Haidai Qing Jian

In 691 AD, Qingzhou stonemason Diao Sanjin was called to Mount Tai to carve the Diamond Sutra in the river valley passing by Shiyu. He was illiterate, but he spent three years chiseling more than 5,000 characters into the stone one by one. Before leaving, he wrote down his experience of carving sutras in a handwritten note and hid it in a crack in the stone, leaving it to "future generations". More than four hundred years later, the pioneer Meng Yuanlang discovered this manuscript in Jingshiyu. He traveled south with his manuscripts and rubbings from scriptures, guarding the spark of civilization in the flames of war. In his later years, he engraved the manuscript on a stone tablet in Gushan, Hangzhou, facing Mount Tai. Five hundred years later, Wang Chengxuan, the imperial censor who was demoted to Hangzhou, discovered this monument on Gushan. He recalled the enlightenment of an old stonemason surnamed Meng when he was a child - the sound of chiseling bluestone still echoed in his heart after hundreds of years. He engraved the inscription on the Taishan Dai Temple, allowing the wandering "cultural context" to return to its homeland. Thirteen hundred years later, Diao Sanjin's descendant Diao Shisuo was moving bricks at a Qingdao construction site. On the anniversary of his father's death, he returned to his old house in Taishan and found the volume of letters in the attic. The last page of the handwritten note reads: "The descendants of future generations should use this method to engrave the monument of Mount Tai Jing Shi Yu." Diao Shisuo put down the hand holding the bricks and picked up the chisel again. "Haidai Green Slips" uses a roll of hemp paper notes as a clue to connect the fate of the four generations of guardians in the Tang, Song, Ming and contemporary times. They have different identities—masons, pioneers, officials, and migrant workers—but together they have completed a "passion" that spans thousands of years. The work takes "stone carving skills" as its bones and "cultural heritage" as its soul. It asks in the sound of gold and stone: What is something that a nation will never be cut off from? The green bamboo slips are there, and the context is endless.