The ancient artists left their consummate skills on those small works, which featured human figures, various utensils, and some even with lines of poems. Such legacies inspired many ancient literati to record them with passages, with one of them known as Nut Carving Boat, which has been included in Chinese middle school textbooks. 

Many people came to know the art form beginning from this passage, which describes the  nut carving work by Wang Shuyuan in the Ming Dynasty. The work, carved on a peach stone, features the scene of Su Dongpo (an influential poet and essayist of the Song Dynasty) going boating at night in Chibi in Central China's Hubei Province.

The boat is about three centimeters long. The bump in the middle of the peach stone is the little boat's cabin. On each of the cabin's two sides, there are four windowpanes. When the windows are opened, one can see two delicately decorated poles with flower patterns; when the windows are closed, one can see the poems carved on the cabin's two sides. On the boat's bow and stern, there are five figures featured altogether, each of them being vividly carved and with poise.

Peach, pronounced "tao" in Chinese, is homophonic to escape. Thus the word always has an auspicious meaning, and is used to avoid misfortunes and ward off evil. By the early part of the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC), the custom of using the peach wood to drive away evil spirits had already been very widespread.

Page:

1

2