Mingjue Iron Painting Forging

The list entry

The first Nanjing municipal list of intangible cultural heritage (the municipal government's notice, Ning Zheng Fa [2008] No. 6, published on 8 January 2008, 87 items) carries the row: serial number 67, item code NJⅦ-19, item name Mingjue Iron Painting Forging, reporting county Lishui County, guardian unit Lishui County Cultural Centre. The same row on the Nanjing tourism portal agrees, and this entry follows the published notice.

Other Lishui items in the same batch are Luoshan Great Dragon (NJⅢ-2), Tiaodangdang (NJⅢ-7), Dashehuo (NJⅢ-8) and Dawujian (NJⅤ-5). "Lishui County" and "Lishui County Cultural Centre" are the names used before the county became a district in 2013; today they are Lishui District and the Lishui District Cultural Centre.

Origin

Mingjue Iron Painting Forging takes its name from Mingjue in Lishui, now Mingjue Community of Shiqiu Subdistrict. The craft's founder was Tang Peng (courtesy name Tianchi). According to a 2026 report in Dajiang Evening News (Wuhu News) quoting the Biographies section of the Wuhu County Gazetteer, Tang Peng was a native of Lishui who settled in Wuhu and created iron painting; the same report notes that the 2020 book Mingjue Iron Painting and the "Song of Tang Peng's Iron Painting", published by Nanjing University Press, confirms that Tang Peng's ancestral home was Mingjue township in Lishui, today Mingjue Community of Shiqiu Subdistrict. A 2009 master's thesis at Xiamen University likewise quotes the Guangxu Wuhu County Gazetteer, recording Tang Peng as a native of Lishui who settled in Wuhu and created iron painting, which corroborates the above.

A second local version is recorded: a 2014 report by China National Radio says the source of iron painting lay in "Mingjue township of Lishui County, that is the Tang family of Luocun in present-day Shiqiu Town", hence the name Mingjue iron painting. The two versions name different villages for Tang Peng (Mingjue Community; the Tang family of Luocun), and both rest on second-hand quotation; this entry sets them side by side.

All quotations from the old gazetteers above are second-hand. This library holds no full text of the Wuhu County Gazetteer, and the body does not quote it directly.

Relation to Wuhu iron painting

Wuhu Iron Painting Forging is a national-level intangible cultural heritage item (serial number 389, item code Ⅷ-39, first national list of 2006, reporting region Wuhu City, Anhui Province, guardian the Wuhu Iron Painting Association). Its official project page states that iron painting began in the Kangxi period of the Qing and was formed by the Wuhu ironsmith Tang Peng together with the Wuhu painter Xiao Yuncong, and is more than 340 years old.

Wuhu iron painting and Mingjue iron painting share an origin but are separate items: the Wuhu item belongs to Anhui and to the national level, while Mingjue iron painting belongs to Nanjing, Jiangsu, and to the municipal level. The craft method given on the Wuhu page — wrought iron heated in a red furnace and worked by forging, drilling, lifting, pressing, welding, filing and chiselling — is the Wuhu account; this library holds no source that records the Mingjue process in its own right, so the entry does not present the Wuhu account as the Mingjue process.

The craft, as reported

According to the 2014 China National Radio report, iron painting uses iron as ink, the anvil as inkstone and the hammer as brush; lines are forged in iron and then welded into a picture, drawing chiefly on the ink, composition and layout of Chinese painting. The craft combines the ancient soldering technique of gold and silver openwork and borrows from paper-cutting, wood engraving and brick carving, fusing the brushwork and composition of Chinese painting; the picture has strong light-and-shade contrast, a marked three-dimensional quality and firm, simple lines. This is the report's general account of iron painting, not a description of the process at Mingjue in particular.

Transmission and safeguarding

The guardian unit is the Lishui County Cultural Centre, now the Lishui District Cultural Centre. Mingjue Iron Painting Forging is entered in the first Nanjing municipal ICH list (2008). This library holds no record of a representative bearer for the item.

There has been recent exchange between the two places: according to the 2026 Dajiang Evening News report, an exhibition of contemporary Wuhu iron painting — masters' works and historical documents — was held at the Nanjing Art Museum Lishui Hall from 31 August to 14 September 2026, jointly organised by the Wuhu Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, the Lishui District Bureau of Culture and Tourism, and the Lishui District Federation of Literary and Art Circles.

Points in doubt

First, the level is given two ways. The municipal list (Ning Zheng Fa [2008] No. 6) records it as a first-batch municipal item, while the 2014 China National Radio report calls Mingjue iron painting "now a provincial-level ICH item of Jiangsu". Both are set out; the level follows the official lists, and confidence is not raised on that account. This library has not located a published document entering Mingjue iron painting in the provincial ICH list, so it is not asserted to be provincial.

Second, the origin rests on second-hand quotation. The evidence for Tang Peng's Lishui origin and for the name "Mingjue iron painting" is Wuhu local media and an academic thesis quoting old gazetteers; this library searched the full texts of the five Lishui County Gazetteers it holds (Wanli, Shunzhi, Kangxi, Qianlong, Guangxu) and found no passage on Tang Peng, iron painting or Mingjue, and holds no full text of the Wuhu County Gazetteer, so no direct quotation is made.

Third, the craft and its transmission lack a first-hand source. The processes, tools, materials, representative works and line of transmission of Mingjue iron painting itself have no direct source here; the 2020 book Mingjue Iron Painting and the "Song of Tang Peng's Iron Painting" is known to this library by its bibliographic record but is not held, and the entry does not develop on it.

Fourth, the names must be kept apart. Wuhu iron painting (national level, Wuhu, Anhui) and Mingjue iron painting (municipal level, Nanjing, Jiangsu) are two items and must not be conflated; item code NJⅦ-19 belongs only to the latter.