Birdcage village carries on old craft, wins bucks

The village of Da'ou in Qingdao, Shandong province, is not your ordinary village. At the entrance to the village, hung from almost every door, adorning every billboard and streetlight there is but one thing－birdcages.

Listed as a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage item in 2009, the skill of birdcage-making has been passed down from one generation to another among local villagers in Da'ou, in the city's Jimo district, for more than 500 years.

Today, the skill has provided the livelihoods of more than 320 of the 460 households in the village. And the others are mostly involved in related businesses even if they do not make birdcages themselves.

"A few years ago, there was no time to make birdcages during the busy farming season, but now many villagers have contracted out their farmland so that they can concentrate on making birdcages," said 50-year-old villager Wu Jinchang, who has been a birdcage maker his whole life.

Wu said a traditional birdcage takes more than 100 different techniques in order to finish, from finely cutting wood and bamboo to the final decoration and polishing.

He insists on making handmade birdcages although some others have turned to using machines.

"Machines don't deal with the cage parts carefully enough," he said.

"To make a good cage, you have to process each part over and over again, and feel the texture of the materials by hand."

He also said that cages must be tailored for different bird species according to their size, range of activity and habits.

"Song thrushes are small, so their cages are generally small, too, rectangular or square. Larks are ground-dwelling birds, so there is no need to put a perch in the cage, but a wall is raised around the bottom to prevent the larks from sweeping out the sand that is laid on the bottom of the cage," Wu said.

"However small a cage is, it must be delicately built; however complex the procedure is, it must not be reduced. That's our ancestral motto," said Wu Hongbai, another master who has been engaged in the business for more than 40 years.

Making birdcages has become part of his life. Without using any drawings or rulers, he is able to complete every single process just with the naked eye.

Thanks to the development of local tourism, Da'ou village is increasingly well-known.

It produces more than 600,000 birdcages a year, which are not only well received in major cities across China, but also welcomed in overseas markets such as the United States, Japan, France and Singapore. The business has created an annual output value of more than 20 million yuan ($2.98 million).

"We have earned money by inheriting the traditional skill, but more importantly we are spreading the culture far beyond China," Wu said.

The emerging e-commerce industry has helped the business grow further.

In 2019, the local government invested 1.2 million yuan to establish a rural e-commerce service center to help the villagers showcase and sell their products online, as well as to organize training programs.

"In the past, we relied on old customers to introduce new ones. Now, thanks to e-commerce platforms, customers across the country can place orders simply with a click on their smartphones," said the village's Party secretary Wu Xitong.