How a Hong Kong flower plaque maker is bringing the craft to the West
Making the decorative bamboo-frame banners traditionally used at weddings and festivals in rural Hong Kong is a dying craft, but one producer is keen to keep it alive, and exports to Europe and the US
When Choi Wing-kei was in primary school, he would often help his father, a flower plaque maker, at the shop. Choi started small, stapling sheets of metallic paper together to make flowers.
Now, almost three decades later, he has his own workshop, and his services have been sought as far afield as Europe and the United States.
Fa paai, or flower plaques, have traditionally been used to celebrate weddings and festivals, especially in rural Hong Kong. Nowadays people use them on other occasions as well, such as store openings, carnivals or simply for advertising purposes, Choi says.
The frame is made by tying lengths of bamboo together and laying newspaper and wire mesh on it, and can be used for almost a decade. Workers only have to replace the characters and flowers on the top layer each time.
Though he has mastered the craft, Choi is always looking to improve the designs of his creations, such as replacing tungsten lights with LED ones, using decorations made with glass fibre rather than plastic and drawing more modern designs to suit the taste of urban dwellers.