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Chapter Four LuPan(^S)l) An Chinese religion one of the main duties of the gods is to provide protection for their believers. To many trades and professions this protection may be in the form of good business but to other trades, such a s construction, thi s protection ma y come i n more tangibl e forms. Lu Pan is the guardian spirit of house building and is credited with the invention of a number of tools, such as the saw, the plane and the ink-box, which are essential to the building trade. Thus, L u Pa n i s th e Patro n Sain t o f Chines e Builder s an d Contractors and his festival falls on the 13th day of the sixth month. He is variously describe d i n ancient an d modern literatur e a s an architect, a n engineer , a carpenter , a technica l designe r an d a n inventor. I t seems , however, tha t he is most famous a s a master builder. Lu Pa n live d i n th e stat e o f L u (mode m da y Shandon g Province) and his real name was Kungshu Pan ( 4X^H£), a surname which has fallen ou t of use nowadays. He lived during the Warring States (Cun Qiu) period and most books date his birth as 507 B.C. although he has been dated as early as 606 B.C. It seems that he attained greatest influence between 490 and 420 B.C. There are many stories of Lu Pan's deeds and inventions; some are obviously myth s wherea s other s have the ring of truth abou t them. Many of the stories are handed down from master to apprentice in the building trade, in much the same way as the skills of the trade itself are passed on. His Life The records of Lu Pan's time are sketchy as it was a time of great social upheaval but he appears to be one of the first mortals to be raised to the level of deity and so the stories that are attached to him are a mixture of both legend and reality. Although Lu Pan was a skilled carpenter and builder (and we shall hear of some of his inventions later), he is often referred to as Lu Pan (Facing page) 121 LuPan a mechanic . As suc h h e would hav e received ver y little , if any , formal education and his work proceeded by rule of thumb, intuition , inspiration or plain common-sense. Thus his craft wa s based on experience and feeling for his work rather than any great theoretical considerations or ideas. This, of course, fits in well with the way crafts such as carpentry are taught to apprentices even today. It also fits in well with the Taoist and Zen Buddhist philosophers' interest in skills which could be learned but which could not be communicated in words: the craftsman could show his apprentice what to do but was unable to express in logical terms his feel for the material with which he was working and his intuition for the right thing based on many years of experience. I n our modem age of mass-production and carefully planned systems such skills are almost a lost art. The Patron Saint's name lives on in proverbs such as "brandishing one's axe at Lu Pan's door" ( | £ f 1 -^ ^ ) which refers t o the (arrogant) apprentice's attempt to show off his limited skill in front of hi s master. Th e Englis h equivalen t migh t b e "teachin g one' s grandmother to suck eggs". One of the interesting legacies of Lu Pan is the Lu Pan Ching ( '£$M £ ) or Lu Pan's Manual whic h i s describe d b y Josep h Needham i n Vol. IV, Part II of Science and Civilization in China and which is a manual of craftsmanship fo r artisan s and builders containing a mixture of techniques, fung shu i ( JH^fc- ) and sound practical advice. Needham describes the book as follows: The book opens with a series of illustrations showing operations of constructional joinery, sawyers at work, and various kinds of houses, bridges and pavilions, partly built or completed. A comparison might be made here with the well-known Tunhuang fresco of a pavilion under construction . Among the pictures is one of a...

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