Yangqitun, a village of about 1000 households in Xunxian County, Henan Province, is one of the major clay toy producing areas in China.

Nearly all the villagers there can make clay toy animals such as monkeys, sheep, cattle, pigs, birds and equestrians on horseback.

In the slack season or at odd moments, all the members of a family will sit together in a joyful bustle kneading and dyeing, and a basketful of toys will be turned out in a little while.

Weather permitting, the toys will be dried outdoors in the sun.  Then the whole village will be immersed in a sea of clay toys, indeed a dazzling sight for visitors.

Toy making in this village has a history of more than 1000 years.  Toward the end of the Sui Dynasty (581-618), some peasant uprisers won a victory over the government forces near the village.

When they settled down there after the battle, some adroit-fingered fighters kneaded clay horses and equestrians to memorize those who had laid down their lives.

As more people followed their example, the practice flourished and gradually took root in the village.

It seems that making a clay toy is quite an easy job for the villagers.  “Whoever stays in the village for a meal will be able to make a toy,” a villager says.

To make a toy is one thing, but to make it presentable is another.  Most of the children there begin to learn the craft at the age of six or seven.

At first they simply stand aside, watching how their elders do it.

Gradually they are allowed to prepare clay or colours before trying their hand at kneading.  The training of a skilled craftsman often requires years of efforts, and many have devoted a lifetime to the work.

Raw material for the toys is a kind of fine clay soil available everywhere around the village in the former course of the Yellow River. Mixed with water first, it is then beaten with a stick repeatedly until it becomes as tenacious as dough.

The major tool of the toy maker is simply a bamboo spike about 15 centimetres in length.  With one end blunt and the other pointed, it is used to carve the features of the animal or pierce a hole in a certain place so that the toy can be blown as a whistle.

Most of the toys are kneaded with the fingers, and some are shaped into a mould.  Sometimes the head of an animal is joined to the body by a spring so as to make it mobile and lifelike when shaken.

Semifinished toys will be coloured as the final touch.  Black, honoured by the Chinese people as the “heroic colour,” is often used as the background, on which to add such primary colours as red, yellow or blue.  The colours are usually mixed with yolk so that they look brighter, and are spread on the toys with a pointed, flexible brush made of dog hair.

Toy animals are usually romanticized in form.  The neck of a horse, for example, may be as long as the body, while the head of a turtle dove may be disproportionately small.

Curious to say, the toys look all the more lovely in their primitive simplicity and crude composition.  Ignorant of any essentials of modern scientific anatomy, the craftsman just follows his inclinations and creates anything as he likes.  So his product is, as it were, a castle in the air rather than a copy of reality.

The finished products will be kept in store for sale mainly in the two temple fairs held on a hill nearby, the one in early spring and the other in early autumn.

The spring fair, which begins during the Lantern Festival (the 15th day of the first month according to Chinese Lunar Calendar) and lasts for half a month, is one of the largest of its kind in Central China, drawing at its peak about 200000 people each day from several provinces.

Then toy stalls will be set up all the way from the foot of the hill to the doorsteps of the temple at the hilltop.

As a rule most of the fair-goers will buy some clay toys as mementos for their children.

The biggest buyers, however, are those childless women who, often traditionally treated with disdain by their husbands and in-laws, go to the fair to invoke the divine blessing on their pregnancy.

Having prayed to the gods for children, they will take basketfuls of toys on their way home.  Mischievous boys waiting at the roadside will shout at them: “Give me a clay chicken, and you’ll bear numerous children.”

Pleased with the words, the women will gladly distribute the toys among the boys.

Clay toys have brought more than money to the villagers.  In recent years their toys have been exhibited in such places as Beijing, Guanzhou, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, as well as in Japan.

Many famous artists and craftsmen, Chinese and foreigners alike, have visited the village.

Three senior villagers have been officially named “folk artists” by the provincial Institute of Folk Arts, and one of them was invited to show his skills in the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

The villagers have found a worthy successor in Zhang Xihe, an artist from a nearby village who has promoted clay toy making to a new level.

Zhang has improved on traditional techniques to make his toy animals more diverse in posture and expression_r.  He is so skilled he can make three lovely clay monkeys in only two minutes.

What is even more remarkable is that he can do it when blindfolded, a skill which has made him known as the Magic Monkey Maker.

Now some senior artists are attempting to have the toys fired in order to make them durable and fit for transportation.  If successful, they will open up fresh markets for the toys and provide a new stimulus to toy production.