China’s Venerated Passion for Flying Kites Is Soaring

Just a few blocks from senior leader Deng Xiaoping’s house, down a dingy alley crammed with coal bricks and drying red chilies, a hospital orderly makes magic.

With wafer-thin bamboo strips, gossamer-fine silk, string, glue and skills passed down through China’s turbulent history, he crafts kites of all colors, shapes and sizes that float on the wind like a sigh.

The Chinese may have grown to love fast food, mobile phones and other trappings of modern life, but they have not lost their passion for kites. Other traditions--such as Peking opera and filial piety--may be trampled in China’s race for modernity. Not kite flying.

In China, kite making and flying are arts, and kite makers like Leng Shixiang are artists.

The 46-year-old Leng began flying kites as a boy, learning from an old man he met on Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. Since then, his kites have been featured in magazines and on TV, competed in contests nationwide and won prizes at home and abroad.

Leng’s cramped room in a bungalow he shares with his family is lined with shelves and cupboards crammed with kites. Bamboo strips for making kites are jammed under the rafters. His desk is littered with paints, glue, twine and other kite-making materials.

“Most of my money and time goes into this,” he says. With obvious pride, he fishes out the prize of his collection: butterfly-shaped kites smaller than aspirin tablets that fly on practically invisible threads.

“Kites can take people out of this world, return them to nature’s bosom,” he says. “By taking you back to nature, a kite helps you forget your troubles. The present fades away.”

Enthusiasts agree Beijing’s best kite-flying season is spring, when the wind is warm and constant. But even in winter, people bundle up against the cold and gather in parks, on highway overpasses, sidewalks, open ground--just about anywhere with space for a kite to come alive.

Nearly every weekend brings a kite ballet in the sky over Tiananmen Square.

Brightly colored fish, fashioned from fine paper and slim bamboo supports, wiggle saucily on the wind, as if battling a river current.

Larger-than-life eagles, with painted wings and fierce cardboard beaks, swoop menacingly overhead, provoking excited yelps from the crowds.

Most impressive are the dragons, their bamboo-and-cloth bodies sometimes stretching 150 feet or more. Their proud heads look down on the world, mouths filled with rows of white cardboard or polystyrene teeth.

Filling the gaps are dozens of smaller birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and even frogs that bounce in the wind, their strings often tangling. Many are made of plastic and can be purchased for a few dollars from peddlers.

China’s first kite, made of wood in the shape of an eagle, was recorded 2,100 years ago, Leng says. It took a scientist three years to build and it flew for a day.

Kites carried letters and were used in mapping, says Leng, who bases his knowledge on historical texts. At first, kites were toys of the wealthy, including China’s emperors. They later became popular among ordinary Chinese and spread to Korea, Japan and finally to the West.

Leng travels to southern China to cut bamboo, avoiding plants that grow close to water because they are too stiff when dry.

“The best bamboo comes from halfway up a hill, facing the sun,” he says. “The point is to keep the bamboo’s elasticity.”

The bamboo twangs like a guitar string made taut when Leng splits it with a knife. He ties the splints together with hemp twine and covers the ensemble with cloth. Gloriously painted designs add the finishing touch.

One of Leng’s latest creations is a wind-driven drum and cymbal on a bamboo frame that will be hung from a kite to make music.

As he works, fish swim silently in two tanks he keeps nearby. Inspiration, perhaps, for his kites?

“No. My other hobby is water weeds,” he says. “I’m not fussed about the fish.”