Jiashan Kite Making Skills There are paper-sticking shops in the market towns of Taozhuang and Fenhu in Jiashan County, which specialize in paper-sticking and make various kinds of paper for the dead and kites for sale. Chen Mingguan, a kite maker in Taozhuang, learned his skills from the paper-sticking shops and has passed them down to this day. The Taozhuang centipede kites in Jiashan kites generally range from thirty to one hundred sections. They are made of cotton paper pasted on a bamboo frame and strung together with cotton thread. It takes three to five people to fly them. Chen Mingguan, a maker of Taozhuang centipede kites, was born in August 1930. He was an apprentice in the market town when he was in his teens and learned the skills of making various kites. In 1983, he made a centipede kite with fifty sections and a centipede kite with one hundred sections, and participated in the county kite competition. The Taozhuang centipede kite is based on the centipede, with a pair of centipede legs as one section, and thirty or even one hundred sections connected as a combination. Each section is pasted with cotton paper on a circular bamboo frame with a diameter of 22 cm. A 95 cm bamboo strip is placed horizontally in the middle of the circular bamboo frame as a foot. Three rooster feathers similar to the centipede's feet are tied to the two ends of the bamboo strip to balance it when it is released. Semicircular patterns are drawn on the cotton paper with red ink and black ink respectively. The centipede head is made by putting together three semicircles and can rotate in the wind. When the head and the sections are made, a thick cotton thread is used to connect the kite head and tail, with a distance of 50 cm between the sections. Then a thick cotton thread is used to connect the two sides, and finally a red silk about 1 meter long is tied to the tail. In the process of making kites, artists paste paper and silk and decorate them with auspicious patterns, implying smooth sailing. With the changes of the times, the production of Taozhuang centipede kites is facing the risk of being lost. For this reason, Jiashan County established a kite making interest class in Taozhuang Middle School in 2001 to pass on the traditional craft of handmade kites and hold kite flying competitions. Jiashan kite making skills have been included in the third batch of Jiaxing City's intangible cultural heritage list. Information source: Jiaxing Library Information source: Jiaxing Library