Chinese Intangible Heritage comes to London’s Fan Museum with a series of cultural workshops by Chinese ink painting artist Chen Mengya.
On July 25th, ten participants gathered at The Fan Museum in Greenwich, London, sitting around a table to complete their very first Chinese ink paintings on silk fans. The session was part of “Hand to Hand: Passing Living Fan Traditions Between Generations at Maritime Greenwich”, a series of cultural workshops led by Chinese ink painting artist Chen Mengya. Working in a one-to-one teaching format, Chen guided complete beginners through the history of Chinese painting, brush-holding techniques and ink preparation before they began painting traditional subjects on fan faces.
The event forms part of a pilot project on Built and Intangible Heritage, developed through a partnership between the UK National Commission for UNESCO and Nottingham Trent University. Of the four pilot projects running under this initiative, this is the only one focused on East Asian culture. Taking place within the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, home to the UK’s only museum dedicated entirely to fans, the project brings Chinese intangible cultural heritage into a space already steeped in history.
Brush and Ink, Bridge Between Worlds
The workshop was held in the museum’s courtyard garden, where brushes, ink, mineral pigments and xuan paper fan faces were laid out neatly on the tables. Many participants, on taking their seats, found themselves curiously examining tools they had never seen before. For most, it was their first close encounter with Chinese ink painting.
Chen Mengya, the workshop’s lead instructor, grew up in Sichuan and has been painting since childhood. She studied under renowned Chinese ink painting master Wang Xiaogang, whose own teacher was Zhao Yunyu, a disciple of Zhang Daqian. Widely known as the Picasso of the East, Zhang Daqian met Picasso in person at his villa in Cannes, France in 1956, where the two artists exchanged techniques and compared their work. Chen made a point of sharing this history with her students. “The West has influenced the East, and the East has influenced the West,” she said. “It goes both ways.”
The lesson began with how to hold a brush, then moved on to preparing the ink and making the first marks on paper. Chen explained that the fundamental difference between Chinese ink painting and Western oil painting lies in their goals: where Western art seeks realism, Chinese painting seeks feeling and atmosphere. “It is not about painting something that looks exactly right,” she said. “It is about expressing what you feel.” First-time users of xuan paper quickly discovered how differently it behaves: water spreads and blooms the moment it touches the surface, making the depth and tone of the ink almost impossible to predict. Chen described this as one of the great wonders of the medium. A single brush loaded with ink, she explained, can produce an almost infinite range of tones and textures. “This is very hard to explain in words,” she said. “But once you try it yourself, you understand.”
By the end of the session, each participant had a finished fan in front of them, every fan painted with a goldfish, but each unique in its own way. Chen said the results far exceeded her expectations. “Everyone brought their own ideas. Every fan is completely unique. Today, through these fan paintings, we had a real cultural exchange.” She had also prepared a fan stand for each participant to take home. “I hope they put it somewhere they can see it every day, so it reminds them of today. If one day they pick up a brush again, then we have achieved what we came here to do.” For Chen, the workshop was never only about learning to paint a goldfish. It was about using art, which needs no translation, to bring people closer to the richness of Chinese tradition.
Showing the World Chinese Culture
Zhou Qinsu, founder of ZSLondon and the project’s lead organiser, runs a traditional Chinese clothing brand with a shop in Farringdon, London. Her involvement stems from a deep personal connection to Chinese culture and a desire to share it with the world.
The idea for the project took shape after an experience in 2023, when her work was exhibited at the British Museum. A visitor approached her and asked: do you think anyone still wears traditional clothing like this? The question stayed with her. “I want to show you that yes, people still do,” she said. That moment became the starting point for her application to this project.
When the UK National Commission for UNESCO and Nottingham Trent University opened a public call for intangible heritage projects, Zhou submitted her proposal. “I am Chinese, and I want our culture to have a real presence in the UK,” she said. In her view, Chinese culture in Britain has long been reduced to a handful of familiar images: pandas, food, or cheap goods. The popularity of platforms like Temu and Shein has only deepened that association. “But we have extraordinary traditional craftsmanship,” she said. “Real luxury is something made with generations of skill and devotion. That is what we should be showing the world.”
The fan was chosen as the central object of the project because it carries deep cultural meaning across East Asia. It is both a practical object and an artistic medium, and it connects naturally to images of Chinese scholars, Japanese geisha and Korean traditional performance. “I wanted participants to slow down, make something with their hands, and take it home,” Zhou said. “Something they could show people and say: I made this. This comes from Chinese tradition.” Clothing, she added, offers another kind of connection. “When you meet someone, what they wear is the first thing you notice. It is also the thing closest to your skin. It reflects your personality and your cultural roots.”
The final event in the series will take place on 29 August: an East Asian cultural showcase and fashion show. ZSLondon will bring together mother-and-daughter pairs from East Asian communities across the UK, each carrying a hand-painted round fan made by workshop participants, as they present Chinese qipao and hanfu, Japanese kimono, Vietnamese ao dai and Korean hanbok on the runway. The oldest model taking part is 65, a Hong Kong-born woman who grew up in the UK; her partner on the runway is in her twenties. The pairing is the clearest expression of what Zhou hopes the whole project communicates.
“No matter what culture you come from, it can only survive if it is passed down between generations,” she said. “There are so many Chinese people living overseas who still teach their children to speak Mandarin, write with a brush, recite classical poetry. That thread has not been broken. I want people to see that.”
A Fan, A World
The workshop brought together participants from a range of backgrounds, united by a shared curiosity about Chinese ink painting. Among them were Son, who was born in Vietnam, grew up in the UK and has Chinese ancestry, and Lucara, originally from Romania and now based in London. Son had come across the event on Instagram. “It is very rare to find something like this in London,” he said. “I knew I had to come.”
Neither had any prior experience with Chinese ink painting, yet both left with something unexpected. What stayed with Son most was the moment Chen traced her artistic lineage for the group. The line of transmission from Zhang Daqian to Zhao Yunyu to Wang Xiaogang gave him a new sense of how far Chinese art’s influence reaches. “Her teacher’s teacher was called the Picasso of the East,” he said. “That shows the influence goes both ways, East to West as much as West to East. I had never thought about it that way before.” For Son, who grew up in Britain with Chinese ancestry, the workshop made that connection feel real rather than distant.
Lucara’s experience centred more on the act of making itself. The workshop changed how she thought about art altogether. “You have to manage the water, mix the ink, decide where to leave space,” she said. “There is so much to think about. It made me realise how much more complex an artist’s daily practice is than I had imagined.” She also mentioned the guqin music playing softly in the background, which helped her settle into a rare kind of focus. “We are all so busy. It is unusual to spend two hours doing just one thing. That made today feel quite special.”
This kind of response is exactly what the organisers had hoped for. From the moment students made their first brushstroke on a fan face to the East Asian fashion showcase planned for late August, the Hand to Hand series sets out to show that Chinese cultural heritage does not have to sit behind glass. It can be touched, learned and carried home. A single painted fan has connected people of different languages, backgrounds and stories. Chen Mengya and Zhou Qinsu both said they hope events like this will continue, reaching more people and opening more doors into the world of Chinese traditional culture.
Written by Tianai Lu, additional reporting by Xiaoxiao Hu. If you like this article, why not read: The Scale Of Power Musical Debuts in London
