Shell Game: What Egg Carving Teaches You About Life

For the December issue of the Beijinger, we sent our editors out to try their hand at traditional Chinese crafts. An excerpt of their experiences was featured in the magazine. The following is the full version of their story.

If you do a search for “egg carving” on the Internet, you’ll find some pretty crazy images of eggshells with the most complex patterns carved on them. They look so delicate that you wouldn’t even dare to touch them, much less imagine making creating one with your own hands. But why not? You may be surprised to discover that egg-carving requires only the simplest tools.

But before you read on, let me ask you a question: Are you a patient person? Because the following story is about how a single egg will test the very limits of your patience.

Like any smug apprentice, I walked into Master Ma’s hutong house imagining that I would make a masterpiece good enough to be exhibited at the Expo. Of course my self-righteousness was smashed.

First of all, I totally forgot how fragile an egg was until I needed to make the smallest hole to get the egg white out. I still want to believe that there is some precise tool that can do a perfect job without breaking the shell. But Ma taught me how to make one with a single pen knife that you can find in any stationary store. Remember what I said? Yes, Patience. The carving process starts now. Let the sharp edge of the knife scratch the center of the eggshell’s bottom. Gently, because there’s a certain limit of how much pressure you can put on that egg, and according to Ma, that limit gets bypassed very often. They once ended up cooking 12 eggs after a single class. (Nope, they don’t waste any eggs.)

Once the hole was made, we started to extract the egg white, letting it drip out into a bowl. Ma showed me how that could be easily done with a needle tube. And again, patience. Apparently this “easy” phase is when most eggs crack.

The fun part finally comes after the egg’s been cleaned inside out. As a beginner, I was told to draw a stylish 福 (“good fortune”) on the egg with a pencil. Drawing on a twisted solid oval turns out to be a little different than drawing on a piece of paper. My quick work had to be amended a few times under Ma’s instruction.

After the drawing is done, it’s carving time. All you need are a pair of steady hands and a persevering spirit. As long as you don’t smash the brittle eggshell, the masterpiece will be achieved after all. It just takes time.

Price and venue: RMB 160/two-hour session, Gift of Hope

The rewards of persevering: A single session only gets you a shell with a few awkward scratches – that is, if you don’t break any eggs. Beginners need at least five hours to complete a piece. It takes years of practice to become a master.

Click here to see the December issue of the Beijinger in full.

Photos: Judy Zhou