A number of century-old Fujian arts and crafts products and rare local food are on display in the boutique area of the Fujian Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo.

The famous local products and food, include traditional dried pork flakes, a hand-made paper umbrella and a horn comb laced with gold.

Pork flakes

The Fujian brand-name Dingding Pork Flakes' predecessor was the Ding Ri You Pork Flakes, which won a gold medal at the Panama World Expo in 1915.

The dried pork flakes are wrapped in a lotus leaf and preserved in a porcelain pot. Without any preservatives, the pork flakes' shelf life can reach more than one year. That's how the food remained fresh when it was shipped to, and exhibited at, the Panama expo nearly a century ago.

Lin Jiahe, made the pork flakes on display today, following a traditional formula inherited from his ancestors.

Hand-made paper umbrella

The umbrella on display today is almost the same of that made decades ago and displayed at the world expo twice in 1915 and 1933.

The umbrella is made using traditional skills and techniques. Fujian craftsmen have given the traditional umbrella a modern twist by introducing more colors and patterns to the umbrella's surface decoration to make it more attractive. The expo umbrella is also stronger than ordinary paper umbrella. An ordinary paper umbrella has 36 spokes while the umbrella specially made for the Expo has 44 spokes.

Ancient horn comb

The hand-made horn comb is one of the top treasures of Fuzhou, the capital city of Fujian province. The one on display at the Fujian Pavilion is made from a black buffalo horn and is an accurate replica of a relic unearthed from a tomb in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) about a thousand years ago.

A template was made from the relic to create the new version, which was then laced with 15-gram of gold foils in the same style as the original. To reproduce the ancient style of the Fuzhou horn comb, craftsmen had to polish every comb tooth by hand.

(China Daily 06/28/2010 page6)