Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.
Matryoshka dolls are a Russian folk art tradition dating back over a century. These hollow wooden figurines, shaped like squat bowling pins and painted ornately, come in sets that nest neatly one inside another.
On a recent visit to northeastern China, I learned that many nesting dolls are made in one small township here — Yimianpo. It's about 125 miles from the border with Russia.
In the late 19th century, when the Russian Empire started to expand eastward, Yimianpo . The matryoshka — or tao wa, as they're called in China — followed.
A workshop owner invited me into his carving shop. There, amid thigh-high piles of wood shavings, I watched an artisan hammer a block of linden wood from a nearby forest onto a lathe. Wielding gouges and chisels that looked like diabolical fire pokers, he shaped the wood into a rounded silhouette. Then he carved another. And another.
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