日韩午夜精品视频,欧美私密网站,国产一区二区三区四区,国产主播一区二区三区四区

Threads of history

0 CommentsPrint E-mail China Daily, August 3, 2010
Adjust font size:
Threads of history
A weaver operates a "primitive" loom nicknamed "the pig basket".


Hand-woven brocade at the Shanghai Expo sheds light on the beauty of a centuries-old craft that crystallizes the dreams and hard work of the ethnic Zhuang in Guangxi, China's largest ethnic group.

Yesterday, amidst the fanfare of the opening of Guangxi Week at the 2010 World Expo, a hand-woven tapestry became the centerpiece that wowed the audiences who flocked to Shanghai. Had it been done by weaving machines and stitched together, it would have been nothing extraordinary.

But what seemed like an ordinary piece of handicraft was actually the largest of its kind, at 6.6 m by 3.68 m, and took five workers 96 days to finish. That does not take into account the time spent on the design, which lasted eight months.

"We wanted to highlight our ethnic culture, but we also wanted new elements," explains Zhou Tengkao, who was responsible for designing the artwork. "We had five major revisions and finally settled on the dove, using it as a mosaic for a world map. In the lower part of the pattern, we adopted the images of the phoenix, the embroidered ball and the drum to represent Zhuang culture. Put together, it conveys the hope of all people in Guangxi for world peace and prosperity."

Zhuang embroidery, like most handicrafts, fell out of favor because of the intensity of manual labor. A small tapestry takes one worker three days to produce and sells for only 30 yuan ($4.43). Without counting the cost of material and with a worker making only a few hundred yuan a month, the sale price cannot offset the cost.

Zhuang is China's largest ethnic group, with 17 million people. Guangxi is officially called Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and preserving this tradition is more important than making economic sense out of it. In rural Guangxi, a bride has to include an embroidered quilt in her dowry. Young women would give small pieces that they wove for their loved ones as a token of love, especially at the songfest, an important local festival. Even though the days are long gone when every family had a loom and every woman could weave, in Binyang, a town one hour from downtown Nanning, a factory still weaves yarns the old-fashioned way.

In the outer room, there are seemingly machine-powered looms, each manned by one female weaver. A wall of single-color yarn faces the worker. The wooden shuttles have an elongated hole in the middle, where threads of various colors are housed. Despite the look of automation the looms are operated by the worker.

How does she know when to use color and which color? The pattern of the tapestry is determined beforehand, which become cardboard slates with small holes in them, called the heddle or harness. The yarn passes through its eyeholes. It moves forward as the fabric is woven. But the details about the colors have to be memorized by the weaver.

"It takes two or three months to remember one pattern," says a weaver surnamed Huang. "If you make one mistake, you have to go back and fix it."

1   2   3   Next  


Print E-mail Bookmark and Share

Go to Forum >>0 Comments

No comments.

Add your comments...

  • User Name Required
  • Your Comment
  • Racist, abusive and off-topic comments may be removed by the moderator.
Send your storiesGet more from China.org.cnMobileRSSNewsletter
主站蜘蛛池模板: 崇左市| 乌审旗| 潢川县| 邻水| 潢川县| 铁岭县| 虹口区| 碌曲县| 三江| 宣城市| 谷城县| 饶河县| 河南省| 蓝山县| 渝北区| 黎平县| 本溪| 泗阳县| 尼玛县| 民和| 新泰市| 德令哈市| 凤冈县| 丰镇市| 浦县| 黑河市| 曲阜市| 孝感市| 内丘县| 四平市| 西畴县| 朝阳县| 灵寿县| 柯坪县| 呼图壁县| 建水县| 嵊州市| 万荣县| 孟村| 肇东市| 蓬溪县|