Tujia brocade
Tujia Brocade
Dear friends:
Hello, everyone! Welcome to visit the Tujia people. The Tujia are a hospitable ethnic group, a people who love to sing, and even more, a people who love life. They write nature into their daily lives and merge themselves into the beautiful natural world. They weave their lives with colorful threads...
In 1989, when former U.S. President George H.W. Bush visited China, then-Premier Li Peng presented him with two pieces of Tujia brocade as a gift. Mr. and Mrs. Bush admired them so much they could hardly put them down, calling them a "rare treasure" seldom seen in the world. As a national gift, Chinese delegations have also presented it to foreign leaders such as the President of Zambia and the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia. In 2003, at the "Ethnic Costume Culture of the People's Republic of China" exhibition held at the Paris Cultural Center and the Louvre, the ancient Tujia brocade craft won high praise from both the French government and public in the romantic capital, who called it a gem of ethnic craftsmanship with an Oriental charm. Its exhibits "Tujia Daughter's Fair" and an antique wooden loom are now treasured in the China Nationalities Museum. The large wall hanging "Yueyang Tower" in the Hunan Hall of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, and the enormous 170-square-meter "Scenic Wuling" on the high wall of the waiting hall at Changsha Railway Station are both Tujia brocade. With its superb hand-weaving craftsmanship and rich ethnic character, Tujia brocade has become a highly collectible item and a distinctive interior decoration. In the National Museum of China, as many as 68 works by "Chinese Craft Master" Ye Yucui alone are collected as national brocade treasures.
So where does this magical Tujia brocade come from, and how is it produced?
The majestic and beautiful Wuling Mountains, stretching for a thousand li along the border between Hunan and Hubei, with the clear Qingjiang River flowing east and the Youshui River flowing south — this pristine landscape and magnificent scenery have nurtured a hardworking, brave ethnic group with a long history and glorious traditions: the Tujia people.
For thousands of years, the Tujia have lived as companions of the mountains and partners of the waters, developing a character as tenacious as the mountains and a heart as clear as the waters. At the same time, inspired and enlightened by this wondrous landscape, they developed their own unique ethnic folk art. From folk songs and dances such as Daliuzi, Dongdongkui, Maogusi, Hand-waving Dance, and the Crying Marriage Songs, to distinctive Tujia handicrafts such as brocade, cross-stitch, embroidery, printing and dyeing, shoe insoles, weaving, and pottery — all reflect the profound accumulation of Tujia culture. Especially in weaving, Tujia women's expertise in textiles has been recorded in historical texts since ancient times.
The Tujia, who have lived in the Wuling region for generations, are a people skilled in weaving, and Tujia brocade is their traditional handicraft. It has a very beautiful name: "Xilankapu," which is the Tujia-language term for Tujia brocade. "Xilan" means quilt, and "Kapu" means flower. It was originally commonly called flower quilt or Tujia flower quilt, and later all Tujia brocade came to be collectively called "Xilankapu." Historically it was known as Tujin or Xizhou spotted cloth. Its current names include "Tujia flower cloth" and "flower quilt." Xilankapu is the traditional weaving custom of the Tujia people, carrying their unique culture and embodying the wisdom and hard work of the Tujia people. It is called the mysterious totem draped on the Tujia people and is a gem of Tujia ethnic craftsmanship. With its unique technique, beautiful designs, and rich content, it is ranked alongside Shu brocade, Li brocade, and Zhuang brocade as one of China's four great brocades, and is a mother art comparable to Hunan embroidery. Because Xilankapu reflects every aspect of Tujia life, its creativity and artistic value are highly praised by experts at home and abroad. It is hailed as a "treasure of ethnic culture" and a "living fossil" of Chu culture.
Xiangxi is the homeland of Chinese Tujia brocade. In the high mountains and river valleys of Xiangxi, this traditional weaving custom is still preserved today. "Xilankapu" is a unique handicraft that Tujia women weave by drawing on the natural color spectrum of fresh flowers, feathers, sunset clouds, and rainbows. It features exquisite weaving, brilliant colors, and nearly 300 patterns. It is mainly used for three-panel quilt covers and for ritual activities of the Hand-waving Dance. The production of "Xilankapu" still uses the primitive waist loom and oblique loom dating back to the Han Dynasty, with cotton yarn as warp and colored cotton, silk, and hemp as thick weft to create patterns — brilliant and bold. This kind of loom is generally about 5 chi long, over 2 chi wide, and about 3 chi high. It is made entirely of wooden bars and is simple and low, consisting mainly of a frame, heddle, roller, and seat board. One end of the warp is rolled into a cylinder on the loom, and the other end is tied around the weaver's waist. The left hand pulls the heddle, and the right hand passes the shuttle. Tujia girls use this ancient wooden waist loom, on a narrow manual weaving machine, to weave Tujia brocade. The weaving girl sits on the seat board, holding a picking knife made of ox bone or silver or copper, with a hemp basket beside her. Once the colored threads are arranged in the basket, she begins to weave.
Xilankapu emphasizes color coordination. Generally, red, blue, and cyan cotton threads are used as warp, while cotton, silk, or wool threads of various colors are freely chosen as weft. It is woven by the method of continuous warp and discontinuous weft, with pattern picking done on the reverse side. However, the dyeing of these silk or cotton threads does not use modern chemical dyes, but rather an ancient dyeing method using cotton leaves, cotton stalks, madder, native indigo, purple berry, red earth, yellow beads, and other substances as colorants. Threads or cloth dyed with these materials have the characteristics of soft, beautiful color that never fades. Tujia brocade involves more than 20 procedures from winding thread to hemp wrapping, to reverse-warping, to the completion of picking and weaving, and each procedure is highly refined. It is precisely through the use of this ancient machine, this ancient dyeing method, and craftsmanship passed down by hand and word of mouth over thousands of years that this rare item, famous through the ages, is woven. Because Xilankapu is primitive and elegant, brilliantly colorful, and exquisitely made, it has always been used as "tribute" and, with its unique craftsmanship and wonderful composition, is ranked as one of China's four great brocades. Its artistic effects — strange shapes, unique designs, vivid realism, bold simplicity, full composition, brilliant colors, and unusual patterns — truly reflect Tujia life, history, and customs, and express the Tujia people's love for nature and life.
As a sediment of Tujia historical culture, Xilankapu has a rich flavor of life and distinct ethnic characteristics. This is mainly shown in the selection of themes, decorative style, and use of color. Xilankapu's patterns cover a wide range of themes, involving almost every aspect of Tujia life, with more than 300 basically established traditional patterns. Those with plant and flower themes include Nine Plum Blossoms, Lotus, Peony, Chive Flower, and Vine Flower; those with animal forms include Yangque Flower, Swallow Flower, Tiger Skin Flower, Little Horse Flower, and Cat's Paw; those with daily objects include Table Flower and Chair Flower; those with geometric patterns include Single Eight-Hook, Double Eight-Hook, Twelve-Hook, Twenty-Four-Hook, and Forty-Eight-Hook; those with character themes include Ten-Thousand Character Flower, King Character Flower, and Happiness Character Flower; those with auspicious patterns include Phoenix Through Peony, Egret Picking Lotus, Twin Phoenixes Facing the Sun, Two Dragons Contending for the Pearl, and Magpie Teasing Plum; in addition, Xilankapu patterns also include Chinese character themes such as Fu Lu Shou Xi (Fortune, Prosperity, Longevity, and Happiness), Long Life and Great Wealth, First Rank at Court, Carp Leaping Over the Dragon Gate, and Lion Rolling the Embroidered Ball. It can thus be seen that the selection of Xilankapu themes is inseparably connected with Tujia life and customs, and is a vivid artistic portrayal of the relationship between the Tujia people and nature.
The decorative pattern style of Xilankapu was formed by artistic transformation and technical processing based on typical patterns from various historical periods, such as primitive geometric patterns, cloud patterns of the Han Dynasty, lotus of the Six Dynasties, peony of the Tang Dynasty, pine-bamboo-plum of the Yuan Dynasty, and intertwined branch lotus of the Ming Dynasty. The compositions mostly adopt romantic techniques of generalization, deformation, and exaggeration, skillfully combining various dynamic and static forms, natural patterns, and geometric patterns organically, so that the overall design is both full of life interest and distinctly ethnic. In terms of color application, Xilankapu has both the brilliant strong contrasts of the Tang Dynasty and the elegant, dignified tonal harmony of the Qing Dynasty. The Tujia people favor red and black: red is a warm color representing brightness, while black is a cool color symbolizing solemnity. Therefore, Xilankapu is mainly red, supplemented by black, interspersed with yellow, blue, and white accents. The coloring is antique, rich, and heavy, colorful and varied, showing harmony within contrast and variety within elegance — splendid yet not vulgar, plain yet not monotonous — giving people a feeling of brightness, liveliness, and vitality. The folk rhyme still circulating in Xiangxi — "The Forty-Eight Hooks are grand, but cannot compare to the rock-pattern Chair Flower"; "Red with green cannot show; black with white, where can it go; blue with yellow shines brightly" — expresses the secrets of Xilankapu weaving and color matching. The expression of brocade decoration is mainly geometric abstraction and symbolism, with clear stripes and blocks, straightforward lines, and a masculine beauty throughout.
When speaking of Xilankapu, one must mention a poignant legend from ancient times: Xilan is actually the name of a girl, and Kapu is the flowered cloth she wove. Legend has it that in a beautiful Tujia village lived a beautiful girl named Xilan. She was clever and nimble, loved by all, and the most skilled at cross-stitch and embroidery in the village. She wove every rare flower and exotic plant from all the mountains and ridges. The flowers she embroidered and the colors she matched left fragrance in the wind and attracted bees and butterflies in dance. The cloth from her loom was loved by all who saw it. When Xilan grew to the age of a flower, her weaving skill was known for a hundred li. Her brocade and her beauty were praised throughout the Tujia villages of ninety-nine stockades. She used seven-colored silk threads, flying the shuttle and working the reed, interweaving many kinds of flowers — monthly rose, rose, magnolia, yellow chrysanthemum. However many kinds of flowers there were on the mountain, she could weave that many. People called this extremely beautiful cloth "Kapu." But Xilan was not satisfied. Whenever the spring breeze blew through the Tujia village, she would go up the mountain at dawn, gather flowers of every color, place them in the flower basket at the head of her loom, and weave one beautiful flower after another into the cloth. Xilan wove one bolt after another, and the wild flowers of the mountains bloomed one after another on the Kapu she wove. Her room became a garden of a hundred flowers blooming in rivalry. She wove day and night, and before her chest it was as if a river of flowers flowed, attracting swarms of bees and dancing butterflies.
Xilan was determined to weave all the flowers in the world into her beloved Kapu. "What flowers in the world have I not yet seen?" she asked the old woman to the east who had lived 99 years. The old woman squinted at the Kapu she had woven for a long time, shook her head, and said, "Girl, all the flowers in the world bloom on yours." "What flowers in the world have I not yet woven?" she asked the old woman to the west who had lived 99 years. The old woman propped her head, thought for a long time, waved her hand, and said, "Girl, you have woven all the flowers in the world." But Xilan was still not content. She asked everyone she met where there might be a flower she had not yet seen. One day, Xilan asked the hundred-year-old elder in the village: "Papu, I have woven all the flowers of the Tujia village. Are there any rarer flowers in the world?" The hundred-year-old man stroked his beard and said, "Yes! Yes!" "What flower?" The old man told Xilan that on the back mountain there was a red-fruit tree that had grown for 999 years, and at midnight it bloomed a flower as red as fire, as passionate as fire, which could not be seen in the daytime. "When does this flower bloom?" "In the deep of night in the fourth or fifth month." In the blink of an eye it was the end of the fourth month, and Xilan resolved to pick the red-fruit flower and weave it into cloth. She rose at midnight, fearing neither the cold night wind nor the dew soaking her clothes, nor the thorns cutting her skin. Every night she crouched alone under the red-fruit tree on the back mountain, gazing at the emerald-green leaves. One day, two days... night after night she kept watch, but the red-fruit tree still did not bloom. Xilan was not discouraged, and every night she still secretly ran alone to the back mountain to wait. Perhaps Xilan's sincerity moved the red-fruit tree, for one night the tree shook all over, and suddenly the whole tree was adorned with strings of fiery red fresh flowers. Xilan picked the largest one of all, and by the hazy moonlight she looked at it again and again, smelled it again and again, then joyfully took it home, inserted it into the head of her loom, and began to weave. But who would have known that her sister-in-law, a woman accustomed to stirring up trouble with a vicious heart, ran to her father and reported that Xilan was up to no good, slipping off to the back mountain in the middle of the night to meet a lover, behaving improperly. Her father, having not seen Xilan for several nights in a row, believed it to be true. He was so angry that he drank 3 jin and 3 liang of old wine, and, drunk, rushed into Xilan's room. Seeing his daughter singing as she wove, he without a word seized the scissors beside him and flung them at Xilan. With a scream, Xilan fell onto the loom and never rose again. Her blood splashed onto the cloth, and on the cloth bloomed string after string of fiery red flowers. Her father sobered up, and seeing the fresh flowers at the head of the loom, he understood that he had wrongly accused his daughter. He beat his chest and stamped his feet in endless regret.
Xilan died, and she turned into a bird and flew high away. Every year after the Qingming spring rain, the little bird flies back to the village, crying earnestly, urging the Tujia people to plow and sow. This little bird is popularly called the "Yangque," which is the beautifully shaped and uniquely designed bird motif in today's Tujia brocade "Yangque Flower" pattern.
To commemorate Xilan, the sisters in the village named their brocade "Xilankapu." Xilan also became the weaving goddess in the hearts of the Tujia people. There is no Tujia girl who does not know this story, and no Tujia girl who cannot weave brocade. The Tujia regard whether a girl can do cross-stitch and embroidery as a mark of whether she is clever and nimble-fingered. A love song goes: "The white cloth handkerchief has four corners, on each corner is embroidered a wild goose; when the handkerchief wears out the wild goose remains — don't look at the face, look at the hands."
This is a story that has been passed down for thousands of years. In Tujia custom, when a girl marries, her natal family, besides providing a set of wooden furniture as dowry, must also provide Tujia brocade quilt covers, the most precious of which is the bed quilt. These brocade quilts are provided both by elder relatives and accumulated by the girl herself, woven thread by thread and shuttle by shuttle on the loom after learning to weave. Therefore, Tujia girls begin learning cross-stitch and weaving techniques from their mothers or sisters-in-law or elder sisters from a young age, practicing weaving various patterns and flowers with ox-bone needles in preparation for weaving Xilankapu. By the time they grow up and are ready to marry, each has become a skilled Tujia brocade artisan. The dowry quilt covers of Tujia maidens
and the baby quilt covers, cover skirts, and carrying bags used after marriage and childbirth are mostly the masterpieces of the girls themselves. When a girl marries, she must have Xilankapu she wove herself as part of her dowry, sometimes as many as twenty or more bedcovers. In the year or two before marriage, Tujia girls generally do not participate in field labor but devote themselves to carefully weaving their beloved Xilankapu at home. Using very simple weaving tools, they pass the shuttle and thread day after day, weaving their beautiful wishes and their longing for a new happy life into the Xilankapu. On the wedding day, the natal family displays the beautiful Xilankapu in front of the house for guests to admire, showing that the dowry is generous and the bride is clever and capable. Moreover, the quantity and fineness of these embroidered and woven items become the standard by which a girl's talent is judged. Therefore, the exquisite art of cross-stitch and embroidery became the essential skill of Tujia girls, and cross-stitch and embroidery became part of Tujia ethnic costume.
When you face these brocades, you cannot help but admire the cleverness and nimble fingers of Tujia girls, and you will feel a desire to buy them and take them away. But if they are the work of an unmarried girl, then no matter how much money you offer, you cannot take them. They place the happiness of a lifetime in these brocades that will become their dowry, especially those for future children, which they regard as their very lives, believing that buying the brocade is like buying the child. Perhaps it is precisely because they contain hopes for the future and deep maternal love that these brocades are so exquisitely beautiful. Therefore, whenever you come to a Tujia village in Xiangxi where white clouds drift, in places hidden by green trees and emerald bamboo you can hear the rhythmic sound of the loom from weaving women and see the figures of Tujia girls weaving brocade in the stilted houses. Pairs of hands move ceaselessly over the brocade, while singing the Tujia "Five-Sentence Song": "The shuttle travels back and forth busily, every thread connects to the heart; weave a flowered brocade to wear, flowers upon flowers make one love to death; when my sweetheart sees it, he cannot keep his soul." In the brocade-weaving villages of Xiangxi, thousands of Tujia women sit before their looms, weaving happiness and joy with colorful silk threads, weaving a rosy beautiful dream... Thus beautiful clouds are drawn near, lovely mountains and waters are brought over, flying lovebirds also alight on the brocade, and the entire charm and romance of Tujia life is painted upon it. Looking at it, it is a beautiful painting; thinking of it, it is a lovely poem; and it is also a moving ballad. Truly, there is poetry in the painting and song in the poetry... The clever Tujia people cut their brilliantly colored brocade into various beautiful daily items to adorn their otherwise lonely lives: flowered quilt covers, flowered door curtains, flowered bed curtains... Dozens of finely made brocade items add wondrous color to Tujia villages.
Xilankapu is not only beautiful but also practical, accompanying the Tujia people throughout their lives. In infancy, they are covered with brocade; when they grow up and understand things, they weave brocade; at marriage, brocade is chosen for the dowry; in marital love, brocade accompanies them; at the Sheba Hand-waving Dance, brocade is draped; in honoring ancestors, brocade is offered; when one becomes a grandmother, brocade is given; at death, brocade is buried with them; after the torch festival and wine, brocade is received. What other art can embody the beauty of tenderness and strength in the human world to the limit of a cultural realm? Ancient totems, modern ideals, stern life philosophies, passionate feelings for life — all are imbued in a tender and romantic world as poetic, lyrical, and picturesque as this.
"Four hundred and eighty temples of the Southern Dynasties, how many towers in mist and rain." Today we can finally reexamine the intangible cultural heritage left by humanity, study and protect it, carry it forward, and better serve humanity.