Interpreting Ancient Chinese Fashion (Day 5)

Today we're in Anshun region in a town called Shuzhoujiai, which is Chinese for stone village. It was a wonderful experience because I was able to take a path up to the mountains and all the homes were made of stone. Walking around the streets you would think you were in a medieval city in Europe. It's just so incredibly picturesque and gorgeous. As I was walking up the path you didn't know what was going to be coming next. As I turned to the right I saw this beautiful view of the mountains. The roofs of the village here tend to be incredible so what they do is take pieces of flat stone and overlap them into really organic and natural patterns. It's amazing to note that the pieces never really fall down and that also the roofs don't leak. Locals are very resourceful putting in pieces of glass to make skylights in their house. So when you go inside the homes you get a really nice effect with the way the light beams through the skylights. Shuzhoujiai is populated by the Buyi people which are traditionally a river people. So all of their villages are built along rivers and here it's built along the Whitewater River. It's really incredible to note that this village was being built about the time that Columbus was making his first voyage to the Americas. In this Buyi village every family's last name is Wu. 307 families live here. Today we were able to spend time with the best artisans in the village learning their batik techniques which have been handed down from generation to generation. The process for making batik is really an involved process. It requires using wax, beeswax to resist dye and sort of complicated because you have to think of the process in reverse. You have to imagine the places that you want the fabric to stay white. The villagers set up a big pot filled with sawdust that was heated up and they put a crucible in there filled with indigo dyed beeswax. They use these really incredibly intricate little tools which really is a type of metal brush. And so I took my little pin, dip it into the beautiful indigo wax and create the shape on the fabric. I needed to be very steady and very clean with my lines and that takes time. I believe it took the elderly woman about 20 years for her to master so I think I have a lot more time to go for this. The second girl was creating a batik design with shapes like rigid little mountains and I asked her what is this? This is very interesting and she said it's dog teeth which is very out of this world. We also got to see the older woman did this amazing spiral pattern freehand. I was just blown away. It was a repetition of these spiraling circles in a row which seems to be a common motif in a lot of the textile work that they do really indigenous to this particular village. After we learned how to apply the designs with the metal brushes then we went to one of the villagers homes to see how the dye is set into the fabric. So there was a very large vat filled with an indigo dye which they make from a local plant. So she took the fabric and she actually dipped the design into the vat and what was happening was that the fabric was being dyed and the intensity of the colors were developing as she was doing this and I asked her how long it would take for her to do something like this. She said it would take probably about a couple days just to keep this consistent, keep the intensity of the color that she wanted. After we finished the dyeing process we went down to an incredibly beautiful river that's so picturesque you wouldn't believe it. It's surrounded by these really amazing mountains and you also see water wheels and behind that are some really incredible fields. So we took everything down and we went to rinse out the indigo dye that was in the fabric. It was a pretty easy process that part of it but it was really difficult to not break the wax so every time you break the wax on the design that allows a dye to seep in and affects the overall pattern. The last step was basically they had this wok, this gigantic wok and she took some corn husks and actually put it underneath to boil the water. Then they would dip the fabric in and that process just simply melts out the wax. It was not a very dynamic process but definitely very critical. So once that was finished the fabric was either dried out or they'd bring it back and start the process over entirely depending on how intricate the design was or if other colors needed to be added. This process may take up to 10 days to complete. My lunch was wonderful. It was so charming too because we were in this small little cavern and it was a very secret place. In fact we probably weren't supposed to be in there but as we turned in there we saw this beautiful batik paint on the wall as decor. Batik is so inspirational to me because I've never used batik before and I think this would be a great signature piece for me. It's really stunning and this one is coming home with me for sure and it's probably going to be something specifically for me. It's a traditional custom in most of the Bui villages and I think we even saw it in Meow villages was the women would congregate at the end of the work day to work on embroideries and share stories or talk about important topics. It was sort of akin to what we would consider a quilting bee or a sewing circle in the U.S. So the women every evening get together and create their embroidery designs. And what I saw was that they were embroidering some sleeve designs for their jackets as well as the trim on their skirt. So those two pieces were very important to pronounce embroidery in their design. It was interesting also to note that the younger women didn't have these embroidered bands. They had a batik band on their sleeves and that was an indication that they still hadn't been married yet. I enjoyed their embroidery because of the colors. I'm really into colors and design. It brings out the design and the concept of it and I asked them what was the reason why they had bright colors and dark colors. Was there any purpose or reason to this? What they tell me was basically that the brighter colors were for the younger people and the darker more monotone colors were for the elderly. Overall the feeling of this village is just incredible. The people are so friendly in so many ways that reminds me of a lot of Mexican pueblos that I've been to. Warmest place that we've been in China so far. I love this village.