This is an element of my box of uncertainty, because during a study tour, I learned about the current situation of traditional handicrafts in some areas of China, where young people no longer continue to learn and use traditional handicrafts as they move to the cities to work. At the same time, I also wondered why we still need these traditional handicrafts in such an advanced age of technology.
The current situation and dilemma of traditional handicrafts
The common feature of intangible cultural heritage is fineness and time-consuming. For example, in the batik in Guizhou, an adult woman’s coat takes 8 months to be embroidered by one person, and a dragon head crow’s feet on the sleeve takes a week to draw. On this pattern, there are countless small strokes.
Tie-dye is also a slow work. The traditional dyes of tie-dye are pure natural and plant-based, like Banlangen, which is the Banlangen of pharmaceuticals. If you soak the blue root in water for a period of time, a light blue will appear, so the locals use it as a dye. After mashing, let it sit for a period of time, and then process it into a tank of dye. The finished product of this blue scarf needs to be dyed more than a dozen times, and every time you dye it, you have to put it in the dyeing tank, soak it for a few minutes and take it out to dry, and then you can dye it the next time. It’s just this work. It will take a few days to make.
Folk handicrafts are different from the current handicrafts, and basically leave no room for these craftsmen to make mistakes. As long as there is a mistake, the whole work will be destroyed. It needs to be pushed back. People who work should be patient and focused on this matter. In the past, it may be mainly maintained by the traditional concept of family and long-term guidance, but now it can only be maintained by the producer’s love for public welfare and the return and sense of achievement obtained through production.
Women play an important role in creating traditional handicrafts.
“Women are an important force in promoting the modernization of agriculture and rural areas. They are the enjoyers and beneficiaries of rural revitalization, as well as promoters and builders. Rural revitalization will bring more development opportunities for women’s development and realize the rise of ‘her strength’.”
Academic research shows that whether it is active or passive, female inheritors naturally have the advantage of maintaining the original culture of their own ethnic group. Ethnic minority women in more closed areas are limited to local communities and families because they are married early and have many children, and they know little about the outside world. However, it is precisely because of this kind of conservatism and “ignorance” that they have a huge advantage in inheriting their own culture. At the same time, in the learning process of folk art, men often accept the study of open physical or consumer folk art, have frequent contact with the outside world, and more innovation and imitation of technical customs, while women do not often have the opportunity to generate their own regional cultural transfer in the process of learning or material consumption, and more Introverted or even closed folk art learning.
The “Mom’s Handworks” project and the significance of intangible cultural heritage
Guangfeng Zhao is a philanthropist, and his organization, the China Women’s Development Foundation, focuses on the support and development of women’s philanthropic projects.
In 2015, he and his team began to promote some traditional crafts to the public in the form of a project.
When they came up with the name of the project, they discussed a lot of options, such as “Confessions of a Poor Mother”, “Left-behind Women”, “Mother’s Handicraft”, and finally they called it “mom’s handworks”. Because the name of mother is very kind, everyone may have this kind of complex. The clothes made by mother and the meals cooked by mother all have an irreplaceable memory and emotion in them, and the people who make non-genetic handicrafts are also mothers. These pan embroidery, Yi embroidery, and tie-dyeing, etc., have passed down the ancient memories of thousands of years from mother to daughter, and then from daughter to daughter step by step.
The “mom’s handworks” project is mainly about: donors can get a public welfare gift by donating a certain amount. On Mother’s Day, they can give it to their mother or the mother of the child. One gift and two caring. Everyone thinks this kind of public welfare project is still relatively innovative. About 400,000 yuan was raised in two weeks. Nearly 10,000 people were able to participate in the activity and helped more than 50 women out of poverty.
They found a girl named Chunyan Yang at the edge of the village, who, like other young people, often went out to work and returned home after a few years without earning much money. She didn’t see her children or the elderly more than a few times a year, and didn’t have much to do after she returned home. Her father was a skilled worker at a tie-dye factory back then, and he was very good at tie-dyeing, so Chunyan grew up doing some tie-dyeing under her father’s influence, but she was shy and didn’t talk much, but she did a lot of things with the “mom’s handworks” team, and slowly became a big part of it. She was shy and basically didn’t talk much, but with the “mom’s handworks” team she did a lot of things, and slowly became the leader of the team, solving the problem of how to start a business at home, take care of her children and the elderly, and become a real inheritor of China’s intangible cultural heritage of tie-dye. The “mom’s handworks” team also started out by setting up a cooperative to sell their products, and slowly turned into an enabler, freeing up more energy to support the next craft.
We need to race against time to protect the intangible cultural heritage.
There was once a master who was visited by “mom’s handworks” team in 2016, and he was the only one who could do many patterns of tie-dye. However, unfortunately, in August 2017, this master passed away, and many of the tie-dye patterns can only go with him, which is very sad. Similar situations have been encountered among other traditional crafts.
There are more than 80 kinds of handicrafts listed as intangible cultural heritage, and they have only 18 kinds of designs at present. There are still too many intangible traditional handicrafts waiting to be rescued, and there are more old amazons waiting for people to help and assist them. If the non-heritage handicrafts just lie in the museum, it becomes a slowly disappearing symbol losing its vitality, someone must learn it and pass it on.