Gorgeous and delicate, color pleasing to the eye on the red brocade, a pair of five-color eyes sparkle, the nose is also made of a variety of colors of cloth splicing, like a rainbow, but the inside is filled, it appears higher. The eyebrows, whiskers, and teeth that have been cut and sewn are vivid, and the royal characters on the top of the head are intuitively revealed, which is the image of a tiger.
This tigerhead hat made of embroidery and cloth is a representative work of modern Western Qin Dynasty embroidery. In February 2022, on the eve of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, skier Gu Ailing posted a New Year greeting video on social media wearing a tigerhead hat, which became a national hot spot. With Gu Ailing winning gold and silver fame, the same tiger head hat has become a popular explosive product sought after by young people.
The other end of the video, Baoji City Qianyang County embroidery women also warmly discussed, "this look is Qianyang embroidery", their mood has never been so excited. Intangible cultural heritage products have obvious regional characteristics, not to mention each work is like a embroider's child, a needle and thread are given feelings, "the tiger's head hat ears, I changed the original red to yellow, a little different from others." It turns out that the tigerhead hat is the handiwork of Shang Yue.
Tiger head hat sales are rising, Qianyang embroider Niang busy ten fingers flying, for a period of time, they rushed to produce more than 60,000 hats, the most popular time buyers have to wait for a month to have goods.
From the daily necessities of "the door is not out of the door" to the fashion items popular in the network, this "grassroots" intangible cultural heritage art has experienced a cumulative counterattack, to say the reason, there are thousands of years of cultural accumulation, there are inheritors for a long time to adhere to and the awakening of market awareness.
The Art of Motherhood
This is a pair of embroidery Niang's hand, the joints are thick, the skin on the back of the hand is slightly rough, a few places are also due to dry and cold weather and cracked, the palm is covered with calluses, some do farm work, grind out with farm tools, some wear a thimble, grind out embroidery needles.
These hands may not be delicate, but the cloth and colored thread after their play, will present a variety of shapes, mandarin ducks play lotus, lion rolling embroidery, golden melon nao son... Works involve all aspects of life, daily clothing, wedding articles, ornaments, pendants and so on.
Embroidery professional cooperatives in the work of embroidery women Xinhua News Agency/photo
"Everyone learned their craft from their grandmother and mother, and it was handed down from generation to generation." Embroidery woman Li Huilian said that they never expected that one day these things could go out of the house and become cultural products.
In 2022, the China Arts and Crafts Museum of China Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum was inaugurated, and the dowry sewn by Li Huilian when she was married - tiger pillow, belly pocket and pillow top were also on display. After 40 years, the dowry that had been pressing the bottom of the box was transformed into a cultural relic. The year 2022 is the year of the tiger in the lunar calendar. At the beginning of that year, Qianyang's exclusive stamp "Embroidery in the West Qin Dynasty - Fu Hu" was officially issued in the country. The most prominent tiger head pillow in the stamp, as well as the right five-poison fish ear pillow and five-poison frog pillow, were embroidered by Li Huilian.
As a municipal inheritor of Western Qin embroidery, Li Huilian has perfected her skills, but she has little understanding of why these works can be collected. In this regard, Tian Sen, the director of the original cultural museum in Qianyang County, has devoted a lot of effort to research, "I will compare the embroidery of the Western Qin Dynasty with the four famous embroiders, and found that its biggest feature is its profound cultural connotation."
Embroidery of the Western Qin Dynasty, as a basic skill of women in the old times, existed widely in Baoji City and the surrounding rural areas. In December 1974, archaeologists found embroidery marks of red, yellow, brown and brown preserved in the soil of Jingji Tomb of Western Zhou Dynasty in Rujiazhuang, Baoji, Shaanxi Province, and the embroidery marks were all made by braid stitch. This discovery confirms the long history of embroidery in the Western Qin Dynasty, and also shows that as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty, embroidery had a special division of labor, and the style of craft production had a fixed specification.
Embroidery of the Western Qin Dynasty has been spread for a long time, relying on folk activities. In terms of categories, it mainly includes birth, marriage, birthday, sacrifice and festival customs, of which the number of marriage customs is the largest. According to the customs of the Guanzhong area, if men and women from engagement to marriage span a year, there are eight festivals and steps that require families on both sides to give gifts to each other, among which there are a large number of embroidery supplies.
"Boys go to the door to make a blind date, and when she leaves, if she is interested, she will offer her frog ear pillow through the window or door curtain to express her interest." Tian Sen said that after the busy summer harvest, the groom's family will invite the bride to stay at home, during which the bride will make embroidered clothes, shoes, tobacco bags, etc., to show her talent. Some of these old customs are still spreading, and some have long been omitted.
The embroidery works of the Western Qin Dynasty often borrow images such as animals and plants to express their praise for life and longing for a better life. For example, the main gift of birthday celebration - "Wufu Shou Shou", composed of five bats gathered in the same direction to hold a round "Shou" word or "million" word, homophonic "fu", blessing the old man longer than Nanshan, happiness as the East China Sea. The five bats are composed of five colors, representing grandfather, parents, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, symbolizing the five generations under the same roof.
The shape of the works is exaggerated, rich and diverse, and the embroidery patterns in different scenes are different, and the meanings are also different. Such as the embroider of the pillow top, the same is a square pattern, most of the old people use Fu Lu Shou pattern, take the meaning of health and longevity; For children to use more folk "five poisons", tiger pattern, meaning to avoid evil town evil, hope that children like tigers brave and strong; Young people newly married, then choose fish play lotus, lotus (Lian) birth of your son, mandarin ducks playing in the water such images bless the newlyweds happy family, more children more happiness.
Embroider Niang will choose different images according to their needs to combine, make pendants, or daily necessities, in general, the work represents people's worship of life. To examine this, it may be necessary to look for its roots in archaeology.
Frog-shaped ear pillows are one of the representative works of embroidery in the Western Qin Dynasty, and frogs are also one of the most common images, which are used to express people's expectation of having more children. According to research, the posture of the frog pillow is similar to the frog pattern on the pottery basin unearthed at Jiangzhai Site in Lintong District. According to this idea, we can understand the significance of this image by going back to Yangshao culture in the Neolithic Age.
Archaeological evidence has proved that the average life span of human beings in the Neolithic age is between 20 and 33 years old, in the primitive society without medical treatment, the first thing to be solved is the problem of survival, "by observing nature, people found that frogs have many children, the big belly seems to be pregnant with life." Later you might see the same thing with fish, and even plants like watermelons and pumpkins, and over time they become things that people worship." Tian Sen said that the image of frogs has appeared in many archaeological excavations, pottery, murals, paper cuttings, embroidery are preserved in large quantities, and the frog pillow and fish pillow in the embroidery of the Western Qin Dynasty are filled with belly, which represents the hope for many children.
In the Han Dynasty, according to folklore, frogs became gods to become the patron saint of the moon, and then became the patron saint of women, so there was the custom of giving frog pillows as tokens when men and women were blind dating, "not only the meaning of this image is quite deep, the patterns and stitching frequently appear on the embroidery works, that is, the language of embroidery is also tirelessly expressing the worship of life."
Western Qin embroidery commonly used patterns include longevity pattern, pan long pattern, Ruyi pattern, seed pattern, this art form spread for many years, the shape of the work, the fabric may change a lot, but the pattern is retained better, the meaning has not changed. In almost all embroidery works, there will be a fan pattern composed of a number of straight lines, each line has a black dot at the end, this "point" is the seed pattern, the silk thread wrapped two circles to pull out can be made, its meaning is still many children.
Compared with the four famous embroideries, the embroidery of the Western Qin Dynasty, in addition to its profound cultural heritage, expresses meaning with objects and pays attention to practical functions are the other two important characteristics. Nowadays, taking cultural heritage as IP and blessing and practicality as "selling points" is becoming the key to the inheritance of this art form.
"Under the background of cultural confidence, young people are more and more willing to pay for the cultural heritage and aesthetic value it carries while pursuing the practical value of the product, and Western Qin embroidery also needs to catch a new round of 'national tide' express train to release its artistic charm." Tian Sen said.
Fly from the "ground stall" to Tunisia
The first month of the lunar calendar has not passed, and there is no work to do in the crop fields temporarily. This period of idle farming time happens to be the busiest time for the embroidery cooperative, and the orders are basically concentrated around the end of the year. Surrounded by a large table, Shang Yuexia and the women talked and laughed, but their hands could not stop, it was raining a little cold outside, they wore gloves with exposed fingers, shuffling embroidery needles back and forth.
Not far from the same village, Li Huilian's cooperative is the same, the conditions are simple, dim light, embroidery women some wearing reading glasses, the needle and thread to maintain a fixed distance in the chest, and some leaning slightly against the window to do the action of borrowing light.
In Qianyang, there are a total of 21 such cooperatives, each of which has seven or eight embroiderers who come to work every day, and more rural women will take their lives home to do it when they have time. All cooperatives lead a total of 12,000 people engaged in embroidery work, with an annual output value of more than 86 million yuan.
Earlier, Li Huilian and Shang Yuexia is a business partner, together to design works, together on the street stalls, at that time they did not think that Western Qin embroidery can go out of China, to the world, and in this glorious process, rural women also played the main role.
When I met Li Huilian, she had just returned to Qianyang after a trip to Tunisia and Morocco, and these days she always remembered her experience in Africa, "like a movie."
From January 18 to 26, 2024, the successor Li Huilian (third from right) participated in the "Happy Chinese New Year" series of activities in Tunisia and Morocco
In January 2024, at the invitation of the Chinese Embassy in Tunisia and the Chinese Cultural Center in Rabat, Morocco, Shaanxi Provincial Art Troupe went to Tunisia and Morocco to hold a series of happy Spring Festival activities. On January 16, the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Tunisia, Shaanxi held an exhibition of intangible cultural heritage, including Li Huilian's embroidery works.
Before departure, Li Huilian worked overtime to make a batch of dragon hat, tiger head pillow, "This year is the year of the dragon, the dragon hat is just designed, the tiger head pillow originally embroidered is the folk 'five poisons' image, I am afraid foreigners can not accept, specially changed to peony." In order to appear more in line with the theme, she also specially bought a red blouse with embroidery elements, "ready, but still a little nervous, before going out to speak Mandarin is difficult, now even go abroad."
From going out of the house to going out of the country, Li Huilian used nearly 40 years, and the thousand years of inheritance of Qianyang embroidery, also in this concentrated 40 years.
Before the 1980s, Qianyang embroidery was completely a self-sufficient living supplies spread in the farm, at most, it was done more to sell on the street, or relatives and friends in need to give each other. Generally speaking, at that time, the county was closed and the transportation was inconvenient, and the works were still limited to the local area.
1986 is a turning point of the year, that year the county came to a poverty alleviation work team, the members of the investigation found that there are many unseen embroidery works on the street, very distinctive. "I don't know if this can be sold, can it become a poverty alleviation industry?" With a try mentality, they carried a bag of products to Xi 'an to set up a stall.
The surprise came out of the blue. The products were sold out within two hours, and many foreigners were even interested in them. The team tried back and forth several times, and even the products being used in the villagers' homes were "requisitioned" and were still very popular in the market. As a result, they organized a wave of professional publicity, and thoroughly pushed Qianyang embroidery into the spotlight.
In just half a year, the small county located in the north of Baoji City was jubilated because of embroidery - foreigners came, interested merchants came, as if the academy of fine arts found the treasure came, "The county crowded to the hotel can not live, everyone is curious about this handicraft." Tian Sen said that it was from those two years that Qianyang embroidery really went to the market.
In order to make the embroidery industry better development, Qianyang set up two companies, although later shut down, but cultivate a lot of professional embroidery niang, they left the company to open their own entrepreneurial process, and because of exquisite embroidery has been rated as non-genetic successors, Li Huilian is one of them.
Just a few years after leaving the company, Li Huilian also learned to tailor, by making clothes to support the family. During this period, there are occasional merchants who like crafts, but the first time they directly contact merchants, my heart is still some hesitation, "people find me also stunned, I thought I did nothing bad ah."
Until 2001, when I heard that a solo exhibition would require a large number of embroidery works, Li Huilian lit a lamp and made a batch of oil, but the booth was limited, and her works eventually failed to participate. "What are we going to do with all this?" Li Huilian tangled for a long time and finally decided to put up a stall outside the exhibition hall with a package on the back, covered with scarves and newspapers on the ground, put things away, and the timid cries rang out.
When you act, there's an accident, and it's a happy one. While setting up a stall, Li Huilian met an important customer, a Baoji man doing business in Xinjiang, and then fixed the delivery to him. Slowly, the Beijing customer also found, and they cooperated for 8 years.
It was also in those years that Western Qin embroidery, as an intangible cultural heritage, was well protected and passed on. In 2004, Qianyang County was named "Hometown of Chinese Folk art embroidery", and in 2007, Xiqin embroidery was included in the first batch of intangible cultural heritage list of Shaanxi Province, and a year later, it was included in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. In various promotion meetings and competitions since then, Li Huilian's works have been listed and accumulated a small fame.
In 2008, at the suggestion of the village secretary, Li Huilian established the Sunbird Crafts professional cooperative, and the development after this has some overwhelming meaning. She took a train one day and one night to Shenzhen to participate in the cultural fair, "a customer bought a tiger hat to wear in the exhibition hall around, immediately a lot of people to ask, immediately sold out." And the Shanghai World Expo, they made more than 200 tiger headrest, is also in short supply. Later, the 16th meeting of the China-Russia Cultural Cooperation Committee was held in Xi 'an, and Li Huilian presented her works to international friends.
At the county level, Qianyang has established a state-owned Meiyuan company and built an embroidery cultural industrial park, attracting 21 cooperatives to settle in, and built a modern industrial park integrating product research and development, production, exhibition and sales.
From crafts to art
The cute donkey, the cute "Happy lion", the earnest and amiable little tiger...... At first glance, the red and green, three-dimensional image of these works is very eye-catching.
Most of the women in Western Qin villages had not received professional aesthetic training, so they often grasped the structure and proportion of the works according to their feelings. Local materials and general ideas were the most obvious creative characteristics. Coupled with the bold character of the northwest people, the embroidery pattern appears casual and naive.
Tiger head hat and tiger head pillow loved by children
Among the many embroiders, the slightly younger Wang Xiuping is meticulous, which is derived from the pursuit of fine, and she has gradually opened up a different road - the imitation embroidery hanging picture, whether it is the expansion of the types of embroidery works in the Western Qin Dynasty, or the improvement of embroidery work, all of which have taken a big step forward.
On February 10, 2024, the first day of the first lunar month, Baoji Bronze Museum was bustling with people all lamenting the heavy history behind the cultural relics. In the afternoon, the embroidery experience held by Wang Xiuping began, and the children rushed to participate and enjoy a moment of quiet and beautiful.
Beside, her works are exhibited at the same time, attracting many people's attention. A Baoji man from Dalian, who returned to his hometown after 10 years, stopped in front of a hanging painting in the middle of an immersive tour.
Solemn and heavy, beautiful and elegant, ornate decoration, as a Baoji people, visitors naturally know that this is the bronze of the early Western Zhou Dynasty - He Zun, is the earliest clear record of the word "China" in existence, but never expected it to be an embroidery work. Delighted, he found Wang Xiuping to buy a back to Dalian, as a gift to his wife.
This is simulation embroidery, it looks very real, and it is extremely difficult to be real, and a stroke of embroidery on the painting needs hundreds of needles to express it. He Zun is a representative of Chinese cultural relics, and Wang Xiuping recently presented one of them to Christian Wulff, the 10th president of Germany, who visited Xi 'an.
Embroidery work "He Zun" as still life embroidery, the most important thing is to show its three-dimensional sense, highlighting the highlight point and contrast of brightness. The main color of the work is black gray, there are more than ten kinds of light black one color system, the process of embroidery needs to constantly change the line to form a contrast between light and dark, which reduces the speed, "generally takes more than a month to embroider into a picture, no more than 10 years of hand work is difficult to achieve such an effect." Wang Xiuping said that this kind of fine embroidery does not have the West Qin Dynasty, in order to improve the technology, she had to study alone to Suzhou, and then decades of hard practice technology.
At the age of 16, Wang Xiuping entered the embroidery factory in the township to learn the art, and began to contact simulation embroidery under the leadership of the master. A year and a half later left the embroidery factory, in order to live, she also went out to work, or by doing clothing to increase income, despite this, the embroidery craft is still not lost, children's clothes and shoes, household necessities can see the shadow of embroidery.
In 2004, Qianyang County Meiyuan Company was established. Because of her outstanding technology, Wang Xiuping entered the company to be responsible for product development, technical quality control and student training. In the meantime, she did not stop exploring more difficult embroidery techniques, such as natural color transitions. According to the traditional method, layer by layer from deep to shallow can be completed, but the effect is slightly blunt, drawing on the long and short stitch method to blend a variety of colors together to make up for this defect. Over time, the simulated landscape flowers and birds, Wang Xiuping can be easily embroidered out, even the most difficult character embroidery also began to dabble.
Until 2009, Wang Xiuping determined to simulation embroidery as the main development direction, and resigned from the company to set up embroidery, "in those years, people's living standards are high, and simulation embroidery gradually has a market, I decided to try." But that's when the difficulties really started."
The art industry relies most on the popularity of the creator, and Wang Xiuping, a novice, has suffered a lot in opening the market. In the first 3 years, the product backlog was serious, the light input did not earn, even the family also took a circuitous route, and told her through friends, "don't do it." But Wang Xiuping is not willing, she wants to stick to another year.
In order to better develop the embroidery of the Western Qin Dynasty, the relevant departments of Qianyang County appeared in various exhibitions with the works of the inheritors, and tried to brush the sense of existence, among which there was Wang Xiuping's simulated embroidery hanging painting. In addition, a non-heritage into the campus plan was formulated, her embroidery is responsible for implementation. After entering the county vocational high school, embroidery gradually accumulated some fame, and the market opened. In the embroidery class set up by the school, Wang Xiuping also cultivated a group of excellent "embroider women" as a teacher.
In recent years, the steady development of embroidery has begun to use the order type of work, attracted by the customers lined up to wait for Wang Xiuping's works, "these two days to finish last year's order, this year's long full."
Even in the most difficult two years, Wang Xiuping did not ignore the improvement of technical level. She repeatedly practiced the difficult character embroidery, the body part can be completed, but the most difficult face and skin part can not be embroidered. "There is a figure embroidery only the face, can't always put it?" Thinking for a long time, she came to Suzhou with her luggage to learn skin embroidery.
In Suzhou, this embroidery method is only taught in expensive advanced classes, but new students generally cannot enter advanced classes directly. In order to investigate the embroider of Wang Xiuping, the master arranged the homework, but she passed the test successfully. A month, ten thousand yuan cost, hold one's breath, Wang Xiuping got up at four o 'clock every day, insisted on six or seven in the afternoon, became other people's "desperate three niang."
Upon her return, she completed a representative work of symbolic significance - the flying Sky Map of Dunhuang. Similar to girls' makeup, embroider the skin needs to be operated layer by layer: bottom, adjust the color to highlight the brightness, a total of five steps each step is detailed, until the last layer, including the broken hair part, need to split the silk into thirty-six parts to use, "light skin with 30 kinds of silk, the needle is mainly used in random needle embroidery, fast transition natural, which is the plain needle embroidery can not do."
Learning from the stitching of Suzhou embroidery, retaining the characteristics of Qin embroidery, and then forming her own style, of course, is the pursuit of Wang Xiuping. In contrast to the graceful and elegant embroidery style of the South, many of her works show the heroic atmosphere of the north, such as tigers with fierce eyes and tall horses.
In order to promote Qianyang with embroidery culture, Wang Xiuping paid special attention to extracting embroidery images from the local social economy. The attractive colors of apples, the crested ibis of the Qianhu Wetland, and the iconic cultural relics such as bronzes are very popular with customers.
(This article was published in Contemporary Shaanxi, No. 9, 2024)
