Xia Liyun

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Xia Liyun, Female, Manchu, from Jinzhoushiguta, Liaoning, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Manchu Embroidery (Ⅶ-80). The tradition is documented in Jinzhoushiguta, Liaoning. Within the regional tradition and school record of Manchu Embroidery in Jinzhoushiguta, Liaoning: Jinzhou Manchu folk embroidery is popular in the area of Guta District, Jinzhou, Liaoning. The relief embroidery (fudiaoxiu) of the Xia family is its most distinctive feature, with series works such as 'Tiger God' and 'Pig God' stitched on themes of Manchu shamanic totems. The palette takes as its main tones the red, yellow, blue, and white revered by the Eight Banners; the forms are exaggerated and transformed, and the style is mellow, honest, and plain. Manchu embroidery is the most distinctive traditional art of the Manchu people; its products are found everywhere on everyday articles and dress, and are most exquisite in pillow-end embroidery. The custom of Manchu women sitting together on the heated kang (earthen bed), doing needlework while receiving guests, has been recorded since the Liao and Jin dynasties. The line recorded in 'Miscellaneous Notes from the Rongzhai Studio' (Rongzhai Suibi) — 'when the wine is finished and the guests have dispersed, each returns to her former seat and goes on embroidering as before' — reflects precisely the way needlework was woven into daily domestic life.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Female, of the Manchu ethnic group, born in February 1964 in Yi County, Liaoning Province. She learned embroidery stitches from her mother from early childhood. In her creative work she draws on and incorporates Suzhou embroidery and other embroidery crafts and stitches; her pieces are dominated by the red, yellow, blue and white favoured by the Manchu Eight Banners, with bright, gorgeous colours and a strong folk flavour. The flowers, birds, fish and insects she embroiders are exaggerated and distorted in form, in a plain and unsophisticated style that gives artistic expression to people's wishes for good fortune and auspiciousness. Her representative works are a series depicting Shaman totems made with relief embroidery, a technique characteristic of Manchu embroidery, including The Tiger God and The Pig God. For many years she has worked to restore, transmit and develop Manchu embroidery, establishing a transmission workshop and offering embroidery courses in schools. Within the documented technical tradition of Manchu Embroidery in Jinzhoushiguta, Liaoning: Embroidery is the most distinctive traditional art of the Manchu people, transmitted among the Manchu folk from ancient times to the present, enduring without decline. Manchu embroidery is strongly practical: it is found everywhere on everyday articles and dress, and is most exquisite in pillow-end embroidery. Manchu embroidery absorbs the strong points of famous Han embroideries such as Su embroidery, Shu embroidery, and Guang embroidery, skillfully blending them with the aesthetic concepts and living customs of its own people to form its own character and charm, revealing the plain folkways of Manchu forebears and the clever hands and ingenious minds of the women of the Eight Banners. Manchu embroidery uses gauze or satin fabric as its principal material, with homespun cloth and blue-and-white cloth as supplements. In composition the works stress left-right symmetry — either answering each other in balance, or with the green dragon on the left and the white tiger on the right — or the cut-embroidery (gexiu) method is used to make the two sides exactly identical. Manchu embroidery has a great variety of designs, bringing into the frame birds and beasts, flowers and plants, fish and insects, and human figures and stories, all expressing the wish for good fortune. The composition of the embroidery carries on the traditional technical rules of Chinese art, peeling back layer after layer and alternating density with sparseness, achieving a state in which 'the sparse is open enough for a horse to gallop and the dense admits not a breath of wind', and displaying a very high artistic standard. Jinzhou Manchu folk embroidery, commonly called 'needle embroidery' (zhenxiu), 'tie-flower work' (zahua), or 'embroidery' (xiuhua), has a long history and is popular mainly in the rural areas of the Jinzhou region of Liaoning Province where Manchu people live in concentrated communities. Jinzhou Manchu folk embroidery usually takes homespun local cloth as its ground. Embroidered pieces are chiefly everyday practical items — tiger-head caps, head scarves, cloud-shaped shoulder collars, garments and skirts, bellybands, shoes and hats, purses, sachets, bed curtains, door curtains, quilt covers, and pillow ends — but also include ceremonial and festive articles such as wedding dresses, longevity banners, funerary banners, and opera costumes. Jinzhou lies in the Liaoxi Corridor, where Manchu and Han cultures blend and meet. The local Manchu embroidery therefore preserves, on the one hand, the plain and simple craft style of the Jurchen, who did appliqué work on leather, and includes many patterns and contents that concretely embody shamanic culture, such as the 'tree of life', the 'mama' (grandmother) figures, and Manchu myths and legends; on the other hand, it has absorbed a great deal from the Han Chinese embroidery techniques of Lu embroidery of the Central Plains and Su embroidery of Jiangnan, as well as artistic nourishment from literati painting, weaving refinement into its bold style and demonstrating the richness and inclusiveness of local culture. Jinzhou Manchu folk embroidery has a wide range of subjects, varied styles, abundant charm, and profound meaning, and is deeply loved by the local people. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Tiger spirit and boar spirit in relief": Her shamanic totem series in the raised-embroidery technique makes the figures stand physically above the ground of the silk. "The eight-banner palette": Using the banner colours of red, yellow, blue and white, her birds and beasts are deliberately distorted to convey the wish for blessing. "Xia Liyun's teaching": Trained by her mother, Xia Liyun borrows from Su embroidery and has founded a teaching studio as well as a school course in Manchu stitching.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

She is a representative bearer of Manchu embroidery (Jinzhou Manchu folk embroidery), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Xia Liyun · National Representative Bearer Archive