Cai Qun

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Cai Qun, Female, Miao, from Bijieshizhijin, Guizhou, is a sixth-batch national representative bearer of Batik Craftsmanship (Ⅷ-25). The tradition is documented in Bijieshizhijin, Guizhou. Within the regional tradition and school record of Batik Craftsmanship in Bijieshizhijin, Guizhou: The Zhijin Miao batik technique is a batik craft mainly distributed in Zhijin County, Bijie City, Guizhou Province, while radiating into the surrounding areas. Zhijin lies in the heart of the Wumeng Mountains; according to The Miao of Zhijin, all 32 townships (subdistricts) within its borders have long-settled Miao communities that pass on the batik technique. Its method comprises five steps, the first of which is composition, drawn with the fingernail alone without the aid of paper-cutting or any other tool. The Zhijin County Cultural Center is the protection unit for the project. The motifs mostly take natural landscapes, flowers, birds, fish and insects, rivers, and stars as their themes, expressing the Miao reverence for nature, worship of ancestors, and love of life, while also recording the history of the Zhijin Miao people's migrations, struggles, and daily life.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

The bearer record for Cai Qun is anchored in the documented technical standards of Batik Craftsmanship in Bijieshizhijin, Guizhou. Within the documented technical tradition of Batik Craftsmanship in Bijieshizhijin, Guizhou: The Zhijin Miao batik technique is a batik craft mainly distributed in Zhijin County, Bijie City, Guizhou Province, while radiating into the surrounding areas. Zhijin lies in the heart of the Wumeng Mountains; according to The Miao of Zhijin, all 32 townships (subdistricts) within its borders have long-settled Miao communities that pass on the batik technique. The Zhijin Miao batik technique consists of five steps. The first step is composition: without the aid of paper-cutting or any other tool, the design is drawn with the fingernail alone. The second step is wax drawing: the wax knife (the smallest in the world) is heated, dipped in wax, and used to trace the motifs on white cloth, generating the pattern. The third step is dyeing: the cloth is placed in a dye vat and dyed by various methods until it takes on the desired indigo blue. The fourth step is dewaxing: the dyed, waxed piece is placed in boiling water to remove the wax. The fifth step is rinsing: the dewaxed piece is placed in clean water, rinsed, and then dried. The selection of raw materials and the use of tools in Zhijin Miao batik are highly particular. Wax materials are mainly paraffin and beeswax; dye materials use the indigo plants, blood vine, and other plants specific to the mountains of Zhijin. The characteristics of this project are mainly embodied in its craft, composition, motifs, and patterns. Motifs fall into two types, natural and geometric; besides the Butterfly Mother and yin-yang fish common to the Miao, there are dragon-head fish, snake-skin flowers, fish paths, and bats, among others; the snake-skin flower alone has several dozen varieties, so the range of patterns is extremely rich, amounting to several thousand kinds in all. By Miao custom, girls learn the batik technique from childhood — planting indigo and cotton, spinning and weaving, wax-drawing and cross-stitch embroidery, dip-dyeing and tailoring — passed down from generation to generation. In the Miao settlements of Zhijin County, Miao women can be seen making batik products at home everywhere. At present, Zhijin County has 125 cooperatives (companies) related to Miao batik, with more than 40,000 inheritors; batik has become the main traditional handicraft driving rural revitalization in Zhijin County. The Zhijin Miao batik technique is finely executed, with a highly patterned, abstract, and procedural artistic style; it carries the historical memory of Miao myth and legend, migration and development, and production and daily life, embodies the Miao people's interpretation of nature, history, life, and the universe as well as their hopes for a better life, and is an important means of understanding the history of the Zhijin Miao, with high cultural and artistic value. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Composition by fingernail": Of the five stages, the first is composition drawn with the fingernail alone — no paper pattern — and the second lays wax with a heated knife. "The world's smallest wax knife": Its wax knife is held to be the smallest of its kind, narrow enough for hairline wax lines that separate the successive dips. "Found in every township": Every one of the county's thirty-two townships has long-settled Miao families who keep the craft, its wide spread answering the mountain cold.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2025, Cai Qun was announced in the sixth batch of national representative bearers for Batik Craftsmanship, with Bijieshizhijin, Guizhou as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Batik Craftsmanship in Bijieshizhijin, Guizhou: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2021 (batch 5), with Bijieshizhijin, Guizhou as its declared area, and Zhijin County Cultural Center as its safeguarding unit. Since the project was inscribed in the national inventory, its declared area and safeguarding unit have carried out documentation, transmission and presentation within the national safeguarding framework. Together, the inventory record and the project archive form the public documentary basis for the bearer’s transmission practice.

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. Caiqun (Bijieshizhijin, Guizhou) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Caiqun · China ICH Official Archive