Guangdong Embroidery

01 · Historical Records

The Tang-dynasty work Du Yang Za Bian by Su E already records the Nanhai maiden Lu Meiniang, "whose skill was beyond compare and who could embroider seven scrolls of the Lotus Sutra on a single foot of plain silk". Yue embroidery has a long history in Guangdong; Chao embroidery appeared in the Chaozhou area of Guangdong as early as the Tang dynasty, and by the Ming dynasty had formed its own style.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Yue embroidery is a folk embroidery craft circulated in Guangzhou and its former dependencies of Nanhai, Panyu and Shunde, with a history of more than one thousand years. Yue embroidery technique pays attention to the form and quality of the materials it works with, and comprises four major categories: true-silk velvet embroidery, gold-and-silver-thread embroidery, thread embroidery and bead embroidery. True-silk velvet embroidery uses silk as its material and has strong expressive power; it is the oldest variety of Yue embroidery and the one whose technique has been most fully transmitted. The stitches of gold-and-silver-thread embroidery are distinctive, with more than sixty of them in seven broad groups, including flat embroidery, woven embroidery, wrapped embroidery, raised embroidery, padded embroidery, appliqué embroidery and brocade weaving. Bead embroidery is a new variety of Yue embroidery, developed and applied by Yue embroidery artisans only in the last few decades. Its subjects are dragons and phoenixes, flowers and plants, birds, beasts, aquatic creatures and human figures; finished pieces mostly serve as everyday articles, sacrificial offerings, objects for appreciation and decorations for opera costumes. Its embroidery methods fall into five types: embroidering, padding, appliqué, piecing and stitching. There are more than two hundred stitches, including hexagonal triple-layer satin-stitch brocade, padded-cotton gold-thread stitch, double-ding scale stitch and padded chrysanthemum scale stitch. Many works combine different embroidery methods and stitches and introduce innovations; for example, the representative Chao embroidery work Nine-Dragon Screen uses five major embroidery methods, among which the nail-gold padded-relief stitch unique to Chao embroidery makes the image of the dragons lifelike. Yue embroidery is a craft with a style of its own: its stitches are varied, its stitch lengths are even, and it can skillfully use the direction of the threads to express the texture of the objects depicted. Yue embroidery has a wide range of subjects and rich colors; it attends to the harmonious use of light and shadow, and at the same time puts craftsmanship at the service of art, attaching great importance to the artistic effect of the finished piece. Yue embroidery embodies the talent and wisdom of generations of artisans; from its artistic style to its creative thinking it is full of Lingnan character, and its course of growth closely overlaps the trajectory of Lingnan culture. Huang Hong, Xu Liancheng, Yu De, Huang Mei and Chen Heying are all influential Yue embroidery inheritors. Today, with the passing of senior artisans, some unique Yue embroidery skills have gradually been lost. Chen Shaofang, the only master of arts and crafts in Yue embroidery, is also nearly seventy years old; Yue embroidery urgently needs young inheritors. In an age of continuous socioeconomic development and rapid scientific and technological progress, Yue embroidery, which relies on manual skill for its outstanding results, has suffered severe competition from machine embroidery and computer embroidery. Its market is shrinking and its survival is difficult, so it urgently needs support and protection.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Chao embroidery is centered on Chaozhou City in Guangdong Province and is distributed across the Chaoshan counties and cities of Chao'an, Raoping, Jieyang, Shantou and Chenghai; the embroidery shops and stalls within Chaozhou city are linked to the village embroiderers of the surrounding countryside. Chao embroidery is used mostly for opera costumes, temple banners and curtains, wedding jackets and skirts and sacrificial articles, and it coexists with other folk crafts such as Chao opera and Chaozhou woodcarving in the same regional cultural environment.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Guangdong Embroidery · Guangdong Embroidery.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Lin Zhicheng (record in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1922, from Chaozhou, Guangdong. Representative inheritor of Yue Embroidery (Chao Embroidery), a first-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project; master of Chinese arts and crafts. From the age of twelve, Lin Zhicheng was an apprentice at the Taisheng Embroidery Shop in Chaozhou; he later moved to the Xu Bingfeng Embroidery Shop as a Chao embroidery designer. After the joint public-private transformation he entered the Chaozhou Chao Embroidery Factory, where he served as director of the design office and then as technical factory director. Using techniques such as padding, piecing, appliqué and folding, together with strongly contrasting colors, and incorporating gold-and-velvet embroidery as well, he produced works that are splendid and highly three-dimensional. He also drew on the artistic techniques of Su embroidery and, combining them with the characteristics of Chao embroidery, created double-sided three-dimensional Chao embroidery works of art, such as Wealth and Honor in the Jade Hall. On the basis of his decades of practice in Chao embroidery, he also summarized 250 stitches and embroidered samples of their patterns for later generations to learn from. Lin Zhicheng passed on the accumulations of his whole life to the young embroiderers of the factory and to his own children. His representative works include Red Phoenix Facing the Sun, Changban Slope and Everybody Is Happy. Kang Huifang (record in the official file of the associated inheritor): Female, Han ethnicity, born in July 1948, from Chaozhou, Guangdong Province. She learned Chao embroidery technique from childhood, and was later selected by the senior artisan Lin Wanying to work at the state-run Chaozhou Chao Embroidery Factory. For several decades she has delved into Chao embroidery stitches; she excels at the combined use of traditional Chao embroidery stitches and techniques, seeking to bring together traditional subjects and modern visual effects so that the two set each other off. Her works have full compositions and lifelike patterns, with intense colors in the velvet threads and meticulous nail-gold work. She participated in embroidering the large padded-embroidery screens Nine-Dragon Screen and Playing the Flute to Attract the Phoenix. She has been appointed deputy director of the Guangdong Province Yue Embroidery Research Institute and technical director of the Xiangqiao District Arts and Crafts Embroidery Research Center in Chaozhou, and has devoted great effort to training the next generation of Chao embroidery successors. Representative inheritor of Yue Embroidery (Chao Embroidery), a fourth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project. She has taught and trained more than a hundred students and apprentices.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Chen Shaofang 01-0081
• Lin Zhicheng 01-0082
• Kang Huifang 04-1771
• Sun Qingxian 04-1772
• Xu Chiguang 05-2597
• Li Shuying
• Huang Weixiong
• Wu Jieyi

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Guangdong Embroidery (Chaozhou, Guangdong) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Lin Zhicheng · National Representative Bearer Archive
3. Kang Huifang · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗