Miaoxiu
01 · Historical Records
The Miao embroidery of Taijiang is an important component of Miao dress, and the cultural connotations embodied in its patterns and motifs reflect the repeated migrations and historical changes undergone by the Miao people.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Taijiang Miao embroidery is one of the most representative folk arts of Miao embroidery, found mainly in Shidong Town, Taijiang County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province. The exquisite modeling, consummate workmanship, and color matching of the dress are the standards by which the ingenuity of Miao women is judged. Before marriage, every Miao girl must embroider a set of dowry with her own hands, a task that generally takes three to five years from start to finish; only clever and deft girls can win people's praise, admiration, and courtship. Taijiang Miao embroidery has a rich pictorial repertoire; common subjects include distinctively rendered birds and beasts, flowers, birds, fish, and insects, with patterns of dragons, fish, butterflies, centipedes, and bats being the most widely used. The stitches employed include flat satin stitch, creased stitch, wrapped stitch, layered stitch, lock stitch, pile stitch, braid stitch, tin stitch, counted-thread stitch, split-thread stitch, seed stitch, horsehair stitch, and tacked-thread stitch. Its coloring is harmonious and restrained and its stitching even and smooth, giving it brilliant colors, lifelike images, and clear layering.
Split-thread, seed and horsetail stitches
Taijiang Miao embroidery uses flat, crepe, wrapped, piled, chain, braid, tin, thread-counting, split-thread, seed, horsetail and tacking stitches, harmonious in colour and even in execution.
Dragons, fish, butterflies and centipedes
Taijiang Miao embroidery is rich in imagery, most widely using dragons, fish, butterflies, centipedes and bats alongside distinctive birds and beasts.
Wu Tongying and Golden and Silver Mother
Learning from her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother from the age of five, Wu Tongying mastered dozens of Miao stitches and drew motifs from Miao epic songs and folk tales.
The 'history without words' and the nine dress types
By content and form Taijiang Miao dress divides into nine types, called a history without words and serving as a mark of group identity.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
By content and style, the dress can be divided into nine types, such as the Fangni, Fangjiu, Fangnan, Fangweng, Fangbai, Fangxiu, Wengmang, and Houshao types, making it a veritable 'history without writing' and a marker and symbol of ethnic identity. Taijiang Miao embroidery centers on Shidong Town and extends to the Qingshui River townships of Taigong, Geyi, Laotun, and Nangong. Embroidered pieces are used mainly on the sleeves, waist aprons, and skirt waists of festive dress, and the patterns are often combined with silver ornaments and batik to form a complete festive-costume system.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Miaoxiu · Miaoxiu · Miaoxiu · Miaoxiu · Miaoxiu · Miaoxiu.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Wu Tongying (from the official archive of the associated inheritor): Master of Chinese arts and crafts. Beginning at the age of five, she learned traditional Miao embroidery, paper-cutting of flower designs, spinning, weaving, and cloth dyeing from her mother, grandmother, and maternal grandmother. She mastered several dozen Miao dress embroidery techniques, including split-thread stitch, lock-stitch edging, and layered stitch, and incorporated her own originality on the basis of the traditional techniques. Her works are technically superb and artistically distinctive, rich in Miao cultural meaning and full of rustic life. Examples include 'Mother of Gold and Silver', 'Creating Heaven and Earth', and 'Casting the Sun and Making the Moon', which distill elements from ancient Miao songs, and 'The Snail Dragon', 'The Spider Dragon', 'Song of the Dragon and Phoenix', and 'Dragon Child', which draw on Miao folk tales. In 1993 she held a solo exhibition of her Miao folk embroidery and paper-cutting art at the National Art Museum of China. Female, Miao ethnicity, born in March 1951 and deceased in October 2018, from Taijiang County, Guizhou Province. Representative inheritor of Miao embroidery, a fourth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage item.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wu Tongying 04-1773
- Zhang Guiying 05-2600
- Wang Qiping 05-2601
- Yang Meiyan 05-2602
- Longnvsanjiu 05-2603
- Wu Yingji
- Liu Zhongchang
- Wang Jinhua
- Shi Liping
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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