Bamboo Weaving
01 · Historical Records
Daoming bamboo weaving is centered on Daoming Town, Chongzhou City, Sichuan Province. The local history of using bamboo stretches back to the Qin dynasty: farmers used bamboo lashed together with rope to build frames and weave walls for houses, and wove farm implements such as back baskets, dustpans, and carrying baskets.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Daoming bamboo weaving is a traditional artistic form that uses natural cizhu bamboo (Neosinocalamus affinis) as its raw material and produces woven bamboo ware through three process steps — forming the base, weaving, and locking the rim. Its area of distribution is centered on Daoming Town, Chongzhou City, Sichuan Province, which abounds in cizhu bamboo, and extends to Jixie Township, Wangchang Town, Baitou Town, Gongyi Township, and other areas of Chongzhou. Daoming bamboo weaving has a long history. According to records, as far back as the Qin dynasty the Daoming area had already begun to plant and use bamboo: farmers used bamboo lashed together with rope to build frames and weave walls for their houses, and wove farm implements such as back baskets, dustpans, and carrying baskets. By the Qing dynasty, Daoming bamboo weaving had gradually developed from coarse-splint ware to fine-splint weaving; its range of products steadily increased, and its level of craftsmanship improved considerably. Daoming bamboo weaving consists mainly of two parts: material preparation and weaving. Material preparation selects two-to-three-year-old cizhu bamboo with long, smooth internodes for felling; the green cortex is then scraped off and the nodes removed; and through splitting the culms, sun-drying, cutting the strips, and drawing out fine threads, bamboo strips and fine threads of various specifications are produced. The weaving part includes shaping the form, weaving the body patterns, decorative color-pattern weaving, and closing and finishing work. It relies mainly on the warp-and-weft weaving method, on top of which various techniques — inserting, threading, cutting, locking, nailing, binding, and wrapping — can be interwoven to produce a wide variety of patterns and designs. The form-shaping weaving mainly presents bamboo-woven forms such as round, square, columnar, and various irregular shapes. The body weaving renders the flat patterns of the main form, such as checks, twills, herringbone weaves, 'pepper-eye' patterns, and 'pineapple' patterns. The decorative weaving realizes the artistic expression of the work through various weaving techniques with thick and thin bamboo strips and the use of colored strips, such as drawn-flower (lahua) patterns, herringbone-flower patterns, and colored patterns pinned among the fine threads. The closing and finishing steps complete the final shaping of a piece through the weaving of the mouth, joints, and assembled parts. Bamboo-woven products are closely bound up with the production and daily life of ordinary people. Finished goods include labor tools, household wares, and craft articles, characterized by tight and sturdy construction, fine weaving, novel forms, and ingenious variety. In all there are three systems — three-dimensional, flat, and porcelain-bodied — spanning 20 major categories and more than 3,000 pattern varieties.
Archival Record of Process Steps
Daoming bamboo weaving is a traditional artistic form that uses natural cizhu bamboo (Neosinocalamus affinis) as its raw material and produces woven bamboo ware through three process steps — forming the base, weaving, and locking the rim. Its area of distribution is centered on Daoming Town, Chongzhou City, Sichuan Province, which abounds in cizhu bamboo, and extends to Jixie Township, Wangchang Town, Baitou Town, Gongyi Township, and other areas of Chongzhou.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The area of distribution of Daoming bamboo weaving is centered on Daoming Town, which abounds in cizhu bamboo, and extends to Jixie Township, Wangchang Town, Baitou Town, and Gongyi Township in Chongzhou City. It has been carried down to the present day through family transmission, master-apprentice transmission, and the collective transmission of the bamboo-grove settlements (zhulinpan) of western Sichuan.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Shengzhou Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving · Bamboo Weaving.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Daoming bamboo weaving has been passed down to the present through family transmission, master-apprentice transmission, and the collective transmission of the bamboo-grove settlements (zhulinpan) of western Sichuan. Daoming bamboo weaving is a concentrated expression of local people's culture of daily labor and leisure, and one of the representative cultural and artistic symbols of Sichuan. Its raw material is the cizhu bamboo that abounds locally, gathered through 'thinning' (jianfa) felling, which is sustainable; the craft therefore has practical and economic value as well as ecological, artistic, and socio-cultural value. Zhao Sijin (from the official file of the associated representative inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born January 1935, a native of Chongzhou City, Sichuan Province. Influenced by his father's generation from childhood, he developed a deep interest in the craft of bamboo weaving. He has practiced bamboo weaving for more than seventy years, comprehensively and systematically mastering the techniques of Daoming bamboo weaving. His craftsmanship is consummate and his products exquisite, and they are deeply admired by bamboo-weaving enthusiasts. He attaches importance to transmitting his skills, having taught five people including his daughter and daughters-in-law, and taken on five apprentices including Wu Shuying and Xiao Yuchao. Since the 1970s he has trained nearly a thousand people in the bamboo-weaving training courses run by various organizations. In recent years he has each year trained two cohorts of students for the Daoming Traditional Bamboo Weaving Research and Practice Base, established in Daoming Town by the School of Urban Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, bringing Daoming bamboo weaving into the university classroom. He is a representative inheritor of Bamboo Weaving (Daoming Bamboo Weaving), a national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the fifth batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yu Zhanggen 01-0119
- He Fuli 03-1265
- Song Zengli 03-1266
- Mou Bingheng 03-1267
- Liu Jiafeng 04-1794
- Su Chengjun 05-2640
- Chen Qinghe 05-2641
- Tian Xianmin 05-2642
- Wei Lumian 05-2643
- Tan Sujuan 05-2644
- Chen Yunhua 05-2645
- Zhao Sijin 05-2646
- Ding Zhiyun
- Hu Zhengren
- Lvcheng
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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