Miaohua
01 · Historical Records
In the early twentieth century, Liang Qiurui, a Miao artist of Baojing County in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Hunan Province, inherited the technique of painting Miao paintings and transmitted and developed it within his family. The images commonly seen in the paintings include dragons, phoenixes, flowers, plants, fish, shrimp, insects, birds, bamboo, and trees. Drawn with care by the painter and combined with the Miao totemic motifs, they organically unite on the surface of the painting the history of the migrations of the ancient Miao ancestors with the mountains, rivers, clouds, sun and moon, human figures, and buildings of the natural world, as well as the immortals and benevolent deities of legend, so that every pattern and every color scheme in the painting contains rich cultural meaning.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Miao painting is an independent genre of painting that developed on the basis of traditional monochrome embroidery design drafts. Miao embroidery originally used papercuts as embroidery patterns. By the end of the Qing dynasty, a Miao man skilled in painting named Wang Zhengyi began painting white starch paste directly onto dark-colored cloth, replacing the old "cuoben" papercut templates, so that women could embroider directly following the painted drafts. These embroidery drafts painted on plain cloth were vivid and full of charm; their lines were fluid and expressive, and they were warmly welcomed by the women. People were reluctant to cover these beautiful lines with embroidery thread, so they hung the painted drafts on the wall as decoration. Wang Zhengyi accordingly changed the white line drawing into polychrome painting, making it a purely cloth-based painting used for clothing, window curtains, door curtains, and interior decoration. Later, Wang Zhengyi passed on the craft of painting Miao paintings to his wife's younger brother Yang Chuxin and his brothers. The Miao paintings created by the Liang family are rich in subject matter, and their content largely reflects the historical and contemporary conditions of Miao culture, production and daily life, commodity trade, and folk belief. The painters combine realistic and abstract, exaggerated and deformed, free and rigorous modes of expression, giving the paintings a highly distinctive aesthetic value and a romantic style that is at once plain and primitive and warmly unrestrained. The compositions are bold, the lines well ordered, the colors rich and harmonious, gorgeous without vulgarity, and the works have a marked national character.
Wang Zhengyi's turn to colour
Late in the Qing, Wang Zhengyi replaced paper-cut embroidery patterns with white paste drawing on dark cloth and then turned the line drawing into colour painting.
Costume, quilts and hall curtains
Miao painting still appears on costume, quilt covers, bed and door curtains, hall hangings, bed edges, wall pieces and ornaments, mostly on auspicious themes.
Dragons, phoenixes and totems
Dragons, phoenixes, flowers, fish, insects, birds and bamboo are joined with totemic motifs to set migration history alongside mountains, rivers and legendary beings.
Yang Chuxin's wild flowers
Wang passed the craft to his brother-in-law Yang Chuxin, whose wild flowers, insects and beasts won over local Miao women and carried the art down family lines.
Liang Desong's record painting
The fifth-batch inheritor Liang Desong, born in 1964, created the Guinness-record largest hand-painted Miao painting; his children continue the line.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Yang Chuxin excelled at painting wild mountain flowers and plants, insects, birds, and animals, and was widely welcomed by local Miao women.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Present-day Miao painting still retains such forms as clothing, quilt covers, bed curtains, door curtains, hall curtains, bed valances, wall hangings, and worn ornaments, and its content mostly expresses the themes of festivity and auspiciousness, long life, and abundant harvests. Liang Desong (from the official archival record of the associated inheritor): Male, of the Miao nationality, born in November 1964, from Baojing County, Hunan Province. His painting combines realistic and abstract, exaggerated and deformed, metaphorical and symbolic means to express the cultural history of the Miao, their production and daily life, and the content of folk belief. His subjects are wide-ranging, his meanings rich, his images strikingly beautiful, and his style romantic, with a strong rustic flavor and artistic power. His works have been shown in many exhibitions and events, or collected by art museums. "Youxi liujin qing huadan, Ludong yicai zhu huihuang" (Golden Flows the You River in Celebration of the Nation's Birthday; Ludong Overflows with Color in Forging Glory) set the Guinness World Record for the largest handmade Miao painting. He is a representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage project Miao Painting. His children are all inheritors of the next generation.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Liang Desong 05-2706
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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