Luliu Village, Hubin Town, Boxing County, Binzhou, a small village on the banks of the Yellow River, the home of Liu Qinghua, the inheritor of the provincial intangible cultural heritage, is in an alley of this village.
On January 17, the reporter came to Liu Qinghua's home and entered the door, and the south wing was an exhibition hall. Inside, there are hundreds of cloth tigers of different sizes, colors and shapes, and some other zodiac-shaped fabric artefacts.
The cloth tiger is a handicraft widely spread in Chinese folklore, which can be given as a holiday gift to children and is also a mascot for the blessing of the town house. Cloth tiger in Boxing has a well-documented survival and development process of at least 150 years, subject to the constraints of the materials in hand, the main varieties are cloth tiger dolls, tiger head pillows, tiger head shoes, tiger head hats and so on. The cloth tiger making skills in Boxing and the surrounding area have developed along with the inheritance and development of parenting folklore.
"There are more than thirty large types of cloth tigers I make, all of which are handmade, which can be said to be a thousand tigers, and each one is not exactly the same." Pointing to the thousands of cloth tigers on the display case, Liu Qinghua introduced to reporters that the cloth tigers she made were mainly characterized by thick shapes, thick, short, and fat shapes, and the head was generally short to show a robust form; the four legs were slightly outstretched, rooted in the ground, and the head was slightly high, which shaped the spirit of the tiger and tiger and the innocence and childish love of the tiger from the posture. The color appearance is mostly black, red, clear and yellow cotton cloth as the background color, and the abdomen is made of white cloth, which lays the basic tone of the tiger. Red, yellow, blue, white and black are available, and there are also materials such as peach, wheat green, eggplant purple, gold thread, silver flakes, and colored silk for inlay embellishment, full of auspicious and auspicious celebrations.
"However, no matter how the shape of the tiger changes, the word 'Wang' on the tiger's head is indispensable," Liu Qinghua said, adding that the intricate embroidery on the cloth tiger was embroidered by hand.
Liu Qinghua, 67 years old from a craft family, has been designing and making cloth tigers for more than 30 years, and his father is good at making various crafts and opera costume props. "When I was very young, my grandmother made me a pair of tiger head shoes, and at that time children wore these tiger head shoes, which I liked very much at that time and never wanted to wear. I've loved this cloth tiger ever since. Having raised earthworms, planted shiitake mushrooms, and made willow weaving, Liu Qinghua was engaged in many industries when she was young, but she never let go of her favorite fabric, and later slowly developed it into her own business.
Liu Qinghua told reporters that the production process of cloth tiger includes more than a dozen processes such as proofing, cutting, sewing, filling, winding, lewing, embroidery, cutting and pasting, and her home is the workshop of cloth tiger processing and production. After more than 30 years of production of cloth tigers, Liu Qinghua is most proud of his works, which were selected for the 5 cloth tigers exhibited at the National Museum of China in 2020 at the "Remember Nostalgia - Shandong Folk Art Exhibition". The largest of these, the cloth tiger, is 2 meters tall and more than 3 meters long, and requires two adult men to be able to lift it.
"After being exhibited at the National Museum of China, this large cloth tiger is particularly popular in 2021. A total of more than 30 were produced throughout the year, and one of the customers ordered 12, all of which are 2.4 meters high and more than 3 meters long. Liu Qinghua told reporters that because it is pure handmade, making such a giant cloth tiger is particularly time-consuming and laborious, 12 giant cloth tigers, they three or four people made it for more than 3 months to complete, and such cloth tigers are sold for about 20,000 yuan each. Under the influence of Liu Qinghua, her two children will be cloth tigers. Since childhood, Liu Ke, the daughter of Liu Qinghua, now 36 years old, has fully mastered all the processes of making cloth tigers. In addition to processing, she is now also responsible for the external sales of cloth tigers. Through online and offline sales, Liu Qinghua's cloth tigers have been sold to the whole country, and some are also exported to foreign countries.
The Year of the Tiger is approaching, and the Cloth Tiger is also in peak sales season. "We are now in short supply, the production staff is still small, we have to work overtime." Liu Qinghua said that in the Year of the Tiger, she hopes that her cloth tiger will enter thousands of households and bring happiness and auspiciousness to people.
Hand-made man says:
Reinvigorate traditional craftsmanship
Liu Qinghua, the inheritor of the cloth tiger: Boxingbu tiger is an important part of Shandong's traditional folk art and the "hometown flavor" in the national culture.
With the change of modern people's lifestyle and aesthetic concepts, the cloth tiger has undergone great changes in shape and use, but more attention should be paid to the protection and inheritance of the traditional skills of the cloth tiger. By organizing and driving urban and rural housewives and the elderly, the sick and disabled to learn the handicraft skills of the tiger, we can not only create more employment opportunities, but also promote the inheritance and development of this craft.
(Reporting by Jiang Bin, Yu Linfan, Zhang Qian, correspondent, Guo Cheng, reporter of the public newspaper)