Qilu Evening News, Qilu One Point Reporter Li Xuxu Intern Reporter Sun Bingqian Ci Yanwen Wang Qiuyi
As the New Year approaches, products with tiger elements are popular, and Weixian cloth toys, Weifang's intangible cultural heritage products, have become a must-have for spring festival decorations and visiting friends. Sun Xiulan is the provincial inheritor of Weifang Cloth Toys, because of the large increase in orders, this year she is busier than in previous years. A few years ago, Sun Xiulan's family of five was making cloth tigers at home, and when they got busy, they were busy from 9 a.m. to 2 or 3 a.m., and they only ate two meals a day.
Two sons sacrificed their holidays
A family of five doing "tigers"
Sun Xiulan's home is not neat, lying on the ground is a 3-meter-long and 1-meter-wide woven bag filled with cotton, the open space in front of the TV set and the sofa are piled with cloth tiger toys that have been made, and the coffee table is scattered with cloth parts of various shapes used as stickers. Sun Xiulan and her old mother, husband, and two twin sons sat in this mess with stitches and needles, their hands busy.
Sun Xiulan not only danced with her hands, but also crackled in her mouth: "My son asked for it, to 'nine to five', I said yes, every morning from 9 o'clock to 5 am, this is also nine to five." Sun Xiulan smiled as she spoke, and her two eyes smiled into a slit, full of happiness.
The Year of the Tiger is approaching, and the cloth tiger, as the most representative work of weixian cloth toys, has increased significantly.
Sun Xiulan's order has been scheduled from a few years ago to the fifteenth day of the first month, in order to speed up the construction period, even her son who returned from winter vacation has temporarily shelved the plan to learn to drive and invested in the production of Cloth Tiger. Even so, the family still has to work overtime until two or three o'clock every day to complete, Sun Xiulan's sons Sun Jiadong and Sun Jialiang told reporters, because they have to help the family rush to work, the training plan of the year ago can only be postponed until the next year. In order to rush work, the family sometimes eats only two meals a day.
After the two college students joined the "winter vacation social practice", the family of five re-assigned work tasks, the son and husband were responsible for filling, the mother was responsible for sewing, Sun Xiulan was responsible for pasting, and the family cooperated tightly.
Combined with the situation of their own family, the two sons who had just entered the first year of college chose the "network marketing and live e-commerce" major, wanting to integrate intangible cultural heritage and e-commerce, and take over the heirloom that fell on the shoulders of their mothers.
Inherit the skills from your mother
From teaching for 7 years to endure pain to change careers
Like her mother, Sun Xiulan has also heard about it since she was a child and gradually learned the production method of cloth toys.
When Sun Xiulan was not yet in kindergarten, her mother did not allow her to touch some needle and thread, but only allowed her to turn over the ears of the cloth tiger. "At that time, my mother was afraid that I would waste it." As she grew older, under her mother's one-on-one teaching, Sun Xiulan also picked up scissors, picked up needles and threads, and learned from her mother's appearance, and finally she could make one or two molded cloth toys. The process was incomparably long, Sun Xiulan recalled: "As far as the optical bag nose is concerned, I learned it for a year to complete it." ”
Sun Xiulan loves cloth toys, but her dream is to become a people's teacher. After graduating from the teacher's college, she became a primary school teacher in the low village of Southeast Zhuli, teaching for 7 years. Sun Xiulan has a good relationship with the children, and often takes the students to play in her yard after school, and there are thirty or forty of them each time. She said: "Later when I left the school, my students cried. ”
After teaching for 7 years in the low village of Southeast Zhuli, her mother expressed her willingness to let her inherit the mantle. Sun Xiulan was unwilling and quarreled with her mother many times, and under the consideration of many parties, she finally followed her mother's advice. Years later, Sun Xiulan mentioned this matter and began to analyze her original state of mind: "Since I was a child, I have made this cloth toy, and of course I have feelings for it. In addition, watching my mother work so hard, I also want to help her. ”
At this time, there is no tone of complaining about her mother in her words, and she does not know whether time has cleaned up her unwillingness, or whether the title of provincial inheritor has now made up for the regrets of that year.
Innovative research and development of more than 500 varieties
Designing "Ping An Fury" for the New Year
Doing a line of love and a line, this has been vividly reflected in Sun Xiulan. After switching careers, she devoted all her love of teaching to cloth toys.
In addition to inheriting the skills her mother accepted to herself, she innovated and began to design new varieties of cloth toys. From 2000 to the present, in the past 22 years, she has launched more than 500 new cloth toy products, which are widely welcomed. Sun Xiulan said that once she and her mother participated in the intangible cultural heritage market activities, customers waited in front of the stall, cloth toys to make one to sell one, the supply exceeded demand.
In addition to being loved by the people, Sun Xiulan's toys have also gone abroad and become gifts for cultural exchanges. She has designed a celebratory tiger for the Miss Asia Hainan beauty pageant, and at the Sino-French cultural exchange event, she hand-embroidered two lion cloth toys. With the precipitation of time, she herself was also hired as the art instructor of arts and crafts teaching in Qilu Normal College, and was also rated as the inheritor of provincial intangible cultural heritage, the first batch of folk art masters, and the first batch of Weifang city masters.
After years of grinding iron pestles into needles, Sun Xiulan was also puzzled by her mother's high standards for cloth toys, and when other merchants used low-quality cotton to reduce production costs, Sun Xiulan's mother often used these words to educate her.
"This thing can be done without doing it, but it can't make money with a bad conscience."
"To lower the standard is to smash your own rice bowl."
"I'm not doing this to make money, it has to be passed down."
Under the guidance of her mother, now Sun Xiulan has finally found a stop in her heart. She said: "The cloth tiger produced by the machine and the cloth tiger made by hand are like the difference between a businessman and an artist, the machine makes a toy, and what we make is a craft." ”
In order to welcome the New Year, Sun Xiulan specially designed a cloth tiger called "Ping An Fu Rui" for several years. She said: "The forehead of this cloth tiger is red, which represents the good fortune and peace. ”