"When I was a child, I used to play in front of my grandmother's door, she sewed a cloth tiger, and I held my chin..." The cloth tiger is an indispensable object on the kangtou of the farmers in the Taihang Mountains and the Shangdang Basin. The elderly often say that the newborn child is "shallow" (to the effect that life is in a delicate period and the root is not yet firm), so the grandmother or grandmother must sew a cloth tiger and put it next to the child's pillow to care for the child's healthy growth. Tiger head shoes, tiger head hats, etc. are also worn daily by children in the north. If the family conditions are good, they will also sew a small hat with a tiger hat, and the child will wear it and run in the snow, like a small tiger, solid and strong.
Li Houhu is a representative of the folk handicrafts of Licheng, Shanxi. In the summer of 1996, the trade union of the former Post and Telecommunications Bureau of Changzhi City, Shanxi Province, held a handicraft exhibition and sales, and the former Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of the People's Republic of China was carrying out the 1998 (second round) Year of the Tiger Zodiac Stamp Collection Activity, and a cloth tiger sewn by Gao Qiuying, a peasant woman in Licheng County, participated in the election, and finally became a sample of the stamp pattern of the 1998 Year of the Tiger. The 50-minute special stamp of the Year of the Tiger was designed by Mr. Wang Huming, a arts and crafts artist, named "Tiger Tiger Shengwei", and the cute Li Houhu created by Gao Qiuying has been artistically treated to increase the sense of movement and aura, and has more spirit.
Look closely, this LiHou tiger is indeed likeable. Yellow cotton as the background color, laying the basic tone of the tiger, the abdomen and chin with red cloth, adding a sense of auspicious and festive. The shape is thick, short and fat, showing the thick and strong form; the four feet are slightly outstretched, in the shape of roots; the head is slightly high, and there is a kind of tiger and tiger spirit and childlike innocence and cuteness. The facial features are unique in shape, the eyes are based on the peach shape, the black, white and red tricolor are selected for decoration, the tiger whiskers are strong as needles, but a beautiful orchid is cut, nestled in the corner of the tiger's mouth, so that the original grinning and fierce state of the tooth, a reverse of the appearance of goodness. There are two whirlwind-like patterns in front of and behind the tiger's claws, which not only conform to the growth law of animal fur, but also have a beautiful meaning of smooth sailing.
Li Cheng has a tradition of "mother teaching female red", girls from the beginning of learning to do needlework to before marriage, sewing Li Hou hu is a major skill. The women in the village sewn cloth tigers in different forms, ranging from crouching tigers to crouching tigers to standing tigers, and each added his own emotional preferences to the design and sewing. In 2008, as the fabric Li Houhu became a national intangible cultural heritage, Gao Qiuying naturally became a non-hereditary inheritor. She summarized and standardized the style and standards of Li Houhu, dividing the cloth tigers of different sizes into 5 models, the largest length of which is 40 centimeters, suitable for sleeping in the bed for newborns; the smallest is only 10 centimeters long, with double-headed tigers and single-headed tigers, which can be hung in the car as ornaments. Gao Qiuying also made improvements to the selection of materials and stitching methods, in addition to yellow and red colors, the cloth also boldly used large flower cloth, satin, gold velvet, etc., and figured out needles such as threading needles, pairing needles, string needles, beating seeds, Yu qiantuo and other stitches.
Licheng County was named after the ancient name of the State of Li. In 2006, the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology carried out rescue excavations at the Xiguan Cemetery in Licheng County, and found two high-grade tombs surnamed Ji in the early Years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and a large number of high-grade burial artifacts were unearthed from the rectangular vertical tomb tomb with tomb road number M10, and jade fish, jade pipes, jade silkworms, jade dragons, jade birds, jade turtles, square jade pillars and other jade objects were found around the owner of the tomb, as well as a jade tiger. Jade tiger is nephrite jade, brown and white, slightly transparent, tiger head to tiger tail about 11 cm, tiger ear to tiger foot about 5.8 cm, thickness of less than 0.5 cm, in the form of flakes, ornamented with double hook yin carved tiger skin pattern. This vivid jade tiger later appeared in many important cultural relics exhibitions.
This archaeology also made a footnote to the origin of Li Houhu. The State of Li was a very important force in the late Shang Dynasty. The tiger is an animal element that is used more often in bronze vessels excavated from yin ruins.
The processing and sewing of Lihou tigers has enabled more peasant women in Licheng County to achieve home employment. When the production team was strong, there were more than 5,000 people, covering more than 200 administrative villages in the county, with an annual production capacity of more than 800,000 pieces, which were exported to home and abroad. Licheng County was named "the hometown of Chinese folk culture and art", and Lihouhu has also become a symbol of Licheng County's tourism culture, deriving a series of cultural and creative products.
In 2008, Li Houhu was identified as an exhibitor of folk crafts at the Beijing Olympic Games, in October 2010 Li Houhu walked into the Shanghai World Expo, in 2011 he participated in the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo held in Zhejiang, in February 2012 he participated in the Exhibition on the Protection of China's Intangible Cultural Heritage Productive Achievements, and in 2020 he participated in the 6th China Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo... Li Houhu, who came from ancient times, finally found his own world.
(The author Zhang Junmiao is a member of Shanxi Writers Association)
Source: People's Daily
![Chef: Twenty years of mistakes are finally corrected! Ogawa Owes us an apology![fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)