Majestic Wumeng Mountain, leisurely Wujiang River.
The Wujiang River, the largest tributary of the south bank of the Yangtze River, has flowed quietly on the magical land of Umeng for hundreds of millions of years. The Wujiang River has two river sources in the north and south, the Nanyuan Sancha River originates from Xianglu Mountain in Weining Autonomous County, and the Liuchong River originates from Dapo Mountain in Hezhang County, and the confluence of the two rivers is a place called "Huawuji" on the southern edge of Xinren Miao Nationality Township in Qianxi City.
Huawu Village, Xinren Township, Qianxi County. Photo by Zhang Huashun
"Huayaji" is her former name, meaning "village under the cliff". For thousands of years, the sons and daughters of the Miao family have flourished in this simple land, using their original ecological way of life to record the smoke and dust of history, the long song of civilization, and the cultural symbols of their own.
Visiting Huawu Village, we found that the quaint Miao family village has beautiful mountains and rivers, beautiful scenery, chic houses, and trees; we see that the children of the Miao family are generous and enthusiastic, industrious and simple, can sing and dance, and are skillful. Sitting in the house by the river, we listened to Yang Wenli, a Miao girl in Huawu, tell the cultural story of this ancient nation...
Qianxi County Xinren Township Huawu Village Huawu Square. Photo by Li Rong
The Miao are a migratory ethnic group that previously lived in the Central Plains and gradually moved to the southwest. There are many Miao branches, and the language, customs and habits are different, most of the Miao branches are basically named according to headdresses and costumes. Crooked comb seedlings are called "crooked combs" because their women's headdresses are left-sided crooked combs. "Crooked combs" are divided into large, medium and small crooked combs, and the seedlings living in the house are all small crooked combs.
Qianxi County Xinren Township Huawu Village Tong village highway. Photo by Zhang Huashun
There is no writing in the history of the Miao people, so Miao embroidery has become an important carrier of the history and culture of the Miao people, which is the crystallization of the industriousness and wisdom of the Miao women. Miao embroidery was included in China's first list of national intangible cultural heritage in 2006.
The legend of the origin of Miao embroidery is that a female leader, in order to remember the difficult journey of the migration trek, came up with a method of marking the clothing with colored threads. When crossing the Yellow River, she embroidered a yellow line, after crossing the Yangtze River, she embroidered a blue line, and embroidered a marker symbol over the mountains and mountains, and when she finally arrived at the settlement where she could settle, she found that at this time, she had embroidered all the patterns from the collar to the trouser cuffs.
Embroidery workers make Hmong costumes. Photo by Li Rong
Since then, Miao family girls have to wear a pure hand-embroidered wedding dress when they get married, in order to commemorate the former homeland, commemorate the heroic and intelligent predecessors, and carry forward the traditional embroidery craft left by the ancestors of the Miao family, so as to inspire future generations to be grateful and cherish the hard-won happy life.
In the exhibition hall of the enterprise founded by Yang Wenli and her husband, the wedding dress embroidered by her mother for herself when she was married was well preserved. Yang Wenli still remembers the scene when her mother embroidered her wedding dress: at that time, her family was still living in the mountains, there was no electricity, and her mother embroidered under the faint kerosene lamp every night, and sometimes sang while embroidering.
Yang Wenli is embroidering. Photo by Li Rong
Needless to say, the Hmong compatriots can sing and dance. In Huaya, people say that the children of the Miao family can sing when they learn to speak, and the children of the Miao family can dance when they learn to walk.
For the Miao compatriots, whether it is to talk about love, wedding and funeral etiquette or leisure and leisure, a set of Miao embroidery clothes is indispensable, especially when it comes to folk art performances such as multi-voice folk song chorus, Lusheng dance, drumming And lusheng fist dance, the Miao family children dressed in Miao embroidery costumes on the stage are even more vivid in the love and beauty of the mountains and rivers around the huawu village.
Wujiang Baili Gallery Huaya Village Wharf. Photo by Li Rong
"Miao embroidery and singing are both ways for the Miao family's daughters to express their emotions, and when the mood is happy, even the embroidered patterns will be particularly beautiful." The person who spoke was named Yang Shouli, Yang Wenli's mother-in-law, and in her opinion, the stitches flying back and forth on the embroidery dress recorded the story between the mother and the daughter, and the moving tone recited the mother's blessings and expectations for her daughter's future good life.
Embroidery pieces. Photo by Li Rong
Usually a pure handmade Miao embroidery suit has to be done for many years, and every stitch is the mother's endless love for her daughter. The love of Hmong mothers for their daughters, in addition to personally embroidering clothes for them to wear, more importantly, they must teach them to embroider themselves.
Yang Shouli is 48 years old this year and has been "embroidery age" for more than 40 years; although Yang Wenli is after 95, she has 20 years of "embroidery age"; and Yang Wenli's eldest daughter You Xinlin, although only 8 years old, has been learning batik embroidery for a year or two.
Yang Shouli introduced that the most commonly embroidered patterns of small crooked comb seedlings are water patterns that symbolize the harmonious coexistence between man and nature, dragons, phoenixes, butterflies that express auspicious meanings, or flowers, birds, insects, and fish that are common in life. The most common stitches are appliqué horsetail embroidery, appliqué flat embroidery and cross stitch. The main fabrics are hand-woven native cloth, cotton, silk satin and so on. The colors are mostly red, white and green, and colors such as pink, black, blue and purple are also occasionally used to match.
Spot the wax. Photo by Li Rong
Every once in a while, Yang Shouli will design different patterns, and over the years, her own original design of embroidery patterns has been countless. "You see, the pattern embroidered in this way is convex, the color is bright, three-dimensional, and grainy." Yang Shouli said while demonstrating the stitching method on a Miao embroidery dress that was being made in a hurry: "When the daughters of the Miao family were young, it was their mothers who embroidered clothes for themselves to wear, and when they grew up, their mothers could not see clearly, and they could not wear needles and threads, so they were embroidered by their daughters to wear for their mothers, which is also a good quality handed down from generation to generation by the Miao family. ”
Yang Wenli, who likes to study the Miao embroidery process since childhood, in addition to her own immersion in research, has also been thinking about how to carry forward the Miao embroidery, let more people know about Miao embroidery, like Miao embroidery, and at the same time let the embroidery ladies in the village increase their income and get rich through Miao embroidery.
Batik cultural and creative product sachets. Photo by Li Rong
At the beginning of Yang Wenli and her husband's business, they experienced many difficulties and took many detours. When I worked in other places, I went to various factories. What impressed her most was her first embroidery factory in 2012, when an embroidery machine opened the door to her new world: she found that many hand-embroidered patterns, machines can also embroider, and more importantly, machine embroidery production is high, easy to clean.
The couple happily returned to their hometown and bought a second-hand embroidery machine first, but it didn't take long to break, so the two made some handmade jewelry to the market to set up a stall, saved enough money and bought a new embroidery machine. Until October 2019, with the guidance and help of the government, she and her husband established Qianxi Wenli Batik Embroidery Co., Ltd. (Guixi Employment Poverty Alleviation Workshop), leading 17 Miao embroidery women in Huawu Village to achieve stable employment.
"This is more than 40 sets of Miao embroidered costumes customized by the Huawu Village Song and Dance Troupe a week ago, and whenever there is an important festival or activity in the village, they put on customized Miao costumes, carefully dress up, and perform a show on the square for everyone." Most of these costumes are machine embroidered, and hand-embroidery is generally only worn at commemorative moments such as weddings, or bought as collectibles. ”
Ponytail embroidery. Photo by Zhang Huashun
Wang Jinmin, a 41-year-old Miao woman in the Fork River Group of Huawu Village, said that she was doing embroidery in the workshop and had an income of 100 yuan per day, except for the busy season of farming, she could work for more than 20 days a month, and she had an income of more than 2,000 yuan per month, which could not only improve her embroidery skills, but also earn money at the doorstep of her home, which was really happy.
In addition to the traditional hand-embroidered boutiques, Yang Wenli has also launched a number of affordable cultural and creative goods for tourists, such as popular batik wormwood sachets, T-shirts that integrate Han and Miao elements.
stain. Photo by Zhang Huashun
This year, Yang Wenli also opened a special cultural and creative live broadcast room, used to promote the characteristic cultural and creative products of Huawu Village, in addition to Miao embroidery, as well as batik, musical instruments, Lusheng and other intangible cultural and creative products have the opportunity to sell to more places through the e-commerce platform, Guangdong, Zhejiang and other places often have repeat customers, is Yang Wenli's loyal fans.
"The most live broadcast, sales reached more than 50,000 yuan. In the first half of 2021, our company's revenue reached more than 500,000 yuan. Speaking of achievements, Yang Wenli is very happy.
Yang Wenli took the dyed batik works to dry. Photo by Li Rong
Yang Wenli's broad thinking stems from "traditional is also fashionable, you embroidered one stitch and one thread, how wonderful!" We must carry forward and expand the embroidery of seedlings, which can not only inherit and carry forward the national culture and traditional culture, but also contribute to the poverty alleviation industry and rural revitalization. ”
Yang Wenli uses national skills to combine industrial production, so that the national culture in the mountains can go to the world. This is a "sample of the house" that inherits national culture, drives development through industry, and opens a new journey of rural revitalization. (Photo: Chen Si, Liu Jinglin, Wang Yingjun Video/Rong Media Center, Qianxi City)