You who often brush vibrato, have you recently been warmed by such a short video?
"Where Baiyun is born, miaoxiang people's homes; on the banks of the Qingshan River, under the moon of the Drum Tower." In the eyes of the three children, their mothers have become different, the mothers seem to have magic, the fingertips dance, the little butterflies on the cloth have life, and the flowers bloom quietly between the gaps..."
This short video, titled "Gap Flowers", received nearly 50,000 likes on Douyin in only 4 days after its release, and the related topics were played more than 29 million times. The interactive props of the same name are also sought after by Douyin netizens, such as maple incense printing and dyeing, Dong handmade cloth, sword river red embroidery... Just select the corresponding props to take a photo with the exquisite intangible cultural heritage works and generate a visual blockbuster.
The "genius mother" behind these intangible cultural heritage skills has also entered the public eye and has been seen and paid attention to by more and more people. It is reported that the short story of "Gap Flowers" is based on the real experiences of women who benefit from the "Genius Mother" public welfare project of the China Women's Development Foundation. Once they could only make a difficult choice between working outside the home to earn money and staying in the mountains to accompany their children, with the support of public welfare projects, they began to focus on the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage skills, not only realizing their self-worth, but also successfully driving the employment and income of their surrounding sisters.
Shot 1: Hmong red embroidery
"Genius Mother" Yang Li: fingertip "dance", red embroidery raw flowers
Jianhe County, which is the hometown of the Miao goddess. The women here are "Liu Sanjie" and "Ashima", enthusiastic, brave and kind.
Outside the quaint stilt building, a pair of smart eyes are blinking and peeking into the house.
"My mother, she changed, she began to secretly use magic, the needle in her hand, left and right a few times, the flower butterfly made its home here." 11-year-old Xiaoyu wondered what magic her mother used to make flowers bloom quietly between the crevices of her fingertips. "My mother took care of me and my brother during the day, and at night she used magic things for fear of being discovered by others, and she wanted to secretly hide from me." But she didn't know that in my eyes, she sparkled when she was embroidered! ”
Xiaoyu's mother, Yang Li, is the leader of the red embroidery dream workshop in Jianhe County, Guizhou Province.
The brilliant red of the embroidery and the verdant green of the distant mountains are the colors that Yang Li remembers most when she was a child.
"Ever since I remember, I think the red embroidery is beautiful and I like it." In addition to the stilt house, the wind and rain bridge, and the lusheng field, exquisite red embroidered miao clothes can be seen everywhere in the village. Yang Li said that her biggest wish at that time was to be able to make a beautiful red embroidery dress by herself, so she began the road of red embroidery learning.
2006 is a particularly important year for Yang Li's life. This year, red embroidery was announced by the State Council as the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list; this year, the government-led "Colorful Guizhou" publicity project was launched; this year, at the age of 14, she did something that made the people in the village feel quite bold: to participate in the embroidery competition in the county town alone.
At the selection competition, Yang Li demonstrated her red embroidery skills on the spot - spreading out a piece of dyeing cloth, folding it in half, holding needle and thread and a small pair of scissors, carefully considering on the dyeing cloth, counting the yarn with embroidery needles, thinking carefully, and then starting to embroider.
Time moves forward slowly bit by bit, and the rivers, birds, plum blossoms, butterflies that are common in life... Under Yang Li's embroidery needle, it became a funny image. It was also with a neat and beautiful red embroidered belt that Yang Li won the third prize.
"There were a lot of out-of-town tourists at the competition site, and they all liked my red embroidery and said they wanted to buy it." Yang Li recalled that after a while, she received the "first bucket of gold" 100 yuan, which was undoubtedly a "huge amount" for her at that time, "Participating in that competition, the biggest gain was to know that our red embroidery was so popular, not only locals liked, but also foreigners were amazed by its beauty." ”
At that moment, Yang Li realized that the embroidery she loved could also become a skill for making a living in the future; that is, at that moment, she had the idea of bringing the beauty of red embroidery to the world.
Through years and years of hard work, in 2013, Yang Li was named a state-level inheritance of the Jianhe County National Intangible Heritage List "Miao Costumes". Subsequently, she participated in national, provincial and state studies and competitions for many times, which not only enriched her knowledge and improved her level, but also made her look forward to the inheritance of red embroidery to continue to go around the world.
"However, most of the people who can do red embroidery are about forty years old, and few young people have learned it, so I thought that red embroidery is the treasure of our Miao family, and we must pass it on and show it." In 2014, Yang Li, Jiang Wenying and 7 other folk craftsmen jointly established the Jianhe County Handicraft Industry Association and founded the Jianhe Red Embroidery Factory to organize rural left-behind women to learn and inherit the red embroidery culture, and also help them increase their income.
From weaving, leaf picking, indigo water, immersion dyeing, sunburning cloth, hammer cloth, steaming cloth, design, embroidery and other entire process flow, Yang Lidu taught the trainees hand in hand, more than five years of cumulative training of more than 2,000 trainees, the company absorbed more than 130 women with fixed employment, the annual per capita income reached 20,000 to 30,000 yuan. In 2018, more than 5,000 embroidery handicraft works of Red Embroidery Company were produced, which were exported to Zhejiang, Guangdong, Chongqing, Hunan and other places.
Yang Li, who talked about it, mentioned the current situation of red embroidery, which was both full of enthusiasm and worry: "Because of the impact of the epidemic, the current orders are not very stable, and the embroidery girls around them are slowly beginning to run outside." We have also been having a headache with this problem, that is, what method should be used to publicize our red embroidery and our heritage, so that the embroidery girls can go home again, so that our national culture will not lose its inheritance. ”
"Thanks to the China Women's Development Foundation for bringing the 'Genius Mother' project to our village, the Dream Workshop was finally built at the beginning of this year and received a lot of support and help." I don't have much culture, but because of the red embroidery, I can also become a 'genius mother', I am very happy, very proud, I believe that the difficulties are only temporary, and our future will be better and better." Yang Li laughed.
Lens two: maple incense printing and dyeing
"Genius Mother" Ran Guangjin: A maple tree, dyed a "maple dream"
"Good flowers come good red, good peanuts are in Ci Li Peng, good peanuts are in Ci Pear Tree, which one is sunny and which red..." In the Buyi ethnic village in Huishui County, Qiannan Prefecture, the melodious song of Zhang Shenmei, the dyeing lady, sounded.
In the eyes of his son Shuai Shuai, his mother changed and became fond of singing.
"When she began to sing, the mountains all pricked up their ears, and the white linen cloth began to have a golden color, flowers, birds, fish, insects... Scramble to hide and seek on sackcloth. Shuai Shuai said proudly: "The dream of my mother and Aunt Ran is to dye a maple tree into a dream, and when the dream is taken seriously, the maple incense dye will be seen by the world." ”
Aunt Ran in the mouth of Shuai Shuai is the leader of the Fengxiang Dyeing Dream Workshop in Huishui County, Guizhou Province, Ran Guangjin, who was originally a middle school art teacher, and when she came into contact with Fengxiang Dyeing by chance, she "fell in love" with this ancient printing and dyeing technique uncontrollably, and even resigned her teacher's job to start her own business and shoulder the burden of non-genetic inheritance.
"The art of maple dyeing is relatively old, although there are some inheritors who are doing it, but the power of carrying it forward is still too small, plus the teacher who invited to teach maple dyeing at that time died of illness, which touched me a lot." The older generation of inheritors is gradually disappearing, the strength of the new generation can not keep up, I myself study art, have a foundation, for the cultural inheritance of their hometown suddenly have a sense of mission, I feel as if the heavens have chosen me, the heart is horizontal, I simply resigned. Ran Guangjin said.
Maple dyeing is known as "cultural relics that the Buyi people don't need to unearth", but few people know about it, in order to make the skills of maple dyeing better inherited, Ran Guangjin decided to do something.
Batik is carved with a knife, and maple dyeing is painted with a brush dipped in maple oil, the lines are smoother and more delicate; the pattern is elegant and simple, and it looks like a brush stroke up close, and looks like blue and white porcelain from a distance. One of the most critical elements is maple oil.
At the beginning of Ran Guangjin's business, almost no one in the market sold maple oil, and the boiling of maple oil was very complicated. To this end, Ran Guangjin visited many folk artists to learn the picking, boiling and proportioning of maple oil, and after repeated experiments, he finally succeeded in boiling maple oil.
At the same time, she has a deep foundation in art, with her own design team to discuss and try again and again, on the basis of the original clothing, and constantly develop new products: "We have now innovated and developed more than 100 kinds of products with maple fragrance dyeing culture, and the product series includes five major sections: clothing, shoes and bags, home decoration, cultural and creative products, education and training. ”
In order to make Maple Fragrance Dyeing known by more people, as long as there are handicraft skills competitions and exhibitions, she will participate, and her figure often shuttles through the various stages of promotion, protection, inheritance and innovation of Maple Fragrance Dyeing, and once became a "net red" figure in the inheritance of Maple Fragrance Dyeing skills.
It turned out that Ran Guangjin had gone the right way. At the 14th China Shenzhen Cultural Fair in 2018, maple fragrance dyeing products with both traditional and fashion elements were favored, with sales of more than 100,000 yuan and many intentional cooperation orders. In this way, sales slowly opened, and more and more people liked the maple dyeing products she designed.
"The title of 'genius mother' gives me a unique honor and sense of mission, we women not only play the role of mothers in the family, but also to incubate and cultivate more groups that want to engage in a certain industry, and highlight the power of women." Ran Guangjin said firmly.
Through the operation mode of "practice base + leading enterprise + professional village + women (household)", women are trained free of charge, and they are dedicated to teaching them maple incense dyeing and making skills, and receiving orders to distribute to them, leading everyone to get rich by relying on their craftsmanship.
According to incomplete statistics, ran Guangjin's company has successively driven more than 200 women to work and trained more than 1,000 people since its establishment 3 years ago. At the same time, since 2018, she has begun to carry out intangible cultural heritage activities into the campus, often teaching maple incense dyeing related knowledge in primary and secondary schools, training about 600 students in total, cultivating children's awareness of protecting and inheriting maple incense dyeing from an early age, and sowing a seed of inheritance in the hearts of students.
"Maybe when they grow up, not everyone will be engaged in the work of maple dyeing, but I believe that as long as I continue to persevere, my efforts and the charm of maple dyeing will have a more or less impact on their lives, and it is also a success to cultivate an inheritor." Ran Guangjin said.
Shot three: Dong handmade cloth
"Genius mother" Yang Chenglan: "Cloth rice bowl" changed the small village
In April, the grass and trees are growing. Fengdeng Dongzhai is located in a valley surrounded by green mountains, and a winding country road connects it to the outside world. A meandering stream runs through the village, and after a few spring rains, the creek that has been silent for a winter becomes plump, the stream clangs, and everything seems to be full of life.
In the eyes of 7-year-old Xiu'er this year, her mother has also changed.
"My mom she's changed, she doesn't want to leave me, sticks to me more, she likes to be with me, give these cranks loose bones, I'm going to pound out the most beautiful flowers, give them to mom." 」 Xiu'er smiled and squinted: "My mother found a way to bloom in the workshop, I don't understand this, I know, my mother is happy in the workshop!" Mom also said that next year must be better than now, I think so. ”
Xiu'er's mother, Zhu Jie, has a pair of children, and she has been working outside the home in the past, and the most regrettable thing is that she cannot take care of the children separately. 3 years ago, Zhu Jie entered the Rongjiang Dongbu Dream Workshop founded by Yang Chenglan, not only with a stable salary, but also with her children.
Speaking of Yang Chenglan, Zhu Jie has a look of admiration, because she is not only the first college student in the history of Dongzhai, but now she has led the village to the road to prosperity.
"In Dong families, almost every woman weaves and dyes, but no one thinks about monetizing the technology that has been handed down from generation to generation." Therefore, when the spring flowers bloomed in 2016, Yang Chenglan resigned and returned to his hometown of Fengdeng Dongzhai in Guizhou to regain the long-dormant Dong weaving and dyeing craft, "I don't want the villagers to keep such a good dong traditional culture, but still live a poor life." ”
There is no place to be a production workshop, so they use abandoned pig pens to build a shed; without a sufficient amount of looms, they will go over the mountains and mountains to find this village; there is no villager to look at this matter, and the women who can do crafts are even more suspicious, Yang Chenglan will go up on his own, from spinning thread, pulp thread, row of thread, to weaving and dyeing cloth on the machine... Spend a lot of time studying the various links and techniques, and pondering the tedious processes.
The first order came from Yang Chenglan's university teacher, two thousand yuan, which ignited Yang Chenglan's hopes. In order to sell more, Yang Chenglan also opened an online shop and transmitted the handmade photos of the finished Dong cloth to the Internet for display. In order to make the product more competitive in the market, she combined with the market demand, developed new plant dyes, novel weaving methods, design and production of shoes, bags, clothing and so on with modern elements.
Yang Chenglan made dong cloth, in addition to the traditional blue indigo, but also added persimmon peel, dense flowers, maple leaves, bayberry leaves, cinnabar root blocks and other raw materials, plant dyeing touch soft and smooth, after several times of soaking, the sense of color layering is richer, but also with the unique fragrance of plants, the market has been further expanded.
"The price of the soil cloth is up to 400 yuan per meter and the lowest is 20 yuan." Yang Chenglan said proudly, "In addition to being sold inside and outside the province, our products are also sold to Japan, Australia and other countries." ”
After the orders continued to increase, Yang Chenglan began to gather the women in the village. Their craftsmanship and skill allow them to use their spare time to weave cloth and take care of recycling and selling them themselves.
"Orders are distributed to their respective homes, so that women can watch children at home and take care of the elderly at the same time through weaving, and hope that our villages can at least retain women, less left-behind children and the elderly." Yang Chenglan said.
After 2 years of improvement, now Yang Chenglan's workshop area has exceeded 10 acres, set weaving, dyeing cloth, drying cloth, display, tourism experience, teaching practice, tourism accommodation in one of the base, a total of more than 300 local women engaged in weaving dyeing, long-term cooperation with more than 180 women, the average monthly income of each woman to achieve an increase of more than 1500 yuan, the annual sales of the production base of more than 2 million yuan.
"At first, I didn't want to lay such a big stall, but I saw too many weaving girls and dye girls' family embarrassment, and so many left-behind children and the elderly living, even if my ability is limited, there is always an inexplicable sense of responsibility." 」 Yang Chenglan said, "This year, I am very happy to have the opportunity to contact the 'Genius Mother' project, this is the first public welfare organization I have come into contact with, and I believe that our Dongbu and our traditional handicrafts will better go abroad and go to the world." ”
In the course of the interview, Yang Chenglan said that no one is born a "genius mother", no matter how difficult it is to do, when you decide to start and put it into practice, the most difficult part has been completed, then you are a "genius mother".
It is understood that after 10 years of public welfare exploration, the China Women's Development Foundation has created a "genius mother" public welfare project, with the construction of a dream workshop as the core to help low-income handicraft women achieve home employment. Today, the "Genius Mother" public welfare project has established 20 dream workshops in 9 provinces across the country, and has helped more than 6,500 low-income handicraft women to work at home to improve their living conditions, and radiation has benefited 50,000 people.
Source/Guizhou Daily Tianyan News
Editor/Tao Yinsheng
Review/Qiao Hong
Producer/Xi Shujun