"Chivalrous Girl" Rain and Her Bamboo Weaving Life

Time passes, time is immortal.

Although the hands of the craftsmen are mottled and rough, the works born in their hands are exquisite and delicate; although their faces have brought the traces of time, the hearts that carry forward traditional culture are shining with the tempering of the years; they use the repetition of years to hide the charm of time in the works under their hands.

A special edition of craftsmen, taking you closer to these masters hidden in the folk, listening to their ingenious ideas hidden in handicrafts, and seeing their intertwined lives with handicrafts.

Rain and rain, bamboo weaving craftsman, the owner of a bamboo weaving shop, a woman who talks about bamboo weaving skills, but she exudes a cool energy and a sense of chivalry.

In 1971, Yuyu was born in Zhanjiang to a handicraft family. This opened her life with the art of bamboo weaving, and the impact of the development of the times and the pressure of life also made her (it) lose contact for a while.

In 2019, Yuyu became the owner of a bamboo weaving display shop. From here, she brought the entire family back into the path of bamboo weaving.

Double-layered bamboo woven bowl for eggs

She picked up the bamboo weaving, and the past, reality and future suddenly appeared in her mind. This time, she decided to seize the opportunity in her hand and decisively spread the skills of bamboo weaving, just as she did many years ago without thinking about helping her parents break bamboo.

One

50 years ago, Yingying was just born, and the sound of broken bamboo was her lullaby. For as long as she can remember, the family has been tightly tied to bamboo weaving, and there are endless bamboo baskets every year.

Grandparents weave bamboo utensils for farm work: fish baskets, dustpans, baskets. In silent persistence and repetition, they produce small but practical daily utensils for nearby farmers.

"At that time, the demand was relatively large, and sometimes they couldn't do it." Parents and aunts take the baton from their grandparents and weave the family's livelihood and future from bamboo weaving. When she was young, she often learned bamboo weaving skills at the request of her parents and helped weave farm tools. At that time, she didn't have much idea about bamboo weaving skills, "My parents asked me to help." ”

But the learning process was not simple, and machines had not yet been introduced. Bamboo selection, soaking water, breaking bamboo, scorn, layering, scraping, over-rounding knives, weaving, oiling and other steps require manual operation. After only two steps, she studied for 2 to 3 years. Although she said: "If they don't do it, they won't be able to finish it, and they don't have any special ideas about bamboo weaving", but the years of study, the skill of dividing a piece of bamboo into 5 or 6 layers, and the endless words when talking about bamboo weaving skills, seem to reveal some information.

Two

Ignorant children grow up, and strong young people grow old. With the promotion of plastic products, the demand for bamboo weaving utensils has declined, and it has gradually withdrawn from the historical stage. After graduation, Ying Ying did not continue to work as a bamboo weaver like the elders. She went to a post that had nothing to do with bamboo weaving, and began to run for life, taking care of the elders, raising children, and weaving the yearning and efforts for the future into her life.

Her father, also due to the decline in demand, gradually reduced the production of bamboo weaving until it was completely gone.

"Bamboo weaving can't be done all at once, it's a big project, and it can only be stopped without demand."

In the life journey of rain and rain, there was a certain period of time when the sound of breaking bamboo was lost. Their world has returned to a quiet place, and only some of the bamboo products left in the home remind the family that there was a time when it belonged to "bamboo weaving". The younger generations in the family no longer know the craft of breaking neat bamboo pieces with their hands.

"If this kind of thing is not available in the future, it will feel very bad." At a moment in her 40s, a sudden loss of "loss" hit her, and she began to miss the sound of broken bamboo as a child.

At this time, the local scenic spot is planning to make a big move.

Three

In 2018, XX Scenic Area opened the recruitment of intangible cultural heritage craftsmen to spread and inherit the culture of Guangdong and West Africa. After hearing the news, Yingying thought that "the family is doing this", so she sank her heart and brought the whole family back to the bamboo road with a cool energy.

The retired elderly in the family also immediately got busy, picking up familiar skills and developing new processes.

"The demand now is different from before, young people like crafts, mainly decoration." Ying Ying found many new handicraft styles, and let the elders in the family make bamboo products with all kinds of interesting little things.

Yu Yu said: "To follow the times, you can't always be the same."

For bamboo weavers, everything can be bamboo, but be patient.

Each time you get a new style, it triggers a "edit-tear-edit-tear" cycle. According to her, sometimes it takes 5 or 6 times to weave a satisfactory work. After the completion of the work, but also according to the preferences and feedback of consumers, and then make changes. For example, if you find that guests prefer small baskets without handles, they remove the handles; some guests find that some guests want to put food in baskets and do not use varnish.

Making a bamboo handicraft takes a lot of time, but the benefits are not much. The knitted products, which took half a day, were sold for only 20 yuan when they were sold. But relying on the support of Dinglong Bay and the elders in the family, Yingying wants to insist on doing this.

Speaking of the original intention of opening the store, she said coolly: "I mainly want to show the spread and tell everyone that there is such a thing, otherwise the children will not know what it is." ”

It's easy to give up, but it must be cool to stick to it. Some people give up their jobs to open shops that do not make money in the year of confusion; some people continue to study and weave "new things" that young people like when they are past the age; some scenic spots spend money to set up a platform for the dissemination of intangible cultural heritage at the time of rapid development.

They are trying to spread some ancient traditional culture, but they reveal full of chivalry and coolness, just like the martial arts masters who shuttle between bamboo forests in martial arts novels.