Visit To Hebei "Intangible Cultural Heritage" Original Village Local Cloth: Chinese Local Cloth On Milan Fashion Week

With the sound of "clapping and pattering", the shuttle quickly goes back and forth through the dense yarn... Cui Xueqin sits in front of a traditional hand loom in front of a traditional hand-made loom in Hebei Province. On the loom, a piece of homespun cloth with white and green stripes is gradually taking shape.

Cui Xueqin, 60, is the inheritor of Hebei provincial intangible cultural heritage project "zanhuangyuan village native cloth textile technology". After 16 years of hard work, she not only inherits the local nearly lost traditional handmade textile technology, but also benefits more than 1300 rural women. She also makes the local cloth go abroad through innovation, which makes Milan International Fashion Week amazing.

According to Cui Xueqin, native cloth is a kind of folk manual weaving technology in China for thousands of years. There are 72 processes in the original village, such as spinning cotton, spinning, weaving, shrinking and cutting“ "Original village" is not a village, but refers to all the villages where Zan Huang made cotton cloth, implying the production of "original" cloth with original technology.

Different from the coarse texture and monotonous color of the old homespun, the original village cloth is soft and comfortable with rich colors. Cui Xueqin said that this is because the quality of raw material cotton has been improved and the process has been improved, from over sizing to non pulping. At the same time, in order to make the cloth more green and healthy, the dye only uses mineral pigments or plant extracts such as leaves and grapes, and does not contain formaldehyde and other chemicals.

Cui Xueqin is the third generation inheritor of the original village's local cloth craft. Her grandmother was the local "weaving champion" during the Anti Japanese war. Later, Cui Xueqin's mother inherited the craft. In 2005, Cui Xueqin, who failed in her clothing business in Shijiazhuang, followed her mother's advice and went back to her hometown to study local cloth techniques.

Starting with the acquisition of seven hand spinning wheels and five old looms, Cui Xueqin's local cloth business, which was "on the right track", soon became prosperous. In 2007, she organized more than 60 middle-aged and elderly women in the village to set up a professional cooperative to train rural women to learn local cloth skills and become "weavers".

After more than ten years of development, the cooperative has 1000 hand spinning wheels and more than 350 homespun looms, driving more than 1300 women from 17 villages and 6 towns to seek common development.

Cui Xueqin believes that "homespun cloth can be" tall "as well as fashionable" international style ". Therefore, for more than ten years, Yuancun has adhered to the standardization production to ensure the quality, and has also established a design studio in Hangzhou to employ designers to carry out a comprehensive and systematic design of the local cloth from variety to style. These efforts have given Cui Xueqin the courage to "go out".

In 2017, the Ministry of foreign trade was established in Yuancun Tubu, which has successively participated in Frankfurt home textile exhibition in Germany and Flemish International Trade Fair in Belgium. Later, he was invited by Mario Boselli, honorary chairman of the Italian national fashion chamber, to attend the Milan international fashion week.

"When participating in the exhibition in Europe, foreign friends gave a thumbs up: Chinese traditional crafts are great, and Chinese farmers are great." Cui Xueqin said with a smile that the original village home furnishing series products have entered the families of German and Italian people.

Since 2020, Cui Xueqin has been awarded the "national poverty alleviation award, striving Award" and "national advanced individual in poverty alleviation". She said that "honor is also a heavy task", and we should "re exert force" in the future rural revitalization. Now, she is planning to make a unified plan for the nearby villages to build a "cultural and tourism town of the original village" relying on the intangible cultural heritage culture of the original village and the ecological environment advantages of Zanhuang.

"The town will produce 72 processes of local cloth textile by sections and households, which will make the production of local cloth more attractive. At the same time, it will also develop residential accommodation, special food and agricultural products processing." Cui Xueqin said that this will promote local cloth production, improve rural living environment and increase farmers' income.

"We are very confident in the future." Cui Xueqin firmly believes that in the revitalization of the countryside, through the industrious hands of the weavers, they will certainly be able to get rich together.

(source: China News Network)