The inheritors of Daoming bamboo weaving, a national intangible cultural heritage in southwest China's Sichuan Province, have been actively innovating to add fashion elements and a sense of life to the traditional technique.
During the ongoing National Day holiday, many tourists will specifically look for unique cultural and creative products at their destinations as gifts for relatives and friends, or souvenirs for themselves.
Daoming bamboo weaving is a representative item of national intangible cultural heritage. During the holiday, Daoming Town of Chengdu City has received a large number of visitors, with approximately 30,000 on the first day alone.
A workshop in the town run by Zhang Dingjuan, an inheritor of the bamboo weaving craft, has just completed orders for the National Day. They are rushing on to produce another batch of more than 10,000 Mid-Autumn Festival souvenirs.
"This refrigerator magnet is very stylish and simple both in shape and color. This fan uses the traditional color style of Dunhuang. Our bookmarks and vases also have their own unique charm. Many brands owners or merchants have great demand for our products. We have also started working on some of our projects for the Chinese New Year," Zhang said.
Various creative bamboo weaving works have refreshed many tourists' traditional impressions of bamboo weaving.
"I came here from Xinjiang and I just bought the earrings. They are so beautiful that I don’t want to take them off. They are made of bamboo, which is very magical," said a tourist from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
"Bamboo craftsmanship has always been a part of traditional Chinese culture. I used to think that bamboo weaving was just about making cattail-leaf fans and backpacks. I never imagined that it could be used to make so many beautiful things, including houses, bags, earrings, and even jewelry. I think it's amazing," said Liao Xu, a tourist from Chengdu City.
Zhang's mentor in bamboo weaving, 90-year-old Zhao Sijin, is very pleased to see more people rekindling their love for the time-honored traditional craft.
"Innovation is key to expanding the market; sticking to the old ways won't save it. I created a new packaging box and put it onto the market, and turned to custom-made production. I've been constantly innovating. I've been working on packaging boxes for 20 years and have developed no fewer than 50 new products," Zhao said.
While seeking innovation and change, Zhao also passed on his skills to more young people, including Zhang. Since graduating from university, she has been learning bamboo weaving from her mentor for seven years. In her hands, Daoming bamboo weaving, once primarily based on the natural color of bamboo, has taken on unexpected possibilities with vibrant colors and patterns.
"Just to make the dozen or so refrigerator magnets, we wove over 300 patterns. This is actually an old craft. Some bamboo weaving objects from the past also used this interweaving technique, but it's relatively traditional. Every era has its own aesthetic, and we explored the aesthetics of our time from the perspective of young people. The colors are more fashionable, vibrantly colorful, and dynamic," Zhang said.
More and more young people in Daoming are engaging in innovative bamboo weaving. They've established collective processing factories, and pushed forward commercial partnerships and collaborative custom designs. Zhang's bamboo weaving workshop alone has sold over 100,000 cultural and creative products this year.
"We used one of our flat patterns to make this design of 'panda hugging bamboo'. It's hollowed out, and you can actually touch the bamboo pieces. We then used it in a notebook," said Zhou Simin, another inheritor of the craft.
"This women's bucket bag, for example, combines bamboo and leather for a stylish look. Through such a small product, consumers can feel our craft, which is also a way of passing on this expertise," Zhang said.
Inheritors of bamboo weaving in Sichuan add new charm to traditional craft
