Batik craftswoman rekindles village in SW China

GUIYANG -- Wearing a blue dress, 37-year-old Yang Chenglan sits quietly by the window of a stilt building. The legends and totems of the Dong minority group are turned into various blue and white patterns on the fabric through her batik-making skills.

Yang grew up in a village surrounded by green water and mountains in Rongjiang County, southwest China's Guizhou Province, where people have been using leaves of a herb called Isatis root to make dark blue plant dye for generations.

Yang learned how to dye cotton clothes and use indigo to make batik from a very young age. Seniors in the village use embroidery and other crafts to create patterns like flowers, birds, fish and insects on their costumes.

However, these traditional techniques have been increasingly neglected by young people. The inheritance of the techniques faces massive challenges.

Yang was the village's first female college student and later worked as a music teacher in Guiyang, the provincial capital. In 2016, she decided to return to her hometown to rekindle the batik-making tradition.

When she started her business, there was no space to produce clothes. Yang rented a 25-square-meter pigsty in the village, backfilled the manure pit, and installed a wooden board herself, transforming it into a simple studio.

She named her studio "Yi Shan Ren," which means "people relying on mountains" because it is her wish for rural life. "I hope that people who live in the mountains can rely on the mountains and live a good life," Yang said.

She took out the time-honored weaving machine, sowed seeds of Isatis root nearby the stilted building, and worked and lived in the studio day and night. A weaving machine, dyeing vat, and wax knife became her new friends.

The cotton cloth she makes is soft with high breathability. Various batik bags, clothing and shoes she designs are fashionable and well-accepted by the market.

In 2019, Yang finally moved out of the "pigsty studio." Now, her new studio has nine buildings, including dyeing workshops, handicraft rooms, exhibition halls, weaving rooms, experience spaces, etc. She cooperates with more than 400 embroiderers from Rongjiang County and surrounding counties to make batik and embroidery.

Besides blue and white cloth, she also uses different plants to dye different cloth colors. The brown comes from persimmons, gray-brown from mugwort, pink from saffron, and yellow from gardenias.

In 2022, Yang's studio was designated an intangible cultural heritage learning center, where children and their parents can experience various handicraft making programs.

More and more tourists come to Rongjiang County to learn how to grow cotton, pick leaves, spin, weave, and dye cloth, and learn to make Dong snacks.

Since the beginning of this year, Rongjiang has already received a total of 1.03 million tourists and achieved a total tourism income of 1.17 billion yuan (about $163.14 million).