China Daily Global Edition (USA)
LovingLo hands
The art of creating baby car carriers shown at museums
Between the soaring, lush mountains in Southwest China are the villages of ethnic groups where women pass down exquisite embroidery traditions through generations. Among the many items they produce is the
bei shan or baby carrier. Women use colored threads to create a variety of patterns on a piece of indigo-dyed fabric to make it.
They use the carrier, which has two straps, to swaddle their babies and carry them on their backs when farming, doing housework or going to the fairs and socializing.
The carrier, which protects the new lives, has significant meaning for those living a difficult life in the remote mountainous areas where they face natural disasters, threats from wild animals and diseases. Also, it showcases different ethnic cultures through the stitching techniques that girls from the different communities learn.
The creativity of these women is being celebrated at a handicraft exhibition called Attachment to the
Hometown at Beijing’s National Art Museum of China.
The exhibition has around 150 baby carriers from eight ethnic groups, including the Miao, Dong, Shui and Yi, from Guizhou, Hunan and Yunnan provinces as well as the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
The earliest carriers on show were made in the late Qing Dynasty (16441911) while the latest are from the 1980s.
Wu Weishan, director of NAMOC, says the carriers on display are testimony to the brilliance of ethnic needlework, which is now giving way to mass production items.
“The art of making baby carriers is a way for the users to showcase their beliefs, their fairy tales and their respect for nature. This item helps bring the audience closer to the soul of these ethnic groups,” says Wu. “They are records of human society.”
The history, culture and the aesthetics of these groups are seen in the vivid patterns, both realistic and abstract, of these carriers.
The designs often feature animals, too. And while the Miao from Guizhou’s Zhijin county prefer geometrical shapes that resemble fish, the Yi feature ram horns to symbolize wealth and use them to create whirlpool-like designs.
Some baby carriers also sport butterfly designs. A Miao legend has it that of the 12 eggs laid by a butterfly, one hatched into Jiangyang, the ancestor of the Miao people.
The Shui believe there were nine suns in the ancient times, and one day as a mother with her infant searched for water and was about to faint because of the fierce sun, a giant butterfly appeared spreading its wings to provide them with shade.
Women from the city of Gejiu, Yunnan, use abstract designs representing the sun, moon and stars on their carriers to show their respect for nature. They hope these symbols can give energy to their babies.
Asmany ethnic tribes do not have a written language, they often use Han characters in their designs. As a result, some baby carriers feature Han characters that convey auspicious and encouraging messages.
Mothers also attach tassels, perfumed medicine bags and shiny materials to their baby carriers to scare away evil spirits and demons.
The carriers at the exhibition are from a donation of 1,770 baby carriers made to NAMOC.
The donation was made by Ada Tang Lee Wai-ching, vice-chairman of the Fu Hui Education Foundation, a charity based in Canada and Hong Kong. She learned of this collection of baby carriers through Lee Meiyin, a collector of ethnic Chinese costumes and a researcher at the Dunhuang Academy China.
In 2012, Lee met an American collector named Mark Clayton in Los Angeles, where she gave a lecture on Miao embroidery.
She was taken to Clayton’s storage facility where she was astonished to see thousands of pieces of ethnic Chinese embroidery which he had collected.
She says because of the rising costs of storage and preservation, Clayton then wanted to donate 5,000 baby carriers to museums in the United States so that more people could appreciate the beauty of Chinese embroidery, but was turned down by such institutions.
Lee then offered to move the baby carriers to China and she persuaded her friend Tang to buy them from him.
Lee was able to convince Tang, vicechairman of Hong Kong electronics and appliances retailer Broadway Photo Supply Ltd to buy the items as the businesswoman is known for passion for ethnic handicraft.
Tang, who has been deeply involved in charity work in Sichuan province over the past two decades, frequently travels to poverty-stricken villages in the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, where she and the Fu Hui Education Foundation run teaching programs and offer scholarships to ethnic children.
She says the voluntary efforts have helped hundreds of children complete middle school.
Speaking of her involvement in the embroidery project, Tang says: “The baby carrier is the start of a joyful childhood and a future of happiness. The donation can preserve ethnic embroidery. I also hope it will help deepen research into ethnic cultures in China.”
Tang plans to donate the remaining pieces she has bought to the museum of Renmin University in Beijing and an education foundation in Hong Kong.
The art of making baby carriers is a way for the users to showcase their beliefs, their fairy tales and their respect for nature.” Wu Weishan, director, National Art Museum of China