Weaving Bamboo Dreams
A Guizhou community uses intangible heritage to craft a better future
On the eve of heading to Beijing for this year’s National People’s Congress (NPC), Yang Changqin, an NPC deputy born in 1990, together with her staff was racing against the clock to fill their first
2022 order.
An inheritor of the intangible Chishui bamboo weaving cultural heritage, Yang managed to combine tradition with rural revitalization, making it possible for this ancient handicraft to leave the mountains of Guizhou Province and venture into the world. At her weaving base, thousands of local villagers can increase their household incomes by working from home.
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, their products mainly went to the overseas market, but the pandemic threw a wrench into the works. Yet the company managed to turn misfortune into literal fortune by tapping into domestic market demand.
Stranger to master
In 2007, 17-year-old Yang graduated as a kindergarten teacher, but she gave up this high-paying job, and even the opportunity to pursue further studies, because she fell in love with bamboo weaving and decided to master the craft in Chishui, a county-level city in Guizhou.
The highly particular weaving skill requires a lot of time and practice, but Yang’s perseverance and hard work lifted her technique to the top level within years, her works earning her dozens of accolades in Guizhou. Later, her expert flair for the craft won her the title of provincial Chishui bamboo weaving inheritor.
In 2012, Yang opened her own factory in the city’s Datong Township. The first staff lineup consisted of impoverished women left behind by their migrant worker husbands. Based on consumer demand, the team produced thousands of creations like handbags, flower baskets, teacups, and so on. These products gained buyers nationwide via different channels, ranging from exhibitions to online shops. “Only when intangible cultural heritage is imbedded in daily life can it add new value; only continuous innovation can inject life into an ancient art so that it can be protected and inherited,” Yang said.
Chishui now covers a bamboo forest of more than 1.3 million mu (87,000 hectares), with 200,000 people working in related businesses. “If bamboo is sold as a raw material, it can (at most) fetch 10 yuan ($1.57); but after it’s processed and transformed into various woven goods, its value can multiply sharply,” Yang explained.
From crisis comes change
The global outbreak of COVID-19 dealt a blow to the company’s production and sales. “When our products could no longer travel to the overseas market, more than 100 workers were left in financial limbo. With foreign markets off-limits, we had to change course and turn to the domestic market.” Yang started calling sales platforms across the country and would travel far and wide to pitch the products in person. “I would stack up boxes of products from Chishui and drive
them to an e-commerce company in the provincial capital of Guiyang early in the morning. After a quick inspection, the company boss decided to stock them on the spot, which greatly encouraged me.”
Inspired by this first successful experience, Yang and her staff soon managed to dispatch their products to e-commerce platforms across China. Meanwhile, they also opted to display their goods at exhibitions. “For the past two years, we have attended over 100 exhibitions, which in turn has led to a lot of offline orders,” she said. Company sales soared. The “domestic sales of commodities originally produced for export” model has effectively helped sustain the company. “The sales on the abovementioned Guiyang e-commerce platform alone amount to millions of yuan [hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars],” Yang proudly added.
The happy deputy
Thanks to her efforts in preserving traditional bamboo weaving and helping locals out of extreme poverty, in 2018, Yang was selected a deputy to the 13th NPC. Deputies are elected by their communities to represent them at the NPC— for a period of five years. During the annual congress, they hear and review several reports, including the annual government work report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang at the NPC opening meeting.
Yang was able to take advantage of her unique position and platform to introduce her hometown’s weaving craft to the broader public. “I am proud to brief people on this art as an NPC deputy. I feel my efforts are valued and I’m very much encouraged by this experience,” Yang said.
In 2021, the art of bamboo weaving was watched on TikTok by more than 70 million people, sparking great interest and curiosity with overseas viewers.
“The popularity of this art in other countries stimulates us to develop more products that will prevail in overseas markets, as to create more value.” To lend the goods a more fashionable twist, Yang took classes at both the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Arts & Design at Tsinghua University in Beijing. She then applied her newfound knowledge and methods to the weaving art, developing an array of new articles, such as bamboo-woven porcelain and ornaments—proving especially popular with young consumers.
As for the legacy of intangible cultural heritage by large, Yang believes that many unique traditional art products and techniques have yet to create and grow their own brands and take things to the next level. She suggests they establish industrial bases, integrate technical resources, create more artful merchandise and improve the training system, both to reach a larger market as well as better protect cultural heritage.
Output value of Yang’s company today approaches some 20 million yuan ($3.14 million), boasting 34 registered brands and 12 patents. Since 2012, her bamboo weaving base has provided training courses to more than 10,000 people, from local leftbehind women to households relocated under the poverty relief policy, to people with disabilities and students.
At Yang’s research and training base, young mothers weave the bamboo, with their babies fast asleep in the cradles next to them. This is the kind of quiet and happy life local villagers seek. BR