Before synthetic fibers were invented and their prices were brought down within the reach of the populace, people clothed themselves with the natural materials available in the surroundings where they lived and worked everyday. These vary from bark of trees to hide of animals. In the case of the Hezhens, an ethnic group in northeastern China, it is fish dermis.

The Hezhens live in the plains along the Heilong, Songhua and Wusuli rivers in northeastern China. With a population of just 4,600, it is one of the smallest ethnic groups in China. Traditionally this people live by hunting and fishing, and rivers provide them many of their living necessities. Early Hezhens invented methods to make clothes, bedding and thread with fish skin, which won them the name the Fish Skin Tribe.

In summer, the peak fishing season, the group would wear fish pellicles, while in winter they were clad in furs like other groups in the chilly north. When the rivers froze, they headed into the forests to hunt game on dog sleds.

Fish skin remained a major fabric for the Hezhen people until the 1960s. In the following decades the increasing influx of migrants into northeastern China brought about profound changes to the local society and economy. The Hezhens could no longer feed their families by simply fishing and hunting, and began to turn to farming and business. As they relied less on the river for their livelihoods and spent less time out on the water, fish played a smaller and smaller part in their lives. It made little sense to continue to spend the time and effort needed to make clothes out of fish skin when they could simply buy an outfit in the store. For most, the tradition gradually receded into a distant memory, and the craft was learnt by fewer and fewer people.

By the generation of You Wenfeng’s mother You Cuiyu, the older You was the only tribe member left who knew how to make fish skin clothes, and because of the high cost and long and arduously complicated process she seldom made any.