The next year, fish skin clothing was to receive an even bigger audience, this time coming from all over the world. The fish skin robe exhibited at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo drew big crowds of curious viewers, curious about this unusual item of clothing. Of traditional Hezhen design, it is of blue and white stripes and bears patterns of clouds and waves at the cuffs and flap. According to its designer, the dress was made of the skin of over 50 chum salmon weighing more than five kilos each.
It is no cheap to make a fish skin coat. Skinning and drying aside, the sewing work alone on the World Expo robe took 12 days by three tailors. The whole process has to be completely handmade. What’s more, the piece was made from the skin of over 50 chum salmon weighing more than five kilos each. Only the fish weighing no less than four kilograms can produce the peel of a descent size, and dozens of them are needed to make an average garment.
There were plenty of fish, and big ones, in the Songhua River when You Wenfeng was a little girl. When fish was needed for dinner, her fellow tribesmen and women would jump into their boats, cast their nets, and soon get back with their catch. It took less time than going shopping for fish. This is no longer the case. Few Hezhen people still work in the occupation that has provided for them for the better part of their history, and fishermen have to go further and further afield to look for bigger hauls, and often the sale of their catch cannot cover the cost of diesel.
Like people in other parts of the nation, the Hezhens now go to markets or grocery stores to get fish. This has pushed up the cost of fish skin coats, which stands at RMB 3,000 or more. You Wenfeng only makes clothes to order, when she knows that there is a buyer for it and the fish skins do not go to waste.
The dwindling numbers of certain kinds of fish have also forced artisans to modernize some of their methods. Traditionally these skins would have been sown together with thread made of the skin of Siberian buso sturgeon and glue extracted from their bladders. In fact, until recently every single component of the fish skin clothes of the Hezhens came from their catch in the river and woods. Now cotton thread is used instead of fish skin thread as Siberian buso sturgeon is on the edge of extinction and under state protection. You Wenfeng keeps a piece of bladder glue, but only as a memento as it is the only one remaining.
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