Nobody knows how the batik style was invented, but a folk tale about a “batik girl” tells explains one theory. The story relates that long, long ago, there was a girl living in a stone village called Anshun, now a city in Guizhou Province. She was fond of dyeing white cloth blue and purple. One day, while she was working, a bee happened to alight on her cloth. After she took away the bee, she found there was a white dot left on the cloth, which looked very pretty. Her finding led to the use of wax in dyeing.
Batik used to be popular both in Central and Southwest China but was somehow lost in Central China. It has however been handed down from generation to generation among the ethnic people in Guizhou and neighboring provinces, in the South-West of China. Today, you can still find traditional batik being made by the Miao, Bouyei and Gejia people.
Batik of Minorities
Batik involves long painstaking work but follows a rather simple process. First, bee-wax is melted in a bowl; then a special brass knife is used to pick up the liquid wax and make patterns with it on the cotton. The cloth is immersed completely in a jar of indigo liquid so that the unwaxed parts take on color. The dyed cloth is boiled to melt off the wax and leave clear patterns in white on a blue ground.
In the process of printing, the dye penetrates fine cracks naturally formed in the solidified wax, leaving hair-thin blue lines on the un-dyed white designs and enhancing the charm of the end product. And as the fine lines differ, no two pieces of cloth are identical even though they may beat the same pattern.
Their motifs carry meanings. For example, their finely drawn circular and double spiral designs represents the horns of the water buffalo, symbolizing their ancestor’s life and death. Their more traditional designs are geometric, where the most skilled wax resist reads as a fine blue line on a white ground. With the influence of the Han Chinese more figurative designs like flowers, birds and fish have been introduced over the centuries.
In the ethnic areas, batik is used extensively on many cloth articles, from dresses, skirts, kerchiefs, and belts to handkerchiefs, pillows, pillow slips and bedcovers. From tablecloths, curtains, tapestries to handbags, satchels and cushions.
Among the Miao nationality, a minority ethnic group in Southwest China, young girls are taught to make batik, to weave, and to embroider from an early age. Custom demands that they make their own garments, from wedding dresses to funeral shrouds.
Email to Friends
Print
Save