Yi embroidery by hand gives off sense of warmth

I still remember a pair of embroidered shoes I loved to wear when I was a little child. Its vividly embroidered flowers in the Yi style impressed me a lot, so it became one of my preferred outfits for every outing. However, with my physical growth and later changes in living place, I lost track of them, and the hand-embroidered shoes gradually faded out of my daily life and memory.

Tools and patterns of the Yi embroidery in Yunnan

One day while I was in college, I met a girl from the Shilin Yi autonomous county, central Yunnan’s Kunming city. She was wearing traditional Yi costume for freshmen registration. Like a delicate work of art, her outfit featured the colors as bright as those of a rainbow, and its patterns of octagonal flowers, flames and ram horns evoked in me an aesthetic sense of symmetry. She told me it was hand-embroidered by her mother, because for the Yi folks, needle works from mother will accompany their children throughout the growth: embroidered carriers for babyhood, special dresses for coming-of-age, and hand-sewn costumes for wedding, all the creations are unique and “highly customized”.

Last summer, I visited the Weishan Yi and Hui autonomous county in west Yunnan’s Dali Bai autonomous prefecture, and my visit coincided with the Torch Festival -- dubbed as the eastern carnival popular among Yi folks. The festivities enlivened the usually small and quiet county town. Besides tourists, there were lots of locals dressed in festival costumes on the street, then I found that the traditional dresses of the Yi people in Weishan have their own uniqueness: With silver ornaments, they feature dazzling colors of red and green paired in harmony. Mother nature has always been a source of wisdom and aspiration for the Yi people.

 

The Yi embroiderers in rural Yunnan

Later, I walked into a costume store. The lady owner told me that it may take several years to embroider a Yi dress by hand, and the craftsperson can create the patterns without a ruler or pencil, learning the designs by heart and doing impromptu creations by their experience only. Then, she showed me a pair of shoes that she had just finished embroidering. Suddenly, my childhood memories were awakened.

The Yi embroidering steps are refined, but each stitch must be precise. In the era when the machine-made clothing has already entered our lives, there are still so many artisans who insist on taking years to make hand-embroidered clothes. I believe the colors Yi people wear and the fiery passion in them have been well passed down on this vibrant land of Yunnan, and embroidery has become a part of their daily life.

Various patterns are embroidered on Yi costumes, including the sun, the moon, stars, mountains, rivers, lakes, plants and animals. The patterns represent their living experiences for thousands of years and the philosophy of coexisting with nature, and they also reflect the beliefs and expectations of the embroiderers. The delicate familial embroideries can even carry the memory of times and ethnicity.

 

Derivatives of the Yi embroidery 

Except for special festivals, few people would wear hand-embroidered clothes in daily life. Will the Yi handicraft disappear? Based on my observation, I would say NO. I learned the Costume Competition Festival has been going on for thousands of years in central Yunnan’s Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture. On that day, local Yi folks, including little girls and grannies, would wear colorful costumes to show the exquisite manual skills and the beauty of traditional clothing. The Yi embroidery and its derivatives have debuted at international fashion events, and I even noticed a mother would carry her baby with a Yi back wrap embroidered in azalea patterns, watching seagulls by the Green Lake in Kunming... Now, handmade Yi embroidery is getting increasingly visible for it comes from our beauty-seeking life. After all, beauty and love are eternal topics.

 

The Yi embroidery debuts at an international fashion event in Shanghai.

(The writer Huang Yixian is a cultural communication observer, who holds a master's degree in Social Anthropology conferred by the University of Edinburgh, UK.)