Sales of horsetail embroidery articles are currently low, but
40-year-old Song Shuixian still believes the traditional handicraft
has great market potential for the future.
With the support of local government, Song opened a shop half a
year ago in Sandu, China's only Sui autonomous county in the
southwestern province of Guizhou.
A special traditional handicraft among women of the Chinese Sui
minority, horsetail embroidery is usually used as decorations for
clothes, shoes, small wallets and T-shaped bags for carrying babies
on the back.
However, the handicraft has been facing extinction in the past
few decades, as young women of the Sui minority prefer to move to
big cities to make money or study rather than engage in the
time-consuming craft.
"It is a complicated procedure," Song said. A thread for
embroidering has to be spun into three thin threads, which can then
entwine three to four pieces of horsetail hair. The horsetail hair
is used to create different patterns. Finally general embroidering
skills like cross-stitching are needed to complete a horsetail
piece.
"Only women in their 50s or 60s have this embroidery skill,"
said Song. "It is vital that we protect this important traditional
folk handicraft. Otherwise, it may become extinct."
The handicraft has just been listed in China's first group of
intangible cultural heritages by the Ministry of Culture.
Born in Bangao village, a centre of horsetail embroidery, Song
learned the craft from her mother when she was very young. In 1995,
she began to collect all sorts of articles and tried to expand the
use of horsetail embroidery.
"A dress decorated with horsetail embroidery can be sold at
10,000 yuan (1,200 U.S. dollars)," Song said, adding that it may
take dozens of days for a woman to finish such an article.
In recent years, local government has allocated special funds
for training some 600 women to preserve and develop this handicraft
with a history of more than 1,000 years.
"Our purpose is to make this endangered craft become a
fast-growing industry in the county," said Liu Changjiang, a top
official of Sandu County.
A special team has also been set up to salvage the traditional
culture of the Sui minority, with horsetail embroidery as its main
work, according to Liu.
"The market for horsetail embroidery products is quite
encouraging," said a tourism official of Sandu.
A series of horsetail embroidery works developed in the county
earned acclaim when exhibited in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen,
said the official, adding that mass production is quite possible in
the future.
In Libo County, another Sui-populated place in the province,
many local women make money by selling their horsetail embroidery
work to a shopping center.
"Our customers include both local people and tourists," said Yao
Bingtai, owner of the shop. "With the development of tourism, our
business will be better and better."
"I am also trying to set up a Web site for horsetail embroidery
to tell the world this craft, and preserve and develop our national
culture," said Song.
Song has two sons and a daughter. "I want my daughter to
undertake this craft when she grows up," she said.
(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2006)
