Guizhou Shui people’s horsetail embroidery girl, in order to develop rural tourism, uses her unique skills to "embroider" her way to wealth.

For those who like to go to the countryside to collect some Chinese handicraft embroidery, I am particularly excited to hear that there is a kind of aquatic horsetail embroidery in Sandu County, Guizhou Province. It is said that the aquarium horsetail embroidery is It has a long history and is a skill that has been passed down for thousands of years. It is the crystallization of the wisdom of the Shui ancestors.

The traditional festival of the Shui Tribe (equivalent to the Spring Festival of the Han people) has the custom of horse racing. It seems that horse racing has a long history. Shui women invented the art of making embroidery from horsetails. In traditional festivals, men race horses and women wear horsetail embroidery to participate in festival activities, which has become a beautiful and moving custom. Such a beautiful legend has further determined me to go to this area to visit the embroiderers of horsetail embroidery and understand the development and history of horsetail embroidery. If conditions permit, I will collect a few more embroidery items. I think this trip is very meaningful.

The weather in Guizhou in January is still very warm. In this weather, it is especially suitable for traveling. The car drove through the mountains and climbed over countless mountains before finally arriving at Antang Village, Tangzhou Community, Zhonghe Town, Sandu County. This village is basically inhabited by the Shui tribe, and many women wear their own embroidered indigo cloth and horsetail embroidery national costumes. Against the background of the indigo cloth, the beautiful patterns of the horsetail embroidery are more prominent and beautiful.

I contacted Wang Fen, an embroidery expert who has won many prizes in horsetail embroidery competitions at all levels in this area. According to Wang Fen, she was born in a scholarly family of Shui tribe, and her father Wang Pinkui He studied Shui nationality poems and books diligently, had a rich family background, was proficient in classics, history, poetry, and literature, and devoted himself to the organization and research of Shui nationality ancient culture.

In September 1994, he was hired as a librarian of the Guizhou Provincial Literature and History Research Center. Influenced by her family tradition, Wang Fen devoted herself to the training and dissemination of aquatic horsetail embroidery. Her horsetail embroidery works traveled across the ocean in the 1980s and were reported by overseas media, making outstanding contributions to the dissemination of aquatic horsetail embroidery.

In Sandu, the main birthplace of ethnic minority areas in Guizhou, it used to be that "every household has embroidery, and every family has embroiderers." Nowadays, machines have replaced manual work in almost every household, and there are fewer and fewer embroiderers engaged in embroidery. Many young people go to the city to work. How many people still understand the value of handicrafts? How many people can endure loneliness and are willing to pass on the cultural bloodline of embroidery?

Wang Fen led the sisters in the village to greet us at the entrance of the village very enthusiastically. I was very pleased to see each of them wearing their own ethnic costumes. The young women of the Shui ethnic group embroidered their own ethnic embroidery and wore their own ethnic costumes. Clothing, so that ancient culture can be passed down from generation to generation.

The needlework in Wang Fen’s hands supported the family’s livelihood. At that time, there were not many people selling horsetail embroidery products on the street. In good times, a suspender could be sold for more than 2,000 yuan.

For this family, she worked day and night without a single complaint, winning praise from all her neighbors.

Through hard work, Wang Fen’s family’s life has gradually improved, but she has not forgotten that she once had nothing. She said: Although I am not rich yet, I must help people who need help more than me!

In order to change the current situation that horsetail embroidery is only a hand job for rural Shui women during their spare time, and the styles of embroidery are relatively simple, Wang Fen organized a horsetail embroidery training class in the village. Now, under her leadership, sisters from poor households in the village embroider together. The styles and sizes of clothes and straps embroidered by Wang Fen and others are all based on the combination of spring, summer, autumn and winter, flowers, birds, fish, insects, and natural things. Some patterns are cleverly Insert the imprint of the aqua text.

Now their embroidery has expanded from traditional clothing to small and exquisite travel accessories such as wallets, handbags, souvenirs, etc. The products are not only diversified, but also meet the requirements of modern fashion aesthetics, so they are popular in Shanghai and Shenzhen. , Guangzhou and other places favored by consumers.

She organized the women in the village and taught them through words and deeds without reservation. At present, these embroiderers are all top "masters" of horsetail embroidery. Afterwards, they made horsetail embroidery crafts through order processing. Some Shui women began to make money from embroidery. Most women had an average annual income of more than 10,000 yuan, and some reached more than 30,000 yuan.

Wang Fen has a daughter named Wang Yinli, who is 35 years old this year. Her fate was very unfortunate. On the 80th day after she gave birth to her son shortly after her marriage, her young husband died in a car accident. Wang Yinli was unwilling to accept the unfairness of fate to her. She wiped away her tears and decided to raise her children alone. Her experience is very sad.

Wang Yinli said that since she was a child, she watched her mother embroidery by midnight, hearing and witnessing her mother's embroidery stitch by stitch. At first she thought it was fun and followed her embroidery, but gradually she fell in love with embroidery, and now she can follow her mother. Together they led the sisters in the village to start the horsetail embroidery business.

Based on the tradition of horsetail embroidery taught by her mother, Wang Yinli constantly absorbs embroidery techniques and modern designs from other ethnic groups, so that her embroidery can draw on the strengths of others, introduce new ones, and create horsetail embroidery works with a unique style.

Wang Yinli proudly told me that in 2017, she compiled the first "Horse Tail Embroidery Collection" of Shui Nationality in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Sandu Shui Autonomous County in 2017. Her mother and she made the final draft in person. This is a collection of samples, a masterpiece dedicated to the historical collection of Shui Nationality horsetail embroidery.

After hard work, the production and sales of Shuizu horsetail embroidery began to take shape, and the products began to travel across the ocean. Wang Yinli "embroidered" "half the sky" for poverty alleviation, and also "embroidered" her own beautiful life. Hearing these stories made me feel that the achievements of Shui tribe's horsetail embroidery today are indeed the result of the joint efforts of several generations of Shui tribe women.