Three washes, nine steamings, and eighteen dryings, one ounce of gold for one ounce of yarn.
Xiangyunsha is a mysterious oriental textile.
Xiangyunsha is a legend of Chinese silk, with a history of at least five or six hundred years. It is the only silk in the world that uses pure plant dyeing. The dyeing and finishing techniques are quite complicated, and have requirements for raw materials and climate. It can only be produced in Foshan, Guangdong, China and its surrounding areas.
In 2008, Xiangyunsha became a national intangible cultural heritage with its unique dyeing and finishing techniques.
So, what is Xiangyunsha?
Many friends who have just come into contact with Xiangyunsha will have a question: Is Xiangyunsha a fabric or a color?
In fact, neither is it. Xiangyunsha is a dyeing and finishing process, which is a process of dyeing silk with plant dyes.
“Xiangyunsha” is made of mulberry silk as the embryo base, and is made through “three steaming, nine boiling and eighteen drying”. It is also called “Langsha”. It is an ancient handmade plant dyeing process fabric in China with a history of more than 1,000 years.
Its dyeing and finishing techniques are very unusual. It is made of pure hand-woven and pure natural materials. Because the craftsmanship of Xiangyunsha is the most complicated among silk products, it needs to go through 14 kinds of crafts, 36 processes, and 1 to 3 years of cellar storage before it can be used for clothing, so it is also called “soft gold”.
Xiangyunsha, as beautiful as its name, makes a “rustling” sound when swaying in the wind, so it is also called “Xiangyunsha”.
Women from famous families all prefer Xiangyunsha. Xiangyunsha has developed to the present, and wearing Xiangyunsha also shows that a person has emotional background, loves traditional culture, has quality of life, and has a unique personality.
In the past, when Lingnan-South China women were about to get married, they would get a set of Xiangyunsha clothes sewn by their mothers as dowry. The mother hoped that her daughter could be like this dress. Although she was getting older, she was also more elegant. The harvest is still the same, implying that life is like brewing wine, the longer it is, the sweeter it is.
Xiangyunsha is full of the marks of time. Under the arcades in Lingnan, women are often seen wearing long braids hanging on the brown Xiangyunsha. The “rustling” sound of Xiangyunsha is interspersed with the “tick-tick” sound of clogs. Walking in the sunset, it is like wearing time on the body.
The previous life of Xiangyunsha was actually very grassroots. According to historical records, the early production area of Xiangyunsha was in Shunde, Foshan and Nanhai in the Pearl River Delta today.
The China Pearl River Delta has a crisscrossing river network, with mulberry-based fish ponds everywhere. Mulberry trees are planted by the ponds, silkworms are raised with mulberry leaves, silkworm pupae are fed to fish, and pond mud is used to fertilize mulberry trees. The virtuous cycle makes the resources here rich.
According to historical records, the Pearl River Delta has been engaged in mulberry planting, silkworm breeding and silk weaving as early as the Han Dynasty.
Many local residents make a living by fishing. Fishermen found that soaking fishing nets in the juice of a local vine, Dioscorea strychnifolia, can make fishing nets strong and durable.
When fishing, fishermen often get river mud on their bodies, mixed with sweat and dripping down, and their clothes are always wet and dry, dry and wet.
Over time, they found that this kind of clothes is not only cool to wear, but also durable, so they began to use it widely, and everyone had one, which became the unique “work clothes” of fishermen.
Later, people used this immersion dyeing method on silk.
The juice of Dioscorea strychnifolia plus the unique river mud in the Pearl River Delta, The dyed and finished silk is not only black, shiny and soft, but also cool and durable, which is very suitable for the hot and humid climate of Lingnan.
Since the Yongle period of the Qing Dynasty, Xiangyunsha has been exported to foreign countries. In the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, it was even more popular at home and abroad. It is said that a piece of Xiangyunsha was sold at a high price of 12 taels of silver, and it has the reputation of “soft gold”.
So, how did this “grassroots” fabric achieve the phoenix nirvana?
Xiangyunsha is light and cool, simple and elegant in color, does not stick to the skin, is soft and not easy to wrinkle, easy to take care of, close to the body and shows the figure, so it is very popular among the ladies of the Republic of China.
The clothes made of Xiangyunsha do not look luxurious, but they are very particular, a little lazy, a little decadent, very feminine, very private, and have a strong literary flavor.
If the mulberry ponds in the Pearl River Delta have created the elegant and noble Xiangyunsha, then the unique dyeing and finishing techniques have made Xiangyunsha elegant and noble.
The dyeing and finishing techniques of Xiangyun yarn still use very complicated traditional techniques, all of which are completed by hand, and are delicate and arduous, and every link is very particular.
First of all, we must choose silk cloth with high count and high density, so that it can withstand the “tough” of subsequent multiple processes.
The dye comes from the reddish-brown pigment in natural yam. The silk blank is soaked in yam water for coloring, and the hands must be constantly turned over carefully with a certain strength and amplitude.
Different silk blanks use different proportions of yam water, and there is no standard. It all depends on the master’s experience to adjust, and it must not be sloppy.
The “drying yam” link is very particular. There are only two time periods from April to June and September to November each year for drying yam, because only during this period of time is there sufficient sunshine, less rain, and high temperature, and the Xiangyun yarn with superior texture can be dried.
The grass for drying ramie is very particular. The grass can only be 1-2cm thick and evenly spaced to ensure air circulation. If the grass is too soft, it will not be able to withstand the pressure of the silk; if the grass is too hard, it will scratch the silk surface.
This link is labor-intensive and pays great attention to tacit understanding and coordination.
When drying, the cloth must be spread out while people have to turn it up and down by hand, then roll up the huge cloth, and then turn it over and spread it out neatly to ensure that it is evenly dried and the ramie water can be fully absorbed by the cloth.
Often, when this side has just been spread out, the other side is already waiting to be rolled up, so this process is usually operated by more than a dozen people at the same time, which is the most difficult and heavy physical work.
In the later stage of drying ramie, a broom made of sunflower leaves is used to evenly apply the ramie water and then dry it. This process of boiling silk and sealing the ramie water to fix the color must be repeated many times.
“Guo Wu” is also very vivid, which means applying river mud. This is not a child playing with mud. Craftsmen need to wave brushes like huge brushes, shout unified slogans, follow a unified rhythm, and take unified steps to evenly apply river mud on the cloth, giving it a black and shiny texture.
After repeating the same process many times, Xiangyunsha magically presents the state of black ceramics, mysterious and elegant.
In order to wait for the color to be completely stable, the finished Xiangyunsha has to be placed for 3 to 6 months before it is considered finished. Perhaps this is what can stand the test of time.
The entire production cycle of Xiangyunsha takes at least one year from material selection to static completion. It is very difficult, and the whole process is full of ritual sense like primitive artistic creation.
Three washes, nine steamings, and eighteen dryings, one ounce of gold for one ounce of yarn.