Cantonese Cloud Silk, a specialty of Shunde District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, is a nationally recognized geographical indication product in China. Also known as “Resonant Cloud Silk,” it is originally called “Liang Silk” and is a silk fabric dyed with plant dye from the sweet potato plant. It is the only silk fabric in the world dyed with pure plant dye, earning it the reputation of “soft gold” in the textile industry. References to sweet potato dyeing date back to the Tang Dynasty, with documented descriptions by Shen Kuo in the Northern Song Dynasty and Li Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty. The silk industry in Shunde District of Foshan City has a long history of silk reeling and weaving, earning it the reputation of “Southern Silk Capital” and preserving the dyeing and finishing techniques of Cantonese Cloud Silk. During the Ming Dynasty, Cantonese Liang Silk was already exported abroad. Cantonese Cloud Silk has various advantages; it is stiff, cool, soft, and smooth, with good resistance to sunlight and washing, strong waterproofing, easy to wash and dry, deep color that is resistant to dirt, does not stick to the skin, lightweight and not easily wrinkled, soft yet resilient, durable, suitable for wearing in hot summers, and has been well-received by consumers. It has been exported to Europe, America, India, and Southeast Asia, praised by overseas consumers as “black shining pearls” in clothing, and has become a famous product of Chinese silk.
On July 6, 2011, the former General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine approved the geographical indication protection of “Cantonese Cloud Silk.”
Product Features:
Cantonese Cloud Silk is the only silk fabric in the world dyed with pure plant dyes. Its unique yarn-making process, limited quantity, and long production time give it the following features: cool and pleasant, lightweight and soft, quick-drying when wet, not prone to wrinkles, with a resilient texture. It also has antibacterial and insect-repelling properties and is beneficial to the skin.
Production Environment:
Shunde, located in the Pearl River Delta hinterland, has a long history and is famous for its “sugarcane, mulberry, and fish ponds,” exemplifying a harmonious and cyclical ecosystem. The fish in the ponds are fed with grass, and their excrement, mixed with pond mud, is ideal soil enriched by perennial sugarcane and mulberry trees. Sugarcane is sweet and juicy, while mulberry is tender and green. Sugarcane leaves, mulberry leaves, and grass on sugarcane and mulberry bases can all feed fish, creating a harmonious and cyclical ecosystem.
Historical Origin:
Cantonese Cloud Silk, commonly known as “white blank silk” or sweet potato silk, has a history of over 1,000 years. It is an ancient Chinese handcrafted plant-dyed fabric and a national-level intangible cultural heritage. Due to its unique production process and limited quantity, combined with its cooling, easy-to-wash, quick-drying, dirt-resistant, skin-friendly, lightweight, wrinkle-resistant, and resilient properties, it was particularly favored by coastal fishermen. In the past, Cantonese Cloud Silk was known as “soft gold” and was only enjoyed by wealthy families. In terms of weaving, it is made by twisting silk threads into a plain white silk with small geometric patterns, then dyed with the juice of the sweet potato plant unique to Guangdong, and covered with the rich mud from the rivers and streams of the Pearl River Delta region, and processed by sun exposure. Because it makes a rustling sound when worn and walked in, it was initially called “Resonant Cloud Silk,” and later, people humorously referred to it as “Cantonese Cloud Silk” due to its phonetic similarity.
References to sweet potato dyeing date back to the Tang Dynasty, with documented descriptions by Shen Kuo in the Northern Song Dynasty and Li Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty. Shunde District of Foshan City has a long history of silk reeling and weaving, earning it the reputation of “Southern Silk Capital” and preserving the dyeing and finishing techniques of Cantonese Cloud Silk. By the Ming Dynasty, Cantonese sweet potato silk was already exported abroad.
During the reign of Emperor Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty (1821-1850), Nanhai began weaving plain weave fabrics with tussah silk, which became sweet potato silk after dyeing. In the first year of the Xuantong reign (1909), there were nine sweet potato dyeing households in Foshan, with about 200 workers. Sweet potato silk was mainly exported to Europe, America, India, and Southeast Asia.
In the early Republic of China period, Nanhai pioneered twisted eye floral patterns in silk fabrics, with small floral patterns called “canopy silk” and large floral patterns called “cloud silk,” collectively known as “silk.” After sweet potato dyeing, it became sweet potato silk. At that time, Nanhai, Shunde, Guangzhou, and other places successively established factories for weaving plain white silk and sweet potato dyeing, or established drying yards specifically for the sweet potato dyeing process. The Pearl River Delta presented a thriving scene of sweet potato silk production, with widespread “weave, dye, and sell” and “self-dyeing and selling” business models.
The heyday of “sweet potato silk” production and development in history was the 1920s, with most of it concentrated in Shiqiao, Nanhai County, and Lunjiao, Shunde County, in the Pearl River Delta, with thousands of silk weaving factories, most of which also engaged in sweet potato dyeing. There were over 30,000 silk weaving machines, over 500 drying yards, and three to four thousand workers engaged in silk weaving and sweet potato dyeing. The annual output of sweet potato silk was 2 to 2.5 million meters.
In the 1930s, during the reign of Chen Jitang (styled Bonan), efforts were made to build a prosperous Guangdong society and revitalize the Guangdong economy, with sericulture listed as the economic lifeline of Guangdong. The Guangdong provincial government organized domestic and foreign experts to conduct field investigations on the sericulture industry in the province. In July 1933, the provincial government ordered the establishment of a comprehensive implementation zone for revitalizing the sericulture industry in Shunde Dalang “Shi’ermu” (place name), directly under the Guangdong Provincial Construction Department. The comprehensive implementation zone was divided into six sub-districts, with Lunjiao being the most important one. Later, after repeated research and evidence collection by the provincial government, it was decided to establish a “Bonan Central Model Silkworm Village” in Lunjiao, to cultivate it into a demonstration base for sericulture industry in the province and even the country.
In the 1940s and 1950s, sweet potato silk was once popular in Lingnan as a unique summer clothing fabric. There is also a story about its origin. It is said that fishermen in the Pearl River Delta found that fishing nets became strong and durable when soaked in sweet potato dye. When they soaked their clothes in sweet potato juice, they found that they could also become strong and durable like fishing nets. Moreover, the river
mud dyed their clothes black and shiny, and the more they wore them, the softer and more durable they became. Therefore, fishermen began to soak their daily clothes while soaking their fishing nets, and this special regional silk fabric product emerged over time.
Just after the end of World War II, a worldwide economic crisis erupted following the war, and synthetic silk was invented. It was much cheaper than real silk, and major silk-using countries in Europe and America gradually replaced tussah silk with synthetic silk to produce silk fabrics. The Guangdong silk industry suffered a serious blow, plummeting, and Lunjiao was no exception. By 1949, most sweet potato dyeing factories were on the verge of bankruptcy, and Foshan City had only 50 silk weaving and sweet potato dyeing factories, most of which were either shut down or semi-shutdown.
In the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the government organized production for self-rescue, mutual assistance, cooperative operation, and public-private partnerships, adjusting and merging sweet potato silk production households and factories, and establishing new factories. For example, Foshan City and Shunde County successively established independent Foshan sweet potato dyeing factories and Lunjiao sweet potato dyeing factories, no longer depending on silk weaving factories.
On September 18, 2020, six national departments issued the “Action Plan for the High-Quality Development of the Sericulture and Silk Industry (2021-2025),” which called for the protection and utilization of silk cultural heritage and the promotion of the inheritance and innovation of non-material cultural heritage such as Cantonese Cloud Silk.