Arts and Crafts

In terms of hand-crafted arts, many of the minority women's costumes are themselves works of art. While closely resembling other costumes of the same sub-group, the artistic tradition still allows room for individualist touches in making choices among embroidery patterns or decorative embellishments. Military-style uniformity is not the tribal way. The general style sets the parametres. The details are left to the individual.

Many of the minority women's costumes are definitely attractive, but do not require much work or activity to create them. The truly artistic minority women are from those groups in which a proper costume takes a long time to make, such as the full year required for a Huayao Yi girl's costume, and she only embroiders the cloth and doesn't have to make it. Most Miao, some of the Zhuang, the non-Buddhist Dai, the central and southern Yi, some Yao groups, the Aini in Xishuangbanna and Simao, certain Honghe Hani and the Bai around Dali all emphasise embroidery. The beauty of women's clothes is locally judged by the artistry of the embroidery.

In a few cases it's the beauty of the batik. This is also a long and involved process, in which the intended design is laid onto the cloth in wax.When the cloth is dyed the wax prevents the dye from touching the design, which then comes out white when the cloth is rinsed and the wax removed.The Miao have been the leading specialists of this art, using the finished cloth for their skirts.Nowadays, though, factories are producing the same designs by printing. Rolls of this cloth are sold in the markets in Miao areas. The original technique is also practised by Yi groups in the south and southeast.

Another method of putting designs or pictures on cloth is the tie-dye technique. This means tying knots in the white cloth, immersing it in the dye, usually indigo, then after rinsing untying the knots. Where the ties bind the cloth the dye doesn't reach, so when untied the cloth shows the pattern in white. The Bai around Dail are especially good at this, though except for head scarves and occasional vest cloth they don't use it much themselves. But they turn out piles of cloth pictures and rolls of material for making clothes, both aimed at the tourist market. Another group employing the technique is a Hani sub-group in Yuanyang County, who attach a tie-dyed strip of cloth to the front of their jackets.

Besides personal adornment, ethnic minority handicrafts include articles of mundane domestic use and the plastic arts employed in spiritual works. A good sense of design and ingenuity are evident in the use of local materials like bamboo, wood and clay to make the utensils and containers of everyday use. Mountain people cut sections of bamboo to make cups and drinking mugs, outfitting some with handles. The Jingpo beer mug may also sport designs painted on it in black, like a sunrise or a pair of crossed machetes. The ubiquitous bamboo also serves as building material for houses and bridges in the south, as well as spoons, dippers and chopsticks. Split into thin strips bamboo can be woven into baskets, fish traps, rice dishes, small round and oval containers, dinner tables and sitting mats. The Dai and the hill dwellers of the south and southwest are particularly adept at bamboo work. The Dai also make the best clay water containers, with incised or painted surface designs.

Further north wood is the main material for cups, bowls, ladles, trays. buckets and butter churns. The Naxi chisel and carve simple bowls, plates and thick cups from blocks of wood. The Tibetans and Yi use lathes to shape the wood. The former also inlay the cups and bowls with silver and adorn the outside with bands of silver with repousse designs. The Yi lacquer their wooden vessels and utensils in red, yellow and black colours. Bands of wavy, intersecting lines and spirals decorate the exteriors. One type of wine cup uses an eagle's foot for the base stand and in the past could only be used by the Black Yi nobility.

Wood is also a prime building material and posts, doors, gates and windows in some areas are delicately carved. Bai and Tibetan woodcarvers are the best in the province, though Tibetan skills were for the most part confined to religious architecture. Not so with the Bai, who were employed throughout the west for house construction, adorning the homes of the wealthy with wonderfully carved plants and flowers, gibbons and dragons, other animals real and mythical, religious figures and symbols. Even in recent years Naxi home owners have hired Bai construction workers from Heqing to make their homes, and carve the gates, door panels, brackets and windows.

Besides house exteriors, Bai craftsmen also have a reputation for fine furniture, using carved wood in conjunction with marble to make elegant tables, chairs and benches. Working with marble alone workers turn out vases, ashtrays, decanters and lamp stands. Dali shops also sell small slabs of marble, often mounted on wooden stands. What makes these slabs attractive is the natural pattern formed by the veins of the stone when it is cut and polished. These often resemble misty mountain ranges, much like a Chinese ink-brushed landscape painting.

One other way in which wood is a medium of art is in block printing. Craftsmen carve low-relief designs and figures on blocks. Smeared with ink, these blocks stamp the design on paper. The resulting print is then mounted on a wall. During Lunar New Year people tack up the block prints over the doorways. The best prints come from the west, particularly Dali and Weishan.

In other places designs are cut from the paper itself. The Dai in Dehong are skilled at this. Using black, gold or white paper they scissor out sections to create silhouetted Buddhist temples, votive objects and peacocks. In the southern counties of Honghe Prefecture Yi women cut intricate floral, geometric and other designs on strips of paper which they then pin to cloth. Taking a needle and thread they embroider the cloth according to the designs cut on the paper, removing it afterwards.

The last major Yunnanese arts worth considering are sculpture and painting, both of which have, until recent decades, generally been employed in the service of religion and ritual. Each has a long tradition in the province. The stone sculptures at Shibaoshan, dating from the Nanzhao era, are the most celebrated works of their kind in Yunnan. Other Nanzhao specimens are on display in other cities, such as the stone pillars at the Kunming City Museum. Later sculptors worked in bronze and samples of their work are on view in Lufeng and Dail museums. In the Ming era Chinese artisans cast the huge bronze Confucius in Shiyang, Chuxiong, while Dai casters produced Buddha images of various sizes for the temples of the south and southwest.

Dai artists also painted murals on temple walls, depicting the bliss of Heaven and the tortures of Hell, but the work is cruder than that of their ethnic cousins in Laos and Thailand. The best religious murals, however, are in a few old temples in Lijiang. These are large, spectacular works, full of details, that contain elements from the Chinese and the Tibetan painting traditions. The Naxi also used to illustrate the covers of their pictographic manuscripts and paint religious figures and symbols on the wooden swords called khobya, which were inserted in the burial grounds at funerals.

In contemporary painting, the ethnic influence on the province's art is reflected in the founding and development of the Yunnan School of Painting in the early 80’s. After 1979 painters were freed from the strictures of government policy on art, wherein painters were restricted to Han-style landscapes, realistic portraiture or propaganda work. The Yunnan School featured non-realistic portraits, with angular faces and elongated limbs, bold colour contrasts and subject matter and themes drawn from the life and beliefs of the ethnic minorities.

Many such painters came from the south, with a heavy accent in their works on exotic hill folks and slim Dai peasant girls in scenes of lush vegetation. Naxi painters incorporated the style of the dongba pictographs and painted mythical and mystical scenes inspired by tales in the old books The Yunnan School style has stopped evolving and much of the work now is derivative. But it was a breakthrough in its time and is still eye-catching to those who see samples of it for the first time.

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