The woman weaving the rainbow on the Dulong River

The Dulong ethnic group is one of the smaller ethnic groups in China, with only a few thousand people. They mainly reside in Dulong River Township, Gongshan Dulong and Nu Autonomous County, Yunnan Province, situated in deep mountain valleys.

The Dulong blanket, which can be used as clothing during the day and as a cover at night, is a traditional ornament of the Dulong ethnic group. The people of the Dulong ethnic group combine plant pigments with plant fibres to weave colorful fabrics, resembling rainbows. Therefore, the Dulong women who weave these blankets are also known as “weavers of rainbows”.

“She is weaving an 8-meter-long blanket, and the rainbow-like yarn is slanting down from the window. The eaves and door frames of Xiumei’s (a Dulong weaver) house are adorned with half-woven Dulong blankets. The unfinished yarn naturally hangs down, forming a beautiful curtain. She is trying to weave raised geometric patterns on the surface of the rainbow-striped Dulong blanket.”

This scene described by Wang Liping, the head of the clothing brand “Klee Klee,” during an interview, depicts her reunion with two elderly Dulong weavers in Dulong Township, Yunnan, and their daily work-life scenes.

Traditional Dulong blankets are made from cotton and hemp. The villagers plant hemp in spring and harvest it in summer. After peeling and drying the hemp bark into threads, they dye the threads into various colors using plant juices. During the weaving process, several bamboo poles are inserted into the ground, and the threads are allocated and shaped into a fabric form. One end of the fabric-shaped threads is tied to a fixed wooden piece, while the other end is tied around the waist. Through more than a dozen procedures and the use of various tools, it takes several months to weave an exquisite Dulong blanket.

Traditional weaving art goes out of the countryside

In 2015, the Naze Naze Dulong River Township Weaving Project was jointly initiated by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation and Klee Klee. Over the course of seven years, Naze Naze has connected weavers and designers, creating not only classic blankets but also handmade woven products that are closer to everyday life, such as shawls, pillows, eye masks, messenger bags, and more.

The project operates under a collaborative model, with Klee Klee responsible for designing and providing wool yarn, while Dulong women are in charge of weaving the fabric. Afterwards, Klee Klee processes the entire blanket into products that are suitable for urban daily life. Prior to this project, the weavers had been using traditional waist looms to weave Dulong blankets, which only allowed for basic plain weave techniques.

In order to better integrate traditional handmade products into the modern market, the design team at Klee Klee provided the weavers with technological innovations. In terms of materials, they replaced the original hemp or rayon with soft wool yarn and cotton thread. Regarding color combinations, the Dulong people have a preference for vibrant rainbow colors. However, these bright hues are more suitable for the natural and rustic environment of Dulong River Township. Naze Naze’s woven blankets reduced the extensive use of bright colors, making the products more in line with urban aesthetics.

Wenting Wu, the designer of Klee Klee, said, “I believe that engaging with traditional culture begins with an attitude of equality and respect. The development of the Internet has enabled global information to be synchronized, and we should transform traditional craftsmanship into something more accessible within the context of shared interest in traditional culture. Through projects involving ethnic minorities, we can strengthen the connections between individuals, even if they may be small, it is still worthwhile.”

With years of development in the local community, the Naze Naze team and the Dulong River weavers have established a mutually trusting, equal, and respectful collaboration, attracting more weavers from neighbouring villages to join.

Dulong River Township serves as a starting point. Naze Naze textile studio, established in 2020, extended its collaboration with the weavers beyond the initial project in the Dulong River Township. They expanded their cooperation to include the Dalitong Village, Eyanaxi Township, and Menglian Xingang Wa Ethnic Village. The profits generated are used to support the sustainable development of the project. Rather than choosing to donate the proceeds from selling a product directly to the weavers, the approach involves involving the villages and the people living in them in the production, design, and management processes. It aims to help the local people establish a self-sustaining ecological cycle.

The charm of Naze Naze lies in the fact that every person involved in different projects can grow together in this process. This sustainable operational model gives rise to many interesting things within the organic entity of the brand. Weavers work together in a free and “loose” manner. They all have their own families, and Naze Naze hopes that these new opportunities will allow them to balance their family and personal lives while finding joy and a sense of value in the projects.

Every year, a “Blanket Contest” is held to fully unleash the creativity and self-expression of the Sisters of Weaving. In addition to the sense of achievement itself, the tangible result is that more and more color combinations created by the weavers are being showcased in the projects.

By 2023, there were 38 women involved in the production of Naze Naze products. The bonds between Dulong women already exist within families and among sisters. It is because of the Dulong project that the weavers gather and form a new community through weaving. Naze Naze acts as a bridge, connecting and transforming rural and urban areas, as well as between artisans and urban consumer groups.

This very “bridge” spans cities of different sizes in China, promoting Dulong ethnic traditional weaving culture to the world.

Naze Naze in London

Local residents collaborate with the Naze Naze team during their leisure time, aside from their farming duties and taking care of their families, to bring hand-woven fabrics from their hometown to the world.

Naze naze exhibited at the London Craft Week at the Fabric X exhibition space in London with the hand-woven textile works of Dulong River Township and Dali Dong Village. I visited the exhibition and attended the brand’s presentation on a weekend in May. On my way back home, while learning more about the brand, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Dulong ethnic blankets were featured as the cover image in the London Craft Week special edition of the Financial Times.

London Craft Week, initiated by Guy Salter in May 2015, aims to provide a platform for artisans worldwide, allowing international and local, historical and contemporary, commercial and cultural exchanges to take place. It enables craftsmanship to transcend the limitations of brand recognition and gain more opportunities for display.

The entire exhibition area showcases innovative and environmentally friendly solutions that contribute to the textile and apparel industry on the path to sustainability.

Naze Naze’s booth has blankets, pillows, messenger bags and other items made by weavers. The delicate and precise stitches seemed to reflect the image of the weavers sitting together by the river, slowly weaving. During the workshop activities, I and some weaving enthusiasts tried color combinations. The instructor taught us how to extract inspiration from trees, flowers, and buildings and incorporate them into our weaving. It was only when I attempted to wrap different colored threads around cardboard that I realized how challenging it is to achieve a perfect combination of different color schemes.

During the visit, the overseas representative of the Naze Naze project, Shen Yiren, shared with me: ” Our project is based on the promotion of the development and preservation of minority cultures. Personally, I have to think about the so-called ‘conservation’, because ‘conservation’ is a state of development in itself. We hope that this is a process of mutual exchange with the weavers.”

“No individual or single organization will become a superhero that solves social problems,” said Daniela Papi, former Deputy Executive Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford, in a TEDx talk. The ultimate goal of social enterprises is to bring about social change, and business activities are one of the means to achieve that. The goal of changing society must go beyond surface-level issues and delve into the “core” of the social problems.

Whether it’s in Dulong River, Dalidong, Dong villages, Oyanaxi Township, or Menglian Xingang Wa ethnic villages, Naze Naze progresses based on respect for local culture and existing ways of life. It operates in a gentle, natural manner rather than causing division. Through the combination of philanthropic funds and social entrepreneurship, a virtuous cycle has been established through women’s handcrafted weaving.

National cultural spirit

Indeed, even the most ordinary and seemingly insignificant things harbor a subtle spirit within them. There is no need to create something grand, as long as there is passion, it becomes a totem in one’s heart.

At the end of the sharing session, Shen Yiren said, “What Naze Naze wants to convey is the wisdom of each individual person. Humanity itself is such a vibrant species. In our project, everyone expresses their wisdom in living a better and more beautiful life, caring for themselves and their families, and living with dedication and meticulousness. These things go beyond ethnicity.”

In my view, handicrafts are not about clinging to unchanged methods from the past but about continuous growth. They represent the current lives, aesthetics, and ways of thinking of the local people.

With the continuous development of the economic and social aspects, especially the modern production and lifestyle, the protection, inheritance, and development of minority cultures face many challenges. Many folk skills are at risk of losing their core essence, with skills being lost, ethnic characteristics weakening, and a lack of talent for succession. How to protect, inherit, and utilize these precious minority traditional crafts has become a difficult problem.

It is the dedication and perseverance of a group of simple craftspeople that has allowed these treasured skills, which have been refined over the years, to be passed down from generation to generation. Amidst the entwining of colorful yarns, these craftsmen breathe new life into their creations with every hook and stitch, rejuvenating them for the present age.

Feature image by Naze Naze on Instagram.