Riding the wind of rebirth

"It seems that you are really interested in our national specialties." The account manager smiled and said: "Adelais silk is the favorite native silk for ethnic women to make clothing. It is mainly produced in Hotan, Kashgar, and SC. The ones produced in the county are the most famous.”

"The specific process is as you guessed. It uses my country's ancient tie-warp dyeing process. The whole silk is first rolled on a large shaft, and then put on a hand-operated rotating shaft and divided into even strands. Then experienced craftsmen will Strands of silk threads are laid flat to form a "drawing", and ink drawings of almond wood, wood board pattern flowers, comb flowers and other patterns are made on it. After the drawing is completed, it is handed over to the knotter for tying."

“After the warp yarns are tied into bundles, they can be dyed according to the requirements of the pattern.”

"Dyeing can also be divided into multiple layers. During the dyeing process, the silk threads are moistened by the dyeing liquid, which will naturally form a color halo, which is scattered and scattered, scattered but not messy. It not only increases the layering of the pattern and the transition surface of the color, but also forms a Adelais silk has rich changing pattern characteristics.”

"Then comes the process of warping, warping and weaving silk. Everyone loves this kind of silk very much and gave it the nickname 'Yubo Funeng Kanati Guli', which is a name full of spring. , meaning ‘flower with cuckoo wings’, the season when the cuckoo comes back is the time for everyone to put on Adelaide dresses.”

Zhou Zhi discovered another problem and turned to ask Ayiguli: "Uncle, I'm not from the Hotan area? Why don't you know how to make this silk?"

He now understands that the Han family likes to dye silk threads into uniform colors and then perform complex weaving; while the Uighurs are good at dyeing silk threads into sections of colored threads of one color, and then pulling these colored threads into warp threads, By the way, the pattern is determined, and then the warp threads are woven and fixed into satin with weft threads.

Ayiguli felt puzzled: "My uncle is in charge of hot fields, so I want to know the ancient weaving technology?"

"Didn't you grow up there as a child?"

"I grew up in the Corps Farm." Ayiguli said with a smile: "It seems that at that time, we only bought materials to make clothes. Anyway, I have never seen anyone weaving silk and satin, not even in several groups."

The Northern Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps is very large. The concept of a group is different from the concept of a group of inland production teams with several households.

The area occupied by one group may far exceed the area of ​​several Jiachuan counties, so what Ayiguli said is actually reasonable. The traditional villages that know how to weave Adelais silk may be far away from Ayiguli’s childhood. The place is hundreds of kilometers away.

When the account manager saw them starting to bicker, he quickly smoothed things over: "I'll take you to the VIP room to choose. There are all high-quality handicraft products specially prepared by our mall."

Everyone followed the business manager to the second floor and came to a small hall with a thick carpet at the entrance.

The eyes of Xu Gang and Ayiguli immediately lit up. If it weren't for Jiuzi's knowledge, the two locals would not have known that there was such a beautiful place hidden inside the largest shopping mall in Urumqi.

Tinware, silverware, bronzeware, wood carvings, knives, woven felts, blankets, flower hats, silks... full of ethnic customs.

Simply dazzling.

Zhou Zhi glanced at another display place, which was all made of straw.

Zhou Zhi took off a big straw hat and said, "What kind of grass is this?"

"This is Achnatherum splendens weaving." The account manager came up and introduced: "It is a traditional handicraft of our TL County."

Zhou Zhi gave Guo Jiang Shuyi a Panama straw hat, which was woven from hemp fiber imitating Dogilia grass. Zhou Zhi found that the fibers of the two grasses were actually very similar, and the woven straw hats were also very similar.

But the price is another matter. The straw hats here are much cheaper than the ones Zhou Zhi bought for Jiang Shuyi, and they are not comparable to the authentic straw hats woven from Dokilia grass fiber.The account manager introduced another craft to Zhou Zhi, which is the ingenuity of Kazakh women. They use wool of various colors to wrap around splendens stalks in sections, and then arrange the straw stalks to form a curtain. The pattern on the curtain is also spliced ​​into Yes, very beautiful.

However, Zhou Zhi is not very interested in such colorful door curtains. He is more interested in those original-colored straw woven curtains. They are very sentimental things to put in the study as a pen holder or to insert dried flowers and lotus pods into tea daggers.

There are also jade carvings for sale here, and the craftsmanship is all Su Gong, which means that the jade here are all "resale" products. The jade materials are sent to Suzhou and Hangzhou to be carved, and then sent back for sale.

Compared with the products of the local jade carving factory in Urumqi, the craftsmanship of the carvers is in the heavens and on the earth, but the carving techniques like this are shocking to Zhou Zhi.

A piece of excellent first-grade white material was carved into an antique animal face by the carver using the technique of Han Ba ​​Dao. The knife cut very deep and directly dug out a lot of jade meat.

What's even more exaggerated is that there is a hollow gap in the middle of the material. After asking about it, I found out that it is used with a belt. It can be passed through the belt to turn the animal face into a jade decoration on the waist.

However, after doing this, there is not much jade meat in the center of this piece of material, which is the most essential. In addition, in order to match the waist, the jade meat on the back is directly smoothed, and the delicate antique texture is carved to increase friction. The front of the animal head is from the forehead to the The nose retains the skin color, while the cheeks and beard have the skin color removed, creating a color-blocking effect.

The artistic achievement is indeed very high, and the overall design is also very unique and exquisite. The only shortcoming is that it has lost a lot of weight. It is really digging deep and hard, everything is just for the effect, and the loss of materials is not considered at all.

"This is a batch of works sent to Suzhou for processing in our Gongmei Mall in [-] to celebrate the [-]th anniversary of the founding of the autonomous region."

"In addition to this animal-faced belt buckle, there is also a set of white jade sword costumes imitating the Han Dynasty, a pair of pictures of ringed peppers, a pair of flying flying statues, a mountain, and a bas-relief of 'Wanfang Music Plays in Khotan'."

"Is this what's in the showcase?" Zhou Zhi put his face close to the glass counter: "It's too scary..."

"Terrible?" The account manager didn't understand Zhou Zhi's meaning.

"It was dug too hard..." Zhou Zhi clicked his tongue repeatedly.

"Oh." The account manager then smiled and said: "Actually, what I was given were two large pieces of material. The animal-faced belt buckle and ring-ringed pepper picture were actually carved from the material taken from the gap between the two dancing flying statues. .”

"The jade sword suit is a small piece of scrap taken from the Kunlun Mountains on the top when carving 'Wanfang Music Plays in Khotan'."

"That's too extravagant..." This kind of practice will never be allowed in another 20 years. The materials here are all of the highest quality. One gram of digging out is worth tens of thousands of yuan. To do things like this batch of carvings, the price is tens of millions. Gone first.

"These carvings should have been reported at the time, right?" Zhou Zhi asked.

"Definitely, this is the most precious gift for the [-]th anniversary of the founding of the autonomous region." The account manager said: "We also have the "Beijiang Pictorial" and "China Art Pictorial" that reported on these carvings at that time, as well as several A newspaper.”

"If I buy them all, how much will it cost in total?"

"Huh?" The account manager didn't understand, or didn't dare to understand.