Lecture on Chinese dyeing skills

As part of the 2017 Colourful Guizhou Culture and Art Festival, the China Cutural Centre is holding a lecture on one of China’s prized cultural heritage items, the batik dyeing creative skills of the Miao Ethnic Group. This lecture, conducted by Wang Xiaomei, compliments the visual feast of ethnic artisans and costumes which forms part of an exhibition named Memory in Hand – Exhibition of Guizhou Intangible Cultural Heritage, currently on display at St James Cavalier. Xiaomei is a cultural anthropologist, chief correspondent of the Guizhou daily newspaper, director of the Cultural Heritage New Media Centre of the Guizhou Daily Newspaper Group and founder of the Guizhou Anthropology Association. Born in a village, Xiaomei has always loved touring villages and immersed in the indigenous ethnic handicraft and the ‘blue flowers’ on the batik. Basing herself upon the oral histories as well as the experience and observation of others, Xiaomei has recorded the changes in the indigenous communities in the context of modernity and reflected on such changes for more than a decade. As one of the time-honoured dyeing handicrafts in China, batik dyeing is very popular in Guizhou. The...