Award: Documentary Award

Time: November, 2001
Place: Xiaohuang Village, Gaozeng Township, Congjiang County, Guizhou, China
Nationality: Dong

Making cloth of Dong is an ancient art and craft of a thousand years taught by mother ancestors. Influenced by exotic culture and the trivial and hard process to make dong cloth, large amount of which the dong women no longer make, most Dong people wear off-the-rack clothes. But in Gaozeng Township, Congjiang County of Guizhou, there is a Dong village, Xiaohuang which is in remote rural mountain valley without convenient transportation, every household are still making such cloth. Walking through the village, I heard women beating cloth, and residents remain wearing traditional clothes while women, young and old, all wear coiled bun on one side of their hair.

Procedures:
1: Weaving cloth.
2: Soaking the white cloth into the hot water, rubbing out the slurry on the silk which will be dried.
3: Dye white cloth into blue, put plant’s root into the water which will turn into black, then put cloth into a bucket with blue dye, repeat the process of dipping, washing and drying for fixing colours on the cloth.
4: Diluting egg white with warm water prior to painting egg white on the cloth which will be dried later.
5: Dipping the dark-purple cloth in the blue dye bucket before folding it flat and putting it on the stone board.
6: Beating it with a wood hammer until its face shines like a penny.
7: The hard black shiny Dong cloth is made.