Chinese ethnic girls

Since very young age, ethnic girls start to learn the skills of weaving,embroidering or wax printing. One who completes the finest piece will be considered to be the most gifted young lady. They generally start to make their own wedding dress when they are 13 or 14 years old. Usually a set of wedding dress including baby carriers and baby clothes takes about 2 or 3 years to finish. In old days, few girls in ethnic community went to school. Except doing some house work and field laboring, almost all their time and energy was devoted to weaving and embroidering. With the infiltration of modern civalization from cities to the countryside, ethnic groups are starting to abandon the practice of weaving and embroidering. Even in remote mountain areas, new textiles are not so sophisticated as the old pieces since many old skills have been lost among younger generation. Thus we find great emergency of collecting and cherish the old and fine textile pieces. Among diffrent kinds of ethnic textile making, cloth weaving, brocade weaving, embroidery and batic are the most important ones. Dozens of different embroidering skills such as "horse tail embroidery ", "thread spliting embroidery"and "metal embroidery"make it even more fanscinating.