Qingyang City is located in the easternmost part of Gansu Province in China, where the intersection of Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia is located on the upper reaches of the Yellow River on the Loess Plateau. It was named Beidi County in the Qin Dynasty period, changed to the Qing State during the Sui Dynasty, and as Qingyang Prefecture in the Song Dynasty. The local spread of Qingyang sachet, also known as “chu chu”, is a kind of Qingyang folk custom. According to paper-cut designs, people use colored strings to embroider a variety of patterns on the silk, and then sew into different shapes that are filled with cotton and spices to make small, exquisite and beautiful embroidery products. This embroidery is also called a bag or “shua huo zi” in the local Qingyang culture. The eternal theme of the Qingyang blessing bag is to obtain auspicious and good luck, bliss and happiness, avoid evil and disaster, disease and misfortune for the safety and peace of the wonderful world.
According to historical records, the sachet is also known as purse, xiangnang, peiwei, rongchou. The common name in Qingyang is “chu chu” or “shua huo”. There is a custom of making and using “chuchu” in the Dragon Boat Festival in Qingyang customs. (“Chu” Originally referred to the original method of stitching with bone needles, later referred to the little bag that was made of cloth and the top of the bag could be tied or unfastened.) Its start time cannot be proven yet, it was said to have been formed in 2300 years BC. qi-bo, the author of Huang Di Nei Jing had carried a bag full of herbs, which can prevent plague and snake venom, he created ‘Fumigation’. Because QiBo was born in Qingyang, therefore fumigation had become the local custom and circulated continuously. Drugs known as “vanilla”. Therefore, the sachet was called a ‘sachet’. In the oldest classical Chinese medicine, Huang Di Nei Jing, there is a record about the bag. The oldest sachet in existence also has 800 years of history. In 2001, people dug and dug the “Stone Pagoda Pairs” in Song Dynasty in Qingyang. They found a little bag in the pagodas. According to research, this sachet was made at least 800 years ago. But it still has a beautiful color. cool in pattern. Therefore, it is called “Longevity Sachet”.
qingyang sachet It is a kind of handicraft with 3D sculpture and simple embroidery. Its structures are homeless and can be divided into four types: chu chu, reel, 3D sculpture, and simple embroidery in terms of shapes. “Chu chu” means hide the needles when embroidering. It is famous for giving people a highly simulated feeling without seeing the needles. The craft procedure includes designing, collecting materials, making, copying the shape of the thing, etc. The spool type of sachet is made of multi-colored needles and is shaped like ‘ZongZi’ (a pyramid-shaped dough of sticky rice wrapped in leaves). You need a lot of skills to finish it, such as folding cartons, matching needles, figuring with needles and improving it (joining the finished products and hanging festoons). This kind of sachet can get along with us, hang on the doors, and can also be sent to others as a gift to show that it is auspicious and safe. The 3D sculpting baggie type is tricky; It has many forms such as hanging on the sides or single-sided fixtures, 3D fixtures, and nearly four hundred formats. The 3D sculpture sachet procedure includes compounding, embroidery, dyeing, screwing, enhancement, and a series of handicraft processes. The beanbag focuses on what’s similar in feel, not appearance. The plain embroidery sachet style is honest and sincere, giving us a sense of eternity.
The Qingyang sachet has five different types: head-wearing, shoulder-sitting, chest-hanging, back-wearing, and foot-wearing. The sachet differs from other bags due to its ancient quality, culture of origin and curious technique. Its distinctive features:
Deeply primitive environmental culture
Qingyang is located in the yellow river, where the eternal Chinese nation lives in the early times which has deeply primitive culture and less effect of other culture. In folk embroidery techniques, there is a platy of primitive marks of worshiping all gods in childhood and totems such as dragon snake, tiger, and deer. There is a culture of the strange and the idea of God and the philosophy of the old balance of the two opposing principles in nature. Like using green cloth to make a snake and then adding some plums, it is the exemplification of the dragon. It is the historical remains that are the worship of the dragon and the worship of the snake and the primitive environmental culture of the dragon totems or the snake totems.
Diversified and singular expression technique.
Qingyang sachet embroidery is a changing technique without perspective or proportion. It doesn’t demand the exact look, but it does require romantic charm with exaggerated shapes and protruding body parts. There are a number of animal bags with different shapes, such as a large head with a small body, a head without a tail, or a head without feet, a head and a body without legs, or short feet on a long body, claws replace the legacy. Use a tiger shaped beanbag to sit on the shoulder as an example, the tiger usually has claws instead of legs. It is never about true image or proper body proportion, but about a totally artistic design from the point of view of the artist’s thinking.
symbolic analogy
Eliminating evil and blessing is the eternal motive of Qingyang folk cultures. The main expression of the Qingyang sachet is the use of symbolic means. For example, it is to eliminate evil, to protect their own safety using the powerful and bold features of tigers and lions. Just as they compare love using the scene of the fish swimming in the lotus, they also hope to have more children and more happiness using the apiaceous characteristic of gourds and pomegranates. To symbolize giving birth to a baby as soon as possible by pronouncing dates, peanuts, longans, and lotus nuts in Chinese.
unique aesthetic point of view
He does not look from material life, but from the idea of imagery techniques to make exaggerated shapes, changeable gestures, multiple perspectives, and to create random little bags. He has big differences with professional art. Many professional artists believe that it is an unreasonable design, however, in the eyes of Qingyang artists, it is quite common. Like the “cats eat rats” bag, there are several rats embroidered on the stomach of the cat-shaped bag. They imagine that the rats were still alive after the cat ate them. Or the “Janus (double distributor)” bag with nose, eyes and mouth on both sides of the face, is the ideal imagination of human facial features.
In Qingyang City, “Longevity Sachet” in Huachi District Shuangta Temple designed from different shapes of plum, lotus, and winding flower. According to the Buddhist Pure Land doctrines, this piece symbolizes as “Western Pure Land”. Because different shapes of plum have become auspicious signs on the chest of the Buddha since the Tang Dynasty.
People thought that their children can grow up safely and without any disaster as long as God or pet protects them from evil spirit and ghost. Qingyang’s sachets with tiger and lion motifs and the five poison catcher (embroiders snake, scorpion, centipede, lizard and spider motifs), the five poison hat are all protection mascots. Except, the ancients believed that ghosts were afraid of roosters. When the roosters crow, all the ghosts disappear. In addition, the garlic bag (small garlic) is also the talisman to end evil. The pumpkin bag with pumpkin seeds is a powerful talisman for ear protection.
Heritage importance:
Qingyang sachet with a strong sense of tradition, exquisite handwork, strong 3D sense, complementary statics and dynamics, deep folk consciousness, and beautiful symbolic meaning is a treasure of folk art. Like traditional Dragon Boat Festival decorations, the Qingyang sachet is filled with good wishes, conveying the symbolic meaning of blessing and removing evil. Each sachet was endowed with popular culture content, showing life, expressing thought belief, revealing humanity. It reflects the simple, healthy and positive spirituality of the working people and implies the broad, deep and masculine national soul of the ancient Chinese civilization.
Qingyang sachet has such a long history mainly because Qingyang has a strong cultivated culture. One of the most obvious characters is the man who is in charge of cultivating and the woman manages to spin and weave. Under the relatively developed productivity, women in addition to finishing weaving cloth, made some handicrafts and gifts to beautify their lives and improve their relationships. Since then, the bag has been circulating. These sachets give people the feeling of magnificence and beauty. They contain and saturate the old philosophical mystery, and their content is varied. The content theme mainly describes humanity’s childhood worship and original totem poles. In Qingyang, little bags can be seen everywhere.
They are hung on the pipes of rural old people, worn on the head of boys, and decorated on girls’ clothes. In the Dragon Boat Festival, people used sachets, especially children, they wear various kinds of sachets which can expel chest, back and shoulder ills. On this day, Qingyang is like a sachet exhibition, and a pleasant smell permeates every corner of the city and countryside. Like a saying that goes: “The pleasant smell permeates ten miles away, and the people living around are carried away by the smell.”