Choosing quality over quantity
Once the fabric is woven, it is time to to dye it into different colors. These native materials for dyeing generally come from every part of the plant: leaves (indigo, black), flowers (mauve, soft yellow), roots (pink), fruits (golden yellow), vegetables (brown), tree bark (grey, rust red), and minerals (black, bright hues). Like cooking, each family has a different method of dyeing and finishing their fabric and some are regarded as secrets that are only passed down from parent to child. This makes documenting the dye recipes difficult, since the knowledge is not being continued by the younger generation.
The advantage of powder chemical dyes is that they are faster and easier to use than foraging for wild plants in the forest. It is like buying ground-up spices at the grocery store instead of picking fresh herbs out of the ground each time you want to make dinner. They also create colors that are more saturated and color-fast than natural plant dyes. Chemical dyes are cheaper and easier to trade than natural dyes, and it is for this convenience why their invention in the late-19th century wiped out the use of plant dyes in __ decades between years the 1870 – 1900? (Fact check in Indigo book).
One can tell when a traditional costume uses chemical dyes because the embroidery colors jump out in bright, often garish ways. It does not have the same faded patina that makes plant-dyed cloth more beautiful with age. When natural plants are used, the colors also seem to match better. Colors rarely seem to clash in nature. They always seem to work in harmony with each other.
Chemical dyes can also cause allergic reactions. While we have been wearing them for 150 years, we are not so clear on the long-term effects of wearing them on our skin. Compare that with natural plant dyes that have been in used in China for at least 5,000 years alongside traditional Chinese medicine, which uses native plants and minerals to heal the body. While every plant that can produce a color, it also has a healing benefit when ingested as an herbal tea or applied topically onto the skin. It is safe enough to ingest into your body, it is safe enough to wear on the skin and will not cause allergies.
The natural indigo plant, for example, can be used as a paste on a child’s skin when they have the mumps. Or used as a baking ingredient to make cakes. Hands are oftentimes stained blue when the villagers are dyeing their fabric, and they will even stick their finger into the indigo dye vat and taste it to check the pH level. It is also naturally insect-repelling, so it provides a bug-free barrier on the skin when worn outdoors in the fields. This also explain why indigo costumes can survive decades in a closet without being damaged by moths or other insects.
Natural indigo is a cold-water dye that is best used on cotton fibers, as it binds to the outside of the fiber and naturally fades over time. After it is created using a fermentation process involving indigo leaves, ash, and rice wine, it can then be used year-round. Every home in the villages has an indigo dye vat, which the grandmother uses to dye new fabrics and over-dye old ones to give them new life. It must be stirred every day and fed rice wine regularly, treating it almost like a pet and part of the family. Perhaps it’s because of this that the Miao regard it as the only dye with a soul. (Site Mr. Yang interview)
To dye fabric using indigo, the fabric is dipped in the dye vat for 30 minutes, then taken out for 30 minutes to oxygenate, and repeated like this for hours, week, and sometimes even months, until the right shade is achieved. The longer the period of repeated dyeing, the higher-quality and more color-fast the dye. As a base color for their fabrics, it can soaked in an extract of “wild walnut” (genus Platacarya), water buffalo skin, tubor (?), green persimmon, or tree bark(?) to give the dark blue cloth a more black or purple color. (Site Sadae T. book) The versatility of natural indigo dye has made it the dominant color of costumes, not just in these villages, but in traditional villages all over China. The dark blue Mao suit is a reference to the ubiquity of and importance of this native indigo plant. (Site source Indigo book)
Interestingly, blue is the only color in the rainbow that doesn’t lose its hue when it appears in different shades (site Blue ocean book), so any fading of the fabric just makes the indigo alter its hue, not making it lose any color. As it fades over time and interacts with the sun, a dark indigo cloth may turn into a chocolate brown, or become a rich black; that is the magic of natural plant dyes. The unstable color brings the color personality and depth. They can morph into other beautiful variants of the original color so that a pink will mutate into peach and then into beige over time. These rich color nuances are just impossible to get with chemical dyes, which look flat and cheapened as they lose their color over time.
Indigo is the original dye of the modern blue jean, but don’t confuse it with the synthetic indigo alternative that is used globally today. Natural indigo is an unstable and time-consuming process to maintain, which is why the chemical-dye version replaced it globally within __ decades after its invention in 1874 (fact check in Indigo book). Before then, natural indigo was so valued around the world that it was called “blue gold” and even used as a form of currency in global trade (site source).
Despite having an active indigo dye vat in every village home, they all, especially the youth, wear chemically-dyed blue jeans that are bought in a store. It boggles my mind why the villagers don’t just dye their jeans in that the real indigo vat sitting in their home. After all, Levi’s has even created a natural indigo vat in their flagship store in San Francisco (fact-check this), to imitate the authenticity of what the Guizhou villagers are doing.
Chemically-dyed blue jeans create toxic wastewater that is released into the rivers and can harm the natural environment. The Pearl River on the southeast coast of China in Guangdong produced one third of the world’s denim. It is so polluted from the toxic wastewater of the denim factories dyeing that the blue dyed river can even be seen from space (site source), locals refuse to swim in it, it has contaminated drinking water downstream. (Site source)
On the industrial level, fashion is the world’s second largest polluter of freshwater, and blue jeans are the most worn garment in the world. It would seem we could reduce a great amount of fashion industry pollution just by changing the ways blue denim is produced.
Dyeing with natural indigo dyes is non-polluting and since the ethnic minority villagers swim, bathe, and wash their vegetables in these freshwater sources, it’s imperative that their rivers stay clean. Mr. Yang, our Miao dyer, explained that natural indigo, because it has nothing in it, will not pollute the river. But because the color is irritating to look at, he gives his method for cleaning the wastewater before releasing it back into nature:
– Round 1: allow indigo sediment to separate from water, wait 2 weeks
– Round 2: allow water from Round 1 to separate additional indigo sediment, wait 2 weeks
– Round 3: allow water from Round 2 to separate additional indigo sediment, wait 2 weeks
– Grow water weeds in all the above water to assist with purification
– Wastewater is now purified and can be used to irrigate crops
There are also native flowers growing wild that can create a rainbow of shades — pinks, yellows, lavender… Madder root, for example….
Each plant can achieve different hues, depending on the agent or dye mordant (mei ran ji) that is used with it: lemon, vinegar, white alum, or iron found in the mud. For example, safflower (hong hua) that creates a bubble-gum pink when used with vinegar or a peach color with lemon. (Site Mr Yang interview)
Most natural dye sources come from Chinese herbs, which have different functions for curing diseases, and go back 5,000 years. Turmeric (jiang huang), for example, creates a bright yellow that is very suitable for baby clothes because this herb can protect tender skin. (Site Mr Yang interview)
Some colors, like the pale yellow of the flowers of the locust tree (hua su hua) only bloom for a short while in April or May, so they can only be dyed during that time when their petals can be safely foraged from the ground, not plucked from the tree. Fresh plants must be used immediately to extract the color from them. It is more difficult to get them when they are dried.
The yellow gardenia seed huang zhi zi (fructus gardeniae) is used to make a bright yellow dye (image of my shorts). In traditional Chinese medicine, it can help cool the blood, and drives out illness and dysfunction that stems from excessive heat, stop hemorrhages and speed healing by encouraging the circulation of stagnant blood, and ease inflammation of the digestive tract. (Site source)
The root of the Chinese yam (dioscorea cirrhosa) creates a rustic brown color on fabric. The root can be applied onto the skin when it is cut is used to strengthen the spleen and and stomach to aid digestion, nourish the kidneys, stop chronic wheezing and coughing, lower blood sugar, soothe mood and regulate sleep.
The first time I dyed fabric with the then 70 year old Miao dye master Yang Wen Bin, I was impressed with how boiled water and leaves could create every color on my color card. The waste was just boiled leaves and tree bark. The dye water could be drunk as an herbal tea. It was far from the irritating powdered chemical dyes I was accustomed to buying at an art supply shop, not to mention the harsh toxic ones used in the factories.
But sourcing these materials isn’t easy. One has to wait for the right time during the year to forage it, and then use it immediately when the plant was fresh so the color could be extracted. It is a long drawn-out process that can not be rushed. That is why the villagers have begun turning to chemical dyes for the bright oranges, pinks, reds, yellow, greens, and blacks. Unfortunately, they are favored for their cheap price and year-round convenience.
While making clothing in Guizhou is a long process, most of the time is spent waiting for nature to supply the raw materials. Nature has its own timing, and, rushing it will only disrupt the process.
Patience is not easy for a New Yorker to grasp, so these lessons crept up as metaphors in daily life. My favorite example is when I spotted a spider working tirelessly on a cobweb outside my window. It was a slow process. I would wake each morning up to see how much progress had been made the night before, which was very little, and wondered if it was worth spending so much time on a delicate structure that I could easily destroy with one swipe of a finger.
One day, there was a huge thunderstorm with forceful winds that blew trees down and knocked the electricity out in the entire village. So I was surprised the next morning to find the cobweb still intact and unharmed outside my window. And it wasn’t just that one. Across the tea farm that surrounded us, I spotted beautiful spiderwebs still intact atop all the tea plants. The raindrops made them visible to me for the first time, showing these spiderwebs were not so delicate after all.
It was my first lesson about craftsmanship: that taking the time to make something slowly and carefully can imbue it with more strength and resiliency than if it were made too quickly and hastily.
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