The South is used to it, but the North is rare, this thing you know called what?
This is called Shaoxi, pronounced as “burned chicken”, is a kind of bamboo wicker basket, often used to hold rice, panning rice, etc.. Shaoxi is very common in the south, Ningbo has an old saying “rice basket Shaoxi hanging up”, meaning lost work, no rice to eat. In Hubei’s Wuhan, Xiaogan and other local languages have a word called “Pi Shaoxi”, a metaphor for the miserly people who do not leak water. There is also something similar to 箕 (bò ji), which is also made of bamboo gabions but has an opening. In many local dialects, the word “撮箕” also refers to 簸筲.
Why are there a lot of bamboo shavings and bans in the south? Because bamboo is produced in the south, especially in the southwest, and is a necessary raw material. This thing looks simple, but in fact the hand preparation is still difficult, from cutting bamboo, there are cutting, sawing, cutting, cutting, pulling, prying, knitting, weaving, chipping, grinding …… more than ten processes, is a craft of the southern farmers.
Like other traditional crafts, there is a risk of losing the skills of preparing shawls and dustpans. The problem of aging and fragmentation of practitioners, Time-consuming hand weaving and lack of successors is a common problem in the current hand-made bamboo weaving. But the old ancestors left the craft can not lose ah, now the Internet is so developed, can help the old craft continue?
In Sichuan, there is a group of young rural entrepreneurs, specializing in selling shaoji, dustpan, etc.. For example, the 30-year-old local guy Gong Xun, specifically looking for Zigong, Neijiang and other rural elderly around their hometowns to collect bamboo products, “how much to collect how much”, and then put it into Poundland to sell. He found that these traditional handmade products are very popular with consumers, before a day can sell 300 single, now can actually sell 3000 single! Many people who work outside the Home even specifically buy home Shaoxi, on the one hand to meet the needs of Life, on the one hand, also equivalent to solve the nostalgia.
With the Internet economy pull, the elderly in rural areas have more motivation to weave down. Neijiang Yin Zhihua, Chen Shufang old couple, a month can weave more than a hundred, income of three to four thousand yuan. Zigong 72-year-old Jiang Zhonghua, these months woven more than 300 wicker pocket (larger than the Shaoxi), also earned four or five thousand dollars.
In fact, the old craft is not no use, just need to better find the market. The market has, why worry about the old craft can not be passed on? The Internet economy has given new life to many traditional products such as Shauji. I hope that as the industry gets bigger, there will be more young people joining the heritage of the old craft.
Recent Comments