【外刊英语精读】贵州侗布蓝靛染 （下）| the Dong cloth

Seeds  of revival

古艺新生

Taiwan -born designer Jenny Chou, who has a studio in Beijing, visited Dali Dong village for the first time in the autumn of 2015 on a business trip. She happened to see villagers harvesting indigo and soaking it in vats to make dye. Chou was fascinated by their perseverance, and that weaving was part of the Dong way of maintaining their traditional styles in an industrialized age.

出生于台湾的设计师周贞徵在北京有一间工作室，2015年秋天，她在一次出差中第一次来到大利侗寨，刚好看到村民们正在采集板蓝根，并将其浸泡在染缸里制作蓝靛。周贞徵被他们的毅力所吸引，在工业化时代，织布是侗族保持传统风貌的方式之一。

" Making Dong cloth is not a task for one person alone," Chou says. "Spinning and winding thread, weaving it on the loom to produce white cloth, dipping it in the indigo dye, it takes about a year to complete a pi (a Chinese measurement of length, roughly equivalent to 33 meters)."

传统制作侗布其实不是一个人能够完成的事情，”周贞徵说：“纺线、绕线、整经，织布机织出白匹布，再浸到蓝靛的缸里面去染布，一年的时间才有可能完成一匹面料（‘匹’是中国长度度量单位，约等于33米）。”

Inspired , she went on to found the Dousa Women's Cooperative, which allows the women of Dali Dong village to not only continue the traditional craft, but also to experiment. "I've never felt that the traditional and the modern are opposed. What is modern today will someday become a part of tradition," Chou says.

受此启发，她创办了Dousa妇女合作社，让大利侗寨的妇女们不仅能继承传统工艺，还能进行创新尝试。周贞徵说：“我从来不觉得传统跟现代是对立的关系。现代的总有一天也会成为传统。”

Yang  Shenghua was among those who signed up for the courses at the cooperative, which she says allowed her to once again experience the joy of making cloth. "The craft was passed on from my grandmother to my mother, and then to me. It used to be something that I was told to do because my mother and her mother did it, and I didn't want to be useless," she says. "Now it is something I like doing, because it is part of our tradition and culture.

杨胜花也报名参加了合作社的课程，她说这让她再次体验到了布艺制作的乐趣。“这门手艺是外婆传给我母亲再传给我的。过去，因为我母亲和她母亲都会做侗布，所以我被告知也要学做侗布，而且我不想做无用之人，”她说，“现在，这是我喜欢做的事情，因为这是我们传统和文化的一部分。”

" I have a small stand in the village, where I sell handmade textiles to tourists, using patterns I designed myself. It's a way of popularizing our heritage so that it finds new life and is carried on."

“我在村里有个小摊，向游客出售手工纺织品，图案都是我自己设计的。这是普及我们的传统文化的一种方式，让它找到新的生命力并得到传承。”

Chou  says Dong cloth can also be used by urban dwellers. It can be made into objects for daily use, like pillowcases, decorations and tissue boxes. In 2017, she took Dong cloth from the cooperative in Dali Dong village to Beijing Design Week. "I think that incorporating Dong cloth in fashion design is a natural development, just like Dior has used Dong jacquard fabric in its collection, introducing traditional Dong craftsmanship to more people," Chou says.

周贞徵说，城市居民也可以使用侗布。它可以做成枕套、饰品和抽纸巾盒等日常用品。2017年，她带着大利侗寨合作社的侗布参加了北京国际设计周。“我觉得侗布融入时装是很自然的延展跟演变，就像迪奥将侗族的提花布运用到其时装系列里，可以让更多的人来了解侗族的传统工艺。”周贞徵说。

Such  a combination of Eastern tradition and Western design is, according to Dior, to connect people with those industrious women in Dali Dong village, who together weave and dye, and create a variety of patterns that have been sourced from nature and found in the objects and animals in their day-to-day life.

迪奥认为，这种东方传统与西方设计的结合，是为了将人们与大利侗寨勤劳的妇女联系起来，她们共同织布、染色，创造出各种各样的纹样，而这些纹样都来自于大自然，来自于她们日常生活中的物品和动物。