Young entrepreneurs revive traditional Dong textile-making skills

Having given up making traditional Dong cloth for nearly 20 years, Wang Yangying, 76, is considering returning to her old job, after being inspired by a group of young ethnic Dong people.

"Many Dong people learned how to weave and dye traditional cloth from an early age," Wang says.

"I used to make clothes myself. However, machine-made products quickly replaced handmade cloth. Besides, we had to do farm work every day, so most of us gave up the tradition."

Wang never expected she would be dusting off these old techniques until she met Yang Chenglan, a young woman who'd returned home to Zaima town in Rongjiang county in the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong autonomous prefecture to develop a startup making and selling traditional Dong cloth.

"She even exports the cloth overseas, which gave me the idea of starting to make Dong cloth again and to promote this ancient craft to out-of-towners," Wang adds.

Yang worked for schools and training institutions for over seven years after graduating from university in Guizhou province in 2009. The 33-year-old decided to return to her hometown out of concern for the large number of "leftover" elderly and child residents there and the need to keep the local traditional culture alive.

"I wanted to protect traditional Dong weaving skills so that outsiders can appreciate our culture and learn more about homespun Dong cloth," she says.

Yang returned to the town in 2016 where she rented a room to use as a workshop. She persuaded some local women to join her enterprise, while her husband took up the role of promoting and selling of their textiles online.