Dongping grass weaving and wicker products

Dongping grass weaving and wicker products

　　The wicker products produced in Dongping County were once renowned worldwide for their fine craftsmanship, exquisite designs, wide variety, and high quality.

　　Dongping is crisscrossed by rivers, dotted with mountainous areas, and abundant in tidal flats and sloping lands—all highly suitable for the growth of shrub plants. There are many small shrubs such as willow and privet, resulting in rich resources and high yields of wicker materials, which provided ideal material conditions for developing the wicker weaving industry. At the same time, as an agricultural county, our region is an important wheat and corn production area, providing superior resource conditions for producing grass-woven items using wheat straw and corn husks as raw materials.

　　According to research, the appearance of handmade woven products in China may even predate pottery. Judging from unearthed artifacts, bamboo ware from the Warring States period and colorful boxes from the Han Dynasty were already exquisitely crafted. Our county’s wicker weaving also has a long history. It is said that wicker products began appearing during the Ming and Qing dynasties. At that time, people mainly used shrub branches to weave production tools or daily necessities, such as baskets, hampers, winnowing fans, and back carriers. The weaving techniques were ingenious, the styles elegant and generous, and the products sturdy and durable. Most items were made for personal use, with surplus ones sold. After the late Qing Dynasty, the wicker weaving industry saw some development—more varieties emerged, production scale expanded, and apart from self-use, products were also sold as commodities within and outside the province. Many farming households in mountainous and water town areas made a living from wicker weaving. There was even a bustling scene where “in villages stretching ten li, no woman was idle, and every household had weavers.” After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, with the support and advocacy of the Party and government, the grass weaving and wicker weaving industries flourished, and weaving techniques rapidly improved. In 1958, Wang Shanfen, a young woman from Ximen Village in Zhoucheng Town, participated in the provincial model workers’ conference and earned praise for her astonishing feat of weaving one cattail bag in just 15 minutes. During the 1950s and 1960s, large-scale weaving production emerged in Zhoucheng Town, Pengji Town, and Shahezhan Town of our county. To improve quality, weaving was generally done in underground cellars, where the humidity kept the wicker or straw materials supple, and the warmth helped during winter. During this period, grass and wicker products reached over a hundred varieties. With their soft, shiny, simple, and elegant features, they were favored by foreign buyers. Items such as handbags, flower baskets, sofas, tea tables, fruit trays, and vases—elegant home decorations and daily necessities—were exported in large quantities to Southeast Asian countries and Hong Kong and Macau regions, earning widespread acclaim, bringing in substantial foreign exchange, and strongly supporting national construction.