ongjiang Cotton Fabric” Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Exhibition was held at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) to enhance the protection and promotion of ICH from Mar. 27 to 30, 2023.

Jointly organized by SISU and Songjiang’s Cloth Culture Exhibition Hall, the exhibition was held to promote the Songjiang cotton fabric ICH in the university. Since 2005, Songjiang District has carried out the protection and inheritance of ICH, investigating and excavating the ICHs with historical, literary, artistic, and scientific value.

The Songjiang cotton textile technique is listed as the ICH of Songjiang District this year. It is a typical folk traditional craft, using cotton as raw material, weaving through traditional spinning wheels and looms, and using traditional plant dyeing technology.

This exhibition focused on Songjiang cotton’s history, from the seed to the final product, and its relationship with the Maritime Silk Road, according to Zhang Lijun, director of the ICH Translation and Communication Center of SISU.

The exhibition displayed the Songjiang cotton fabric, which dated back to the period between the 1930s and the 1960s. Textile tools like local spinning wheels and looms were also showcased.

Songjiang cotton fabric is soft in quality and varied in variety with more than one hundred kinds of patterns. The most common cloth pattern is wicker cloth, which is divided into two categories: wide and narrow stripes. The main colors are blue and white.

Cultural products such as notebooks and mobile phone cases with covers made of Songjiang cotton fabric were also on display. The exhibits were provided by Songjiang’s Cloth Culture Exhibition Hall.

At the exhibition, visitors could have hands-on experiences. Inheritors from the Cloth Culture Exhibition Hall guided them to practice the processes of spinning and weaving to create their own fabric products.

“Never before have I felt so up close with traditional culture,” Yang Qi said, a student from SISU who had such experiences.

In addition to the exhibition, Zhang delivered a lecture to Chinese and foreign students to explain the international perspective of Songjiang cotton.

In the lecture, Zhang introduced the records of Songjiang cotton fabric in foreign literature and its historical contribution. He also explained how it promoted cultural exchange between the Eastern and Western regions through the Maritime Silk Road.

Songjiang is known as the cultural root of Shanghai. Songjiang’s cloth culture emerged in the 13th century when a local woman, Huang Daopo, brought the advanced cotton weaving technique back home from the Li nationality in Hainan.

The Li nationality is the earliest inhabitant of Hainan Island. Li brocade, one of the oldest ethnic brocades in China, can be called the “living fossil” in the textile history of China, with a history of over 3,000 years.

Huang taught the technique to the locals and innovated cotton textile tools. The cloth from Songjiang soon gained a national reputation in China. By the 19th century, Songjiang cotton was the main cargo transported along the Maritime Silk Road.

After visiting the Cloth Culture Exhibition Hall two years ago, Zhang was inspired to start a “Plant Your Cloth” workshop at SISU to promote Songjiang cotton. Over 200 square meters of land on the campus was transformed into a practice base for students to plant cotton.

The project “documentation and communication for Chinese ICH” was founded by teachers and students of SISU in 2019. The team initiated the “Songjiang Cotton Fabric” ICH item, retracing the path of Huang.

This summer, the team will go to Hainan to study the relationship between the textile technique of Songjiang cotton and the weaving and dyeing technique of the Li nationality.

The team plans to hold a “Songjiang Cotton Fabric” Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition in Hainan and tries to take the exhibition overseas to promote the Chinese ICH worldwide.