Blue-Calico Printing and Dyeing Technique

The Tongxiang blue-calico printing and dyeing technique spreads through the central towns of Chongfu, Shimen, Wuzhen and Wutong in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, and more than twenty villages around them. It is the traditional cloth of the Jiangnan water towns, once used in every household for quilt covers, bed-curtains, wrapping cloths and aprons, and is inscribed on the national ICH list under traditional skills.

The craft uses a pierced stencil through which a resist paste of soybean meal and lime is printed onto handwoven cloth; the cloth is then repeatedly dipped and oxidised in a plant-indigo vat, dried, and the paste scraped away to reveal auspicious white patterns on blue—butterflies, fish, lions with an embroidered ball, pomegranates, all carrying wishes of abundance and fortune.

Tongxiang blue calico carries the everyday aesthetics and rural memory of the Jiangnan water towns, and through Wuzhen's tourism it has opened shops and reached a national audience, a model of living transmission and contemporary revival for a traditional dyeing craft.

The Hongyuantai dye house in Wuzhen's East Scenic Zone displays the calico drying and dyeing process.