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Chinese Ethnic Group's Fish Skin Clothes Allures Foreign Collectors
Fish skin clothes tailored by the Hezhens, once China's smallest ethnic group, are enchanting foreign collectors from Japan, South Korea and the United States to bid high price for a suit.
In recent years, collectors from overseas travel all the way to the compact community of the Hezhens in Tongjiang, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, to speak for the ethnic group's traditional fishskin costumes.
The Hezhens are the only nationality in north China which makes a living by hunting and fishing. The Hezhen men are skilled at chasing game using sleds, and the Hezhen women make beautiful clothes out of fish skin
The Hezhens has now a population of more than 4,000, most of them live in the valleys of the three major rivers in Heilongjiang Province: the Heilong, Songhua and Wusuli.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Hezhens developed new modernized living way and lifestyle, and fish skin clothes were fading out the Hezhens' life.
With the rising tide in search for lost culture, foreign collectors show an increasing interest in fish skin clothes on the verge of extinction.
"A suit of clothes take 250 kilograms of fish. Mainly are green pikes, carp, salmon and bigheads are most often used," He Shuzhen, an old Hezhen lady and skilled fish skin tailor, said. She spends on average 1,000 yuan (US$120) to buy the fish for a suit and sells ready-made clothes at 5,000 to 6,000 yuan (600 to US$720), She added.
By now the old lady, 64, has finished making more than 10 pieces of fishskin clothes for foreign clients.
The pictures, showed by He, show that the fish skin clothes, in traditional Chinese form, perfectly preserve the texture and color
of fish skin.
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