Craftswoman in Guizhou pays respects to China’s astronauts with handicraft featuring starry cosmos

A traditional craftswoman from the Miao ethnic group in southwest China's Guizhou Province led a team to create a space-themed handicraft featuring local batik and silver ornaments in order to express her respect for China’s astronauts.

Photo shows the distinctive artwork featuring stars in the vast cosmos as created by Pan Xue and her team. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)

Pan Xue, who is from Kaili city of the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou Province, teamed up with teachers and students at a batik workshop linked to a local vocational school, having worked together to make an artwork featuring stars scattered in the vast cosmos. It consists of a piece of batik representing the cosmos and a silver tree with stars hanging on it, both of which are considered types of intangible cultural heritage in the province.

Pan decided to make a space-themed artwork because she was impressed by the daughter of China's female astronaut Wang Yaping, who asked her mother onboard the country's space station to pick up a star for her while in outer space during a children’s dance show for the 2022 Spring Festival Gala.

Photo shows Pan Xue and her team members drawing a star-filled sky on a piece of cloth. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)

“I must make the work an exquisite one,” said Pan. In choosing the fabric for the batik, Pan and He Changming, a batik teacher, spent a long time since they wanted to ensure that the cloth was going to be smooth enough. Then the team moved onto the process of designing the batik pattern, and after many trials, the team successfully painted over 1,000 stars onto the cloth, which had a width of 1.5 meters and a length of 2 meters.

Pan then created the tree using some pieces of wood. She painted the wood with silver powder and then carved out the wood to make the tree appear as if it had a real trunk. She also formed the branches and twigs of the tree using silver wires, after which she then began to make nearly 100 stars using silver sheets. It took her five days to complete the tree with all the silver stars hanging from it.

“It’s called a longevity tree in Qiandongnan, whose implication of hope matches China’s burgeoning space industry,” she introduced.

Photo shows Pan Xue making silver ornaments for her artwork. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)

Photo shows Pan Xue working on fashioning the silver ornaments for her artwork. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)

Photo shows Pan Xue in a local ethnic costume next to the artwork she and her team created. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)