A craft with ancient roots
Tie-dye was once called zha xie or jiao xie (bound-and-dyed). Its Chinese history reaches back to the Western Han, around the second century BCE, making it one of the country's oldest textile-dyeing arts. Paintings and costume research show the Bai people's ancestors mastered pattern dyeing more than a thousand years ago; by the Republic era, household tie-dye workshops had spread thick across Zhoucheng and Xizhou near Dali, turning the area into a renowned tie-dye center. In 2006 Bai tie-dye entered the first national intangible-heritage list, with the Zhoucheng village of Xizhou Town (Dali City) the craft's most representative home.
No two pieces are ever alike
In the countryside Bai tie-dye is nicknamed "lump dyeing": the pattern is first drawn on white cloth, then the "flowered" parts are pinched, pleated and sewn tight into little lumps. After repeated dipping, the stitches are undone and the untouched color unfurls as the design — typically white flowers on indigo or blackish-blue ground, fresh, plain and elegant. Both the tying and the dyeing are done by hand and resist machines; a hair's difference in stitch tension or in soaking temperature and time produces a wholly different halo of color. So no two tie-dye ornaments in the world are ever identical.
What is more, the indigo on these fabrics fades softly with the years; the boundary between blue and white blurs — and the piece only looks better. That blue, tuned by time, is the craft's deepest charm.
Natural dyes and countless patterns
Dyers favor natural indigo from smartweed, banlangen (Isatis root) and mugwort — colors that are lasting and ecologically gentle, and banlangen-based dyes even soothe skin and repel mosquitoes. Tying techniques grew from simple to intricate, spanning over thirty methods (tie, pinch, pleat, fold, pick), and motifs expanded from traditional small butterfly-flowers, plum blossoms and purslane-flowers to more than a thousand new designs. Products range over fabric, bed sheets, tablecloths, scarves, shoulder bags, aprons and clothing.
Today tick-dye has become Dali's most recognizable cultural emblem. Zhoucheng alone turns out over 250 tie-dye products sold as far as Europe, America and Southeast Asia. In 2015 China's first Bai tie-dye museum opened in Zhoucheng and was designated a national productive-protection base; masters Duan Shukun and Duan Yinkai tour far and wide demonstrating the craft, carrying it out of Dali to the world.
