InMiao village, the craft of adding the honey to batik held by the local peoplehas been inherited for thousands of years.

Accordingto legend, long time ago, while a girl was making batik, bees flied over,leaving the honey on the fabric. The girl found that the shape of the honeyliked beautiful flower. So she used honey as raw material of batik.

AMiao woman aged 40 said that honey wax only used the top layer of the cooledhoney residue. In ancient time, in order to make honey wax, people had to learnto pick honey. In order to protect themselves from being stung by bees, theMiao people found a good idea that they went close to the honeycomb by holding atorch to drive the bees away.

InMiao village, the girls are all good at painting. They can use graver to drawthe batik wallpaper on the fabric. When they were painting, they would carry apot with them to keep the honey within it warm. When the it was done, theywould put the fabric into the dyestuff made by indigo to dip dyeing and washrepeatedly. In the process, they would also put white wine into it. After driedin the sun, the batik was made successfully.

Batikwith blue bottom and white flowers is very common to Miao people, the curtain and the quilt cover are all made bybatik. It is also welcome among the people outside Miao village. The price of afabric made by batik has up to thousands yuan.

Date: 2014.8.13

Ssource:Eveningpaper of Guiyag