Tao Dollar (right) teaches his skills.
Tao Dollar is the national inheritor of Miao costumes (customs).
Tao Meiyuan was born in 1965 in the Dalongtan villager group of Daping Village, Yi and Miao Township, Changning County. Since he was four or five years old, Tao Yuan followed his grandmother and mother to select hemp seeds, turn hemp ponds, plant hemp, harvest hemp and cut hemp, count hemp, spin thread, winding, boiling, washing and drifting, milling, thread loading, weaving, embroidery, etc., and visited the elderly of Miao culture with relatives in Dali, Chuxiong, Wenshan, Honghe, Guizhou, and Hunan with relatives. He has mastered the techniques of picking flowers, flat embroidery, lock silk embroidery, flat belt embroidery, stem edge embroidery, seed embroidery, subsidy embroidery, pile embroidery, broken thread embroidery, tin embroidery, and braided embroidery in Miao costume production. Master the unification method, foil method, contrast method, echo method, embellishment method and so on of color matching in Miao costumes. Master the geometric patterns (including reticulated patterns, triangular patterns, octagonal patterns, diamond patterns, zigzag patterns, thunder patterns, back patterns, arc patterns, narrow stripes, swirl patterns, circle patterns, whirling hook patterns, etc.), animal patterns, plant patterns, labor production tool patterns and other "mother patterns" in Miao costumes. Master the pattern modeling, pattern color matching, and pattern connotation in Miao costumes.
From the age of twelve or thirteen, Tao Yuan went to the neighborhood and four townships to follow the Miao folk oral literature of the elderly, and went to the Miao people inside and outside the province with relatives to study, and mastered the historical legends and connotations of clothing. For example, myths and historical legends related to Nuwa, Chiyou, the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, Dongting Lake, Poyang Lake, Huangguoshu Waterfall and other myths and legends in the costumes; The legend of the Miao migration, fields, cities, cattle and sheep in the costume pattern case.
Known as the "colorful neon dress", the Changning Miao costume is composed of eighteen sets such as baotou, blouse, collar gown, shawl, streamer, triangular small waist, belt, large square waist, small square waist, pleated skirt, leggings, etc., and is known as eighteen flowers. A beautiful set of Changning Miao costumes usually takes 5 to 10 years to complete.
In the courtyard of Tao Yuan's house, you can see the most basic raw material for making Miao costumes everywhere - industrial detoxification**. It is sown in March and harvested in July. The maturity of hemp should be flowered, but it will be harvested before the fruiting stage, and the hemp is easy to brittle when it is old, and it cannot meet the requirements of spinning. How do these seemingly "poor" raw materials be transformed into colorful costumes? Tao Yuan introduced: "Before cutting hemp, you should evenly pour water on the sun-dried hemp stalks, wait for more than ten minutes, and hold the softened hemp stalks in your hands, and you can tear off the hemp skin, which can not be light or heavy, and the strength should be uniform." Hemp is another time-consuming link after hemp cutting. In the process of connecting the hemp pieces together, the parts that are too thin should be thick to prevent the twine from breaking; Peel off the excessively coarse parts to avoid the formation of small knots and affect the appearance. Tao Yuan thinks this is the most complicated process in linen making. Before the hemp is woven into linen, Tao Dollar also has an important task, which is to make the color of the twine white, and the protagonist of this link is actually black stove ash. After boiling the twine in black stove ash water three times and drifting three times, it becomes a cooked thread from raw thread, which not only becomes white, but also soft and not easy to break. Such twine can only be loaded onto the loom after the spinning process, and woven into cloth in a shuttle.
On May 20, 2006, the Miao costumes (customs) of Changning County were promulgated as the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects.
With such an opportunity, Tao Dollar turned the inheritance of Miao costume skills into a responsibility. She said with deep feelings: "I am a national intangible cultural heritage inheritor, I am very honored, and I feel a great responsibility, in our Miao cultural inheritance, I want to learn from me I teach seriously, I want to pass on our excellent national culture." While learning from his predecessors, Tao Dollar continues to excavate, protect and inherit the national culture and skills. Nowadays, most of the local Miao women worship her as a teacher, and there are also Miao women from Dali, Chuxiong, Wenshan, Honghe and other places who come to study as a teacher, and there are more than 200 apprentices. Today, she is a cultural business card of the Changning Miao people, a well-known person, and especially wants the outside world to remember that she is the representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage project of Changning Miao costumes.
The inheritance and promotion of any handicrafts will encounter a bottleneck period, and Changning Miao costumes are no exception.
Tao dollar can not only make Miao costumes "weaving and embroidering", but also "singing". She is good at singing Miao costume customs and mountain songs, with a unique voice and a unique charm in the minor key. There are many minor tunes that only she can sing, and she is also known as the "Miao Mountain Lark". In 2010, he was named as the provincial representative inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage project of Yunnan Province; In 2013, he was rated as the fifth top 100 top village local talents in Yunnan Province; In 2013, he served as a folk consultant for the movie "Miao Ling Ni Dress" and a Miao singer; In 2014, he was named the national representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage project; In 2016, he won the first "Xingchang Talent Award" in Changning County; In 2017, he was awarded the honorary title of "Yunnan Provincial Model Worker" by the people of Yunnan Province; In 2020, he was awarded the title of "Baoshan Craftsman" by the Baoshan Federation of Trade Unions. The folk tunes sung by her on behalf of the collection include "Tao Dollar Singing 60 Songs of Changning Miao Costume Customs", "Tao Dollar Singing 62 Songs of Changning Miao Costume Eighteen Sets of Minor Tunes", "Tao Dollar Miao Folk Tales" (400,000 words, collected and sorted by Luo Jinrong) and so on, which are its representatives, another treasure of Miao costume culture, and another living fossil of Miao culture.
Driven by Tao Dollar, 6 Miao costume inheritance points have been established in Yi and Miao Township, each of which focuses on training 10 to 15 inheritors and training nearly 100 apprentices every year. At the same time, every year, the Miao costume folk culture transmission activity and the inheritor skills display competition will be held to strengthen the exchange and learning between the inheritors. Tao Dollar will always carry out the practice and teaching of Miao traditional embroidery at such training and competition sites, fulfill the responsibility of inheritors, and let the exquisite Miao costume making skills continue to grow.