---
title: "Tibetan Leather Workshop in Songpan Ancient Town | LyrikTrip"
description: "Songpan old town once held sixty leather workshops. One is left, run by the fifth-generation heir — a former primary school teacher, and the first woman to hold the craft in over a hundred years."
type: "experience"
source: "film"
url: "https://www.lyriktrip.com/en-GB/experience/songpan-tibetan-leather-workshop"
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![A narrow shop in Songpan old town hung with leather boots, bags and belts](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/77e066c5004f.webp)

Songpan · Two to three hours, booked on its own

# You make the two cuts *that can't be undone*

Two or three hours in the last leather workshop inside Songpan's Ming walls — there were once sixty. You choose the hide, cut it in one pass, stitch it with two needles, and put it in your pocket.

- Where: Songpan old town · Northwest Sichuan · headwaters of the Min, on the tea-horse road
- How long: About 2–3 hours
- You leave with: A small piece you made · Cut and stitched by you
松潘

LyrikTrip · a standalone workshop

## Hide*& Awl*

- 2–3 hours
- The last workshop in the town
- Provincial heritage
- A piece you made

## What you get

### Two hours at the bench, *and this is yours*

### You'll see

- A shop hung floor to ceiling with **boots, satchels and belts**, and a whole wall of tools
- **Guzi hide** — taken only from a mule's hindquarters, sixty-plus operations, no machine at any stage
- Pieces from the 1950s and 60s bought back from herding families, still in use when they were found
- A walled Ming garrison town at the headwaters of the Min river

### You'll handle

- Several hides, until you can feel where one stretches and one won't
- A round knife heavy enough to make you concentrate
- An awl, two needles and waxed thread

### You'll hear

- That the town once held **more than sixty** leather workshops and now holds one
- How the fifth-generation heir left a primary-school teaching job to come back to it
- The standard her grandfather's generation worked to: **one thing should last you a lifetime**

### You'll take home

- **The small piece you cut, stitched and finished** — slightly imperfect, unmistakably yours
- The saddle stitch, which you can now do badly but correctly
- An understanding of why hand-sewn leather outlives machine-sewn

## Act I — Why leather, here

![A boardwalk under snow in the mountains near Songpan](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/aca6e96b0247.webp)

![A high-altitude lake below snow mountains](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/e1b476d2623d.webp)

![Terraced pools in a mountain valley](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/079973d1af90.webp)

Songpan is a walled garrison town at the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, at the *headwaters of the Min river*.

It sat on the tea-horse road. Everything that came through came on an animal, and everything on the animal was leather.

So the craft here was never decorative. *It was harness, satchel and belt — things that had to survive the road.*

## 01 — Who runs it

![The workshop's keeper working leather at her bench](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/0b94afd0cbc5.webp)

14:15 Fifth generation

### She was a primary school teacher

Provincial heritage · the first woman in the line

About a decade ago the fifth-generation heir to this workshop left a teaching job at a primary school in Hongyuan county and came back to keep the craft going — the first woman to hold it in over a hundred years. In 2014 she borrowed from relatives to rent this shop inside the old town. It is a working workshop and, quietly, a museum of Songpan leather: the old pieces on the shelves were bought back from herders, sixty and seventy years old and still in use when she found them.

## 02 — The best hide

![Rolled leather hides stacked in a workshop](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/b087c674d962.webp)

14:45 Sixty operations before you touch it

### Only from one part of one animal

泡皮 · 脱毛 · 脱脂 · 软化 · 烟熏 · 上色 · 揉制

The prized material here is *guzi* hide, taken only from a small area on a mule's hindquarters and put through more than sixty operations — soaking, dehairing, degreasing, softening, smoking, colouring, working — with no machine involved at any stage. What comes out carries the animal's own grain, and no two pieces have ever matched.

## 03 — The cut

![Leather knives and edge tools laid out on the bench](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/a3ede2daaedd.webp)

15:20 The irreversible bit

### One pass, and commit

Thick enough to fight you

This leather is heavy, and cutting it is physical. The maker is blunt about what learning it cost: hands opened up again and again from forcing the shears, and a father whose palms were solid callus. You cut in one continuous pass against a steel edge, because a stop-start line shows forever. This is the moment the room goes quiet.

## 04 — The stitch

![An awl piercing leather ready for stitching](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/8c9369cba976.webp)

16:00 Two needles, one thread

### The awl goes before the needle

Saddle stitch · both needles through every hole

You pierce each hole with an awl, then pass two needles through it from opposite sides — the reason a hand-sewn seam outlives a machine-sewn one. It is slow and rhythmic, and about ten holes in your hands work it out without you.

## What they were built for

![Leatherworking tools laid out on the wall of the workshop](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/f1bb193ac1e1.webp)

The standard this trade was held to

### “The idea was that *one thing should last you a lifetime.*”

That is the maker on the pieces her grandfather's generation produced — the ones she has been buying back from herding families across the grassland counties, still in service after sixty or seventy years.

It is also the argument she is having with her own trade. Buyers now want leather goods that look considered and feel soft, and the toughest construction is rarely the most comfortable. She trained in modern leatherwork in Guangdong specifically to find the balance.

You are not going to make anything that lasts a lifetime in three hours. But you will do the two steps that cannot be undone — the cut and the finish — which is the difference between a piece you made and a piece you were handed.

## The bench, unrolled

### What is on the bench

Hide · knife · awl · stamp

![Leather being folded and handled](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/b76197eaa6d2.webp)

**The hide**皮料 · thicker than it looks

![Hands cutting leather](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/66ff225f4058.webp)

**The cut**下料 · one pass

![A hand-stitched leather seam](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/eddd96109e76.webp)

**The seam**缝线 · two needles, every hole

![An embossed leather pattern](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/57c69e17e9c1.webp)

**The finish**压印 · damp, and one clean strike

![The timber streets of Songpan's walled old town](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/96ad6ef56d9d.webp)

**The town**松州古城 · nationally protected

## Practicalities

- Duration: About 2–3 hours
- Where: Songpan old town, northwest Sichuan
- Heritage status: Tibetan handmade leather, Sichuan provincial list
- Altitude: Songpan sits high — take the day gently
- Hands-on: Cutting, stitching and finishing
- Guide: English-speaking, throughout
- You keep: The piece you made
## End card

![Leather pieces laid out at the end of the session](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/ae5ac39554a3.webp)

### Book *a bench*

Two to three hours, on its own, inside the old town. Tell us a date.

[**Start planning](/contact)