--- title: "Tujia Brocade Weaving Workshop near Zhangjiajie | LyrikTrip" description: "Two hours at China's largest Tujia brocade centre in Zhangjiajie: eight hundred warp threads, a bamboo pick, a technique with no chart to follow — and a wooden back-strap loom you sit down at." type: "experience" source: "film" url: "https://www.lyriktrip.com/en-GB/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving" canonical_url: "https://www.lyriktrip.com/en-GB/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving" locale: "en-GB" alternates: {"en-US":"https://www.lyriktrip.com/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving","en-GB":"https://www.lyriktrip.com/en-GB/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving","zh-CN":"https://www.lyriktrip.com/zh-CN/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving","zh-TW":"https://www.lyriktrip.com/zh-TW/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving","de-DE":"https://www.lyriktrip.com/de-DE/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving","fr-FR":"https://www.lyriktrip.com/fr-FR/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving","es-ES":"https://www.lyriktrip.com/es-ES/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving","it-IT":"https://www.lyriktrip.com/it-IT/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving","x-default":"https://www.lyriktrip.com/experience/zhangjiajie-tujia-brocade-weaving"} --- ![A Tujia waist-tensioned slant loom, red warp strung and a band already growing on it](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/2310f4d3c2db.webp) Zhangjiajie · Two hours, booked on its own # You take the seat, *and they cut it off for you* Two hours at a wooden back-strap loom: eight hundred warp threads, a bamboo pick, a pattern held entirely in the weaver's head — and then she gets up and lets you try. - Where: A brocade centre near Zhangjiajie · Western Hunan · China's largest, opened 2014 - How long: About 2 hours - You leave with: The rows you wove · Cut off the loom for you 西兰卡普 LyrikTrip · a standalone workshop ## Warp*& Weft* - About 2 hours - China's largest brocade centre - National heritage, first list - The rows you wove ## What you get ### Two hours at the loom, *and what comes off it* ### You'll see - A wooden back-strap loom worked by hand — **no motor, tension held by the weaver's spine** - A pattern appearing row by row with **nothing drawn anywhere** - An entrance piece eight metres wide and thirteen high, woven from 150,000 metres of red thread - **7,955,280 colour blocks** in one panel upstairs — 190 weavers, one year, now in a national museum ### You'll handle - Eight hundred warp threads under real tension, resisting you - The bamboo pick that lifts a different count of threads on every single pass - Finished brocade — and you'll feel why a metre takes over a month ### You'll hear - What **xilankapu** literally means: the flowered bedspread woven with every kind of beautiful pattern - A fifth-generation inheritor teaching the loom hand to hand - Why one wrong row means the whole row comes out ### You'll take home - **The rows you wove, cut off the loom for you** - The physical memory of the warp going slack when you pull wrong - A reason to never again call a woven textile 'just fabric' ## Act I — What it is called ![Two Dragons Scrambling for Treasure — a classic xilankapu pattern in cut weft on a dark ground](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/bc5e7cbeb718.webp) ![Phoenix in Peony Flowers, the pattern built entirely from square colour blocks](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/a9a44325d0f5.webp) ![Red warp under tension on the slant loom, the weaver's back-strap hanging beside it](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/43a5e76bf07c.webp) In Tujia it is *xilankapu* — literally, *the flowered bedspread woven with all kinds of beautiful patterns*. People here call it the flower of the Tujia, and describe it as their culture compressed into a single object. It was on China's very first national heritage list. And it is made on a wooden back-strap loom, by a person leaning away from it to keep the tension. *Nothing else holds it.* ## 01 — The centre ![Xilankapu panels on display, one of them laid out flat](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/46a87b85256b.webp) 10:15 Opened 2014 ### Thirteen thousand square metres of it Exhibition hall · working floor · the first of its kind This is the largest Tujia brocade production base in the country and the first dedicated exhibition hall and teaching workshop for the craft. The building runs as a sequence — an entrance piece, a gallery, a working floor you walk through, and a shop — and the entrance piece is a flower eight metres wide and thirteen high, woven from a hundred and fifty thousand metres of red thread. ## 02 — The technique ![A finished xilankapu panel — the face, woven while looking at the back](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/e0bc6846129e.webp) 10:45 Counted, never drawn ### Threaded from the back, face down 通经过纬 · 反面挖花 · a bamboo pick, one pass at a time The weaver works with the pattern facing away from her, picking the coloured weft through with a bamboo tool — and the number of warp threads she crosses is different on every single pass. There is nothing to copy from. A metre-long panel of a standard motif takes over a month. ## 03 — What it can hold ![The weave at close range, every motif resolved into individual square colour blocks](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/74ccce2241e3.webp) 11:15 The piece upstairs ### Seven million, nine hundred thousand 6.4 m × 2 m · 190 weavers · one year In the gallery upstairs hangs a panel six point four metres long. A hundred and ninety weavers worked on it for a year and picked 7,955,280 individual colour blocks. It is now permanently held by the National Museum of Ethnology. Standing in front of it after you have tried four rows yourself is a specific and slightly humbling experience. ## 04 — Your turn ![The loom and the plain wooden bench you sit on to work it](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/3420ef2c672a.webp) 11:35 After the demonstration ### Then you sit down at it A fifth-generation weaver takes you through it A fifth-generation inheritor of the craft teaches the loom hand to hand — how to hold it, how to open the shed, what order things happen in. The strap goes round your back and you find out how much of this is in the body. The first pass is clumsy and the third is noticeably less so. ## Why sitting down matters ![Big Lotus — bold geometric medallions, no curve anywhere in it](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/600f6e6c181d.webp) Watching is not the same ### It goes from something you looked at *to something your hands remember* You can watch weaving for twenty minutes and leave with a video. The moment you take the seat, the loom stops being a display. You feel the warp resist. You feel it go slack when you pull wrong. You discover that the even, unremarkable cloth on the wall behind you represents a physical discipline you could not sustain for an hour. Most of the weavers here are women who stayed in the villages when others left for work in the cities. The centre trains them, films them, and streams them working — a strange sentence to write about a technique with no written pattern, and also why it is still here. ## The loom, unrolled ### What the loom holds Timber · thread · bamboo pick · pattern ![A framed xilankapu pattern on the workshop wall](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/a07663d4220d.webp) **The pattern**纹样 · hooked geometry, no curves ![Women in Tujia dress on the steps of the old town](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/c7d11d82e17d.webp) **Worn, not framed**上身 · the pattern language, off the wall ## Practicalities - Duration: About 2 hours - Where: A brocade centre near Zhangjiajie - Heritage status: Tujia brocade, national list — first batch - Hands-on: Yes — you weave on the loom - Skill needed: None - Ages: Suits about 8 up - You keep: The rows you wove ## End card ![The dragon pair at close range, cut off the loom](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/44bec24112fc.webp) ### Book *the loom* Two hours, on its own. 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