Batik, one of the oldest handicrafts, has been appreciated as a part of ancient Chinese civilization since the foundation of dyeing and weaving technology in China. It is a traditional Chinese folk art which combines both painting and dyeing.

Batik, also known as laran or wax printing, is an artistic technique used by dipping a specially designed knife into melted wax and painting various patterns on pieces of white cloth. The wax stays on the cloth and often cracks after it hardens. The cloth is then dyed and the dyes seep into the un-waxed material as well as between the cracks. When the wax is boiled away, beautiful patterns are left on the cloth.

Indigo is the color chiefly used for the basic batik throughout Guizhou. An indigo paste is made from the harvested plants which have been soaked in a wooden barrel.

Where did batik come from?

The history of batik can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-24 AD). There are batiks found in the Mawangdui tomb, which belonged to a noblewoman called Xing Zhui of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), which was excavated in Changsha, capital of Central China’s Hunan Province, in 1972.

Nobody knows how the batik style was invented, but a folk tale about a “batik girl” tells explains one theory. The story relates that long, long ago, there was a girl living in a stone village called Anshun, now a city in Guizhou Province. She was fond of dyeing white cloth blue and purple. One day, while she was working, a bee happened to alight on her cloth. After she took away the bee, she found there was a white dot left on the cloth, which looked very pretty. Her finding led to the use of wax in dyeing.

Batik used to be popular both in Central and Southwest China but was somehow lost in Central China. It has however been handed down from generation to generation among the ethnic people in Guizhou and neighboring provinces, in the South-West of China. Today, you can still find traditional batik being made by the Miao, Bouyei and Gejia people.