What are the folk arts in Yunnan Province?

Dai people like to use pottery since ancient times. According to the old adage of "Hundred Arts Biography" in Ming Dynasty, wearing utensils "uses a lot of pottery". Up to now, the Dai villages such as Mandou Village, Hanmeng Manluan Village, Mengzha Village and Menglong Village in Jinghong City, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture still retain the ancient pottery-making skills.

Dai pottery is widely used in daily production, life and Buddhist activities.

Pottery tools are generally composed of wooden pottery bats, pebbles, bamboo chips, wooden boards, wooden hammers, small dustpans, etc., with different patterns, and the raw materials are clay rich in various places. Generally, it is necessary to go through several procedures, such as earth borrowing, soil drying, soil screening, Gaza mud mixing, turntable loading, blank making, cooling and drying, and firing. The main varieties are pots, cans, retort, pots and so on. Among them, clay pots are the most famous. The food cooked in the casserole made by traditional pottery method is easy to cook and delicious, and the water is cool and refreshing. Decoction can maintain the best medicinal properties and is deeply loved by local people. Dai pottery is made by women. In order to keep the technical secret, some places still follow the custom that pottery-making skills are not passed on to their children, but only to their daughters-in-law.

Pot-making, called "board mill" in Dai language, commonly known as "earthen pot", mainly produces various household appliances, building materials and Buddha carving supplies. The craft is characterized by hand-made slow wheels with carved wood grains printed on the surfaces, which are very similar to Neolithic pottery unearthed in the south. The materials are all clay and sand, and there are many methods such as open-air baking and closed semi-baking. The embryo forming methods are diversified, such as whether there is a wheel to make the embryo, whether the toes turn the slow wheel, and manually turning the wheel. These technological processes fully prove that the pottery-making technology of the Dai nationality completely preserves the ancient pottery-making technology.

Since the late 1950s, archaeologists and ethnologists at home and abroad have studied this technology. It is generally believed that the traditional pottery-making of the Dai nationality has become a breakthrough in understanding the pottery-making technology of the Neolithic age in China, and it is the representative of the oldest pottery in China. With the development of modern society and economy, the economic benefit of pottery making is getting lower and lower, and fewer and fewer people make pottery. At present, only a few elderly women have mastered the production technology, and there is a lack of descendants.

Archaeological data show that in Jianshui County, Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, pottery products fired by Dorobou Pan method were used in the late Neolithic period. During the light years of Qing Dynasty, after the improvement of Jianshui artists, purple pottery gradually developed into arts and crafts pottery, with richer cultural connotations and more varieties, including tea sets, stationery, wine sets and so on. The ancient kiln sites in Wanyao Village of Jianshui are dotted all over the place, which fully proves the long tradition of making pottery in this area.

The most remarkable technological characteristics of Jianshui Zitao are grinding and polishing. Jianshui unglazed polished pottery can be divided into red pottery and white pottery according to product quality. Red pottery is generally called "Jianshui Zitao". Its unique technology, the main features are: sound like parallel imports, bright as a mirror, greasy to the touch, lead-free and non-toxic. Purple pottery has a unique decorative style, all of which are filled with white mud or multi-color mud carvings with calligraphy and painting patterns, integrating epigraphy, calligraphy and painting, and seal cutting. Among them, the most distinctive decorative technique "mending the picture" is extremely bookish, showing superb craftsmanship and decoration level, which is unique to the whole country and has produced, Xiang, Xiang Fuguong, Chen Shaokang, Yuan Yingshun, Pan Jin and others. In recent years, the iron hollow knife was invented for direct carving, which improved the efficiency. However, fine strokes still need a foot knife, which can't completely replace the traditional process of using a brush to draw strokes and then using a foot knife double hook engraving method.

Wanyao Village in Jianshui County mainly produces purple pottery in small workshops, among which there are many artists with deep qualifications and fine skills. Zitao's works have participated in various activities and exhibitions since 19 14, and have been sold at home and abroad, becoming national and local special gifts. When Premier Zhou Enlai visited Albania on 1963, he chose Jianshui unglazed polished purple sand pottery as a gift.

Jianshui Zitao has a good development prospect and is a characteristic tourism product determined by the local government. In 2004, the County Purple Pottery Research Association was established, which provided an effective carrier and platform for the research, inheritance, innovation and further development of purple pottery. The county party committee and government also gave strong support, and listed Zitao as one of the five leading industries in the development of Jianshui cultural industry in the development plan of cultural industry.