Long after we left the Hmong village in May 2023, the sights and sounds of the Sisters Festival lingered in our minds. The dedication to the beauty of life that the Hmong have touched us deeply. How did the Hmong form this kind of value system? As we reflected on our experiences at the Sisters Festival, we noticed an external expression of the love for beauty: Hmong embroidery.
Why do all Hmong women embroider? How do they persist in such time-consuming tasks? What do they embroider? What meanings do their embroidery contain? What are the histories and narratives that make their way into the patterns? What is the place of embroidery in Hmong culture? These questions flooded into our minds, and so we returned to the village in that October in search of answers.
The difficulty of fieldwork far surpassed what we had imagined––we hit several dead ends early on in the process. But our curiosity for Hmong culture kept us going, until we finally met Huajie (花姐––literally meaning “Flower Sister”), whom we had briefly encountered earlier during the Sisters Festival. Huajie had worked in cities like Guangzhou and Shanghai and had done embroidery designs for major brands like Hermès, but when she is in Hmong society back home, she appears to be no different from the other Hmong women. When we spoke with Huajie, what touched us the most was not her skill but her passion for embroidery and beauty.
With Huajie, we finally had an interview subject. Throughout the process, there were also many pleasant surprises, such as how we came to interview her around the time of her daughter’s birthday. Another time, we missed a wedding ceremony in Geyi Village but chanced upon another wedding in Shidong Village. Fate always seemed to be paving the way for us.
But the most wonderful surprise came on the morning of Huajie’s daughter’s birthday. That day, Huajie invited us to fish in the farms. Fish is an important activity in Hmong culture, as we came to understand earlier. At major festivals such as the Sisters Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival, every village holds its own fishing event. Thanks to Huajie, we were now able to experience it firsthand.
At first, we were a little hesitant about catching fish in a muddy field. Only a teacher and two younger students followed Huajie into the water. Yet, when those on the banks saw that they were enjoying themselves so much and catching one fish after another, many others quickly joined in.
It was a delightful morning in the fields, and fishing together with Huajie really broke down the barrier between us and brought us closer together. We realized that the success of fieldwork rested not only on academic and theoretical knowledge, but also on our ability to connect with people and immerse ourselves locally. Sometimes, following a tight plan wasn’t as fruitful as just being open to unexpected experiences.
At An Hong’s Su-style mansion, we interviewed Huajie. With the sound of fabric being hammered in the background, we spoke with her for an entire afternoon. In the garden of the Hewan Institute and on the bridge, we shot the photo that would become the poster of the documentary; at the market fair, we filmed Huajie’s mother selling embroidery at a stall and listened to her sing Hmong song poetry about embroidery and weddings; we witnessed a Hmong marriage ceremony; we celebrated Huajie’s daughter’s birthday at their home; walking back at night, we also captured shots of the yellow lights trickling into the night from residents… Even though the failming has ended, these moments have since stayed with us in our minds.
In the process of filming, we began to understand her personal story with Hmong embroidery. The importance of many details that we had overlooked before began to dawn upon us as we learned more and more from her.
Hmong women draw inspiration from Hmong song poetry, natural scenery, and everyday life. They combine these elements and employ techniques such as exaggeration, formalization, and abstraction to create stunning patterns. Through generations of inheritance, the Hmong have formed a sophisticated aesthetic system.
Huajie told us that during the agricultural off-season, Hmong women gather in groups of three to five to embroider together, trading gossip and techniques throughout the process. Time flowed silently with each stitch.
Hmong girls learn to embroider from their mothers at a young age. By the time they are 15 or 16, they begin to embroider their own dowry in a process that takes several years. Growing up, Huajie’s family was quite poor, so she began doing appliqué embroidery and individual pieces of embroidery at around 7 or 8, selling them to help supplement her family’s income.
Persisting in Hmong embroidery is not just about developing handicraft but also about learning and grasping Hmong culture and history. Each and every piece of Hmong embroidery carries in itself a specific cultural meaning, and together they are an integral part of cultural inheritance.
Throughout the filming process, Huajie also demonstrated to us the split-thread stitching technique for which Shidong is known. This technique involves breaking the thread into 8 to 12 sections, sometimes as many as 16 sections. Then, the threads are put through soapberry leaves, which transfers the sap onto the threads, making them smoother, glossier, stiffer, and more resistant to dirt.
Next, the satin stitch technique is used to carefully fill in the pattern’s outline and create a locking edge. Split-thread embroidery, due to its intricate and time-consuming nature, is often used exclusively for making wedding attire and ceremonial garments. Completing a set of split-thread embroidered wedding attire typically requires at least a year, and for the most intricate designs, the whole process can take up to 4 to 5 years.
The Hmong believe in animism, or the idea that there is some kind of spirit essence in all beings and objects. To this day, this belief is expressed in their embroidery. This is especially the case in the Qiandongnan region, where common embroidery patterns depict over 50 types of animals, including dragons, roosters, ducks, geese, bulls, lions, dogs, and more.
These animal patterns can appear by themselves. Some are depicted with human figures, while others are placed between all types of trees, flowers, and fruits. Yet other animals are directly integrated with human bodies––there may be a human head on the body of an animal, living literally as one on a piece of embroidery.
These animal figures are not represented in naturalistic fashion but are rather formalized and elevated to an almost supernatural status. The colors, too, are done according to the judgment and taste of the embroiderer. Every piece of embroidery that Huajie showed us was utterly unique, and all of them were incredibly pleasing to look at.
Thus was the documentary “Hua’s Hmong Embroidery” created！In the shooting process, not only did we learn about Hmong embroidery from Huajie and deepened our understanding of Hmong culture, but we also witnessed three different attitudes towards embroidery from three generations, representing a microcosm of the historical developments over the past century.