Taiwan Today

In the Mei Workshop along the Folk Art Boulevard at the National Center for Traditional Arts (NCTA) in Yilan County, a visitor is looking at a man-made flower through a magnifying glass. While the flower--approximately two centimeters in diameter--can be seen by the naked eye, what is not so obvious is that it is composed from very thin thread, the filaments of which can barely be seen without magnification. "It's called a tshun-a-hue," says workshop owner Chen Huei-mei, referring to the artificial flower. "Women used to wear them in their hair for weddings and special occasions, but most young people haven't even heard of them," she says.

Chen explains that "tshun," or spring, is a season for new life and new hopes, so a tshun-a-hue symbolizes a good beginning. (The "a" is a particle and "hue" means flower.) And since "tshun" has the same pronunciation as the word for "extra" or "more" in Taiwanese, wearing a tshun-a-hue also expresses the wish that there should be always more than is needed.

Tshun-a-hue are also known as "thread" or "wrapping" flowers, which refers to the way they are made. Silk or rayon threads are used to give a glittery look, and the skill is basically to wrap the thread to form the flower. The first step of making a tshun-a-hue is to cut paper into petal or leaf shapes. Then place a wire behind the paper to act as a stem. Separate the thread into four plies and start winding it around the paper and wire to form the flower parts. Next wrap the parts together to make a complete flower, and wrap the flowers together if a bunch is wanted. Considering the thickness--or rather thinness--of the thread, a flower easily requires tens of thousands of windings. "As a folk craft, the materials are easy to get and the skills not hard to master," Chen says. "The hard part is having patience."

An Accidental Interest

Chen is one of the very few people who makes and promotes tshun-a-hue in Taiwan. Her first encounter with the craft, however, was quite unexpected. Born and raised in Yilan, Chen moved to Taipei several years after graduating from the National Ilan Institute of Agriculture and Technology's (now the National Ilan University) Department of Home Economics. In her spare time as a mother and housewife, she started to pick up some leather-working skills. "I was simply building a hobby so that I could have something to do when I get old," she says. Much to her surprise, however, the hobby eventually developed into a business. Chen set up a leather workshop, attended shows and began to give leather art classes.

Changes in life made Chen a single mother. In addition to the leather workshop, she also needed some part-time work to make a living. About 10 years ago, one of her colleagues in an antique shop was making some tshun-a-hue for a friend. At first sight, Chen was fascinated by the craft. She was surprised that she had never heard of the craft, perhaps unnecessarily so since it had all but disappeared. Chen asked her colleague to take her to Sie Chen Ai-yu, from whom she had learned the craft. "Grandma Ai-yu, who was 90 when we first met, learned it when she was young and when most women in the neighborhood knew how to do it," Chen says. "For Grandma Ai-yu and people of her generation, making tshun-a-hue was nothing more than a side-line that helped the family economy a little." The handmade tshun-a-hue market, however, was gradually subsumed by mass-produced plastic products. Most people shifted to other part-time work, but Sie Chen kept doing it even though demand from traditionalist buyers was small.

Lost History

Sie Chen shared every skill she knew before she passed away at the age of 97, but that was not quite enough for Chen. "I wasn't learning it for fun as I had been with the leather," Chen says. "Be it folk craft or art, the tshun-a-hue is simply too beautiful a heritage to let disappear." Preserving a craft, as Chen sees it, requires more than just the craftsmanship but the history and cultural meanings behind it. Sie Chen, unfortunately, was not much of a help in these areas. "One thing about folk crafts is that there are very few records about their histories," Chen says. "Oftentimes, the people who master the crafts don't know much about the crafts themselves."

When she failed to find any written references to the craft, Chen started her own studies by talking to old people about tshun-a-hue and trying to put the pieces together. The craft appears to have originated in Quanzhou, in China's Fujian Province (from which a large number of Taiwanese can trace their ancestry), since the flowers are rarely seen in other parts of China. There is no knowing when or by whom it was invented but Chen surmises it was probably by housewives as an inexpensive form of adornment. Early immigrants brought the tshun-a-hue to Taiwan. There are some differences between tshun-a-hue in northern and southern Taiwan, though their origin is the same. Generally, those in the south have a simpler structure, while those in the north are more detailed. And for reasons that Chen has yet to discover, they became a kind of festival or wedding accessory instead of everyday decoration.

Special Meanings

As accessories for special occasions, there are not many tshun-a-hue variants, but every variant has its special meaning. The most important occasion is a wedding. Nowadays, some wedding planning companies still provide tshun-a-hue, though most of them use much cheaper plastic flowers. At the wedding, the bride should wear a pomegranate tshun-a-hue hairpin, for the pomegranate's many seeds symbolize that she will soon have many children. The groom's mother should wear a tshun-a-hue with deer and turtle shapes prepared by the bride, symbolizing good fortune and longevity. There is a tradition here: The leaves of a tshun-a-hue look like lips. The "lips" are closed on the ones worn by a bride and open on those by her mother-in-law, warning the bride should keep her mouth closed in the marriage and listen to what her mother-in-law says.

The aunts from both families wear the five-blessings tshun-a-hue, wishing one another, as well as themselves, fortune, prosperity, longevity, happiness and health. In the past, the bride and female members of her family wore pink tshun-a-hue while the groom's side wore red. Today, however, both sides usually wear red. Chen's explanation is that, for Chinese, red has always been the color of first choice for joyful occasions, and everything else in a wedding from the tablecloth to what the bride and groom wear is red. When there was no knowing why pink was used, it seemed appropriate to shift to red.

There are other occasions for wearing a tshun-a-hue hairpin. In an intercalary month in the lunar calendar, for example, children prepare rice noodles and tshun-a-hue for their mothers to wish them longevity. Women also wear the tshun-a-hue when they visit friends during festivals. Chen recently learned that some would even use tshun-a-hue in a funeral, to wish the deceased a good new start in the other world.

Increasing the Repertoire

Once Chen had learned all the traditional patterns of tshun-a-hue, she set out to give the craft a more diverse repertoire. The easiest way to do this, she found, was to use more colors. Creating new designs proved more difficult, and Chen has only developed a few such as roses and butterflies. Wrapping thin threads over paper, she admits, imposes a lot of limitations in terms of shapes and sizes. In promoting the craft, however, limitations on the number of variants can be overcome by putting them to new uses. For example, tshun-a-hue were mostly made for hairpins, but Chen has made bangles, necklaces, pendants and brooches. Beautiful as they are, the thread-wrapped tshun-a-hue are rather fragile as daily accessories, so Chen incorporated them into paintings or combined them with wood, often driftwood, to function as interior decoration.

To make the craft better known, Chen submitted her work to handicraft competitions and "crashed and burned," she says. "I guess the judges probably didn't even know what category this should come under." Chen firmly believes that popularity plays a key role in the preservation of a folk craft. Citing leather art as an example. "It was rare and not much of an art 20 years ago, but more and more people started doing it and this has changed people's attitude," she says. "The more people hear about tshun-a-hue, and the more the people who can actually make one, the better the chance the craft has of being preserved."

Through exhibitions and classes, Chen has managed to establish a reputation and make the craft better known. About three years ago, she was offered the chance to open a shop at the NCTA. Her original idea was to set up a space exclusively for tshun-a-hue but Chen had to compromise and also bring in her leather pieces. A basic tshun-a-hue that takes an hour to make sells for NT$350 (US$10.6), which is not very competitive considering that disposable plastic versions cost only NT$10 (US$0.3). The market for tshun-a-hue as gifts or home decorations has been increasing but not fast enough. "There is no way I can make a living just from tshun-a-hue," Chen says. "I'm basically supporting the tshun-a-hue with my leatherwork."

The NCTA, given its mission of folk art preservation, requires that shop owners have to be able to make what they sell. So on most days, Chen sits in her shop and demonstrates her craft. From time to time, she stops work to talk to older visitors, hoping to dig from their fading memories some nuggets of information about tshun-a-hue. She also likes to introduce the craft to those who have never heard of it. Or, she works patiently at her desk, keeping the thread of a folk craft from breaking.