Commodifying Culture
High in the mountains above Lugu Lake lives the Moso’s most famous craftswoman, A Qi Du Zhi Ma.
A Qi du Zhi Ma is a local craftswoman around the Lake Lugu area and also works for the government to uphold the Moso culture for tourism. Because of this, she holds an important position in the community. A Qi’s work is so famous, that her handmade clothing and blankets are shipped all over the world, and people from all over the world come to her property to watch her work and to explore her small museum.
Moso women have passed down a weaving technique from generation to generation which they use to make predominantly scarves but also traditional garb and blankets. A Qi is one of these weavers who learned her weaving skills from a long line of Moso women.
Before modern clothing became more available, it was a Moso woman’s duty to weave clothing for their whole family. Weaving was not viewed as a commodity because everyone in the area learned how to weave. Most women made a living from agriculture, but A Qi was tired of the hard labor jobs. She decided to think outside of the box and became the first person in the Moso community to use the traditional hand weaving skills to make a profit.
A Qi was discouraged from using her weaving skills to make her main source of income. She was ridiculed in her village; Even her own family discouraged her idea to make money. Regardless, A Qi persisted her idea and traveled many hours to a busy city market once a month to sell bags and belts that she weaved herself. The beginning of her weaving journey was rough because not only did she have little support from her village, she also didn’t make a lot of money.
However, this changed in the 1990s when the Chinese government implemented a pro-poor tourism policy. This policy made tourism a significant industry in the rural ethnic minority areas Lugu Lake. Small rural areas began to flood with tourists, so the Moso started to manage hotels and restaurants, which helped those people come out of poverty. This significant increase in tourism helped the Moso realize that their culture is unique to the people outside their small tribe, and made handmade items like A Qi’s clothing, much easier to sell locally.
Because of her booming business, A Qi had to make more handwoven stuff at a faster rate, which meant she needed employees to help her. She started a small business and employed local women from her village. A Qi started with 26 employees in her small studio and in her prime, had 900 employees.
After a few years of running a successful small business, A Qi was able to raise her three children and sent them to college herself. She also rebuilt their house and opened her own museum that's on her property.
“When I made my mine to weave, a lot of people look down upon me, because they thought that weaving was not a way can make a living. Moso People were proud of working on land or being a peasant. However, I don’t like that, I like weaving, I make up my mind I wanted to reuse Moso traditional weaving to make a living and support my family. However, we experience some difficult time that we didn’t have enough money for supporting our daily life. But I told myself, I wouldn’t give up, I should believe myself if I was not afraid of failure. Day after day, month after month, year after years, 20 years had been passed. I felt happy that I didn’t give up at that time.”
Unfortunately, A Qi’s work had become so notable that outside merchants saw an opportunity to copy her handcrafted items by using machines for mass production for one-tenth of the price. The pieces the machines made were almost identical from A Qi’s, and some even looked better because they didn’t have human errors. Now, most souvenir stores in Lugu Lake sell fake “handmade” scarves which took away a lot of business from A Qi.
The decline of business meant that Moso women had to stop weaving as a business, and A Qi’s studio is only used by herself now.
In order to protect her work for the future, one of her sons, who graduated from university, assisted A Qi to register her own trademark and created a patent for traditional Moso patterns.
“My original intention was making a living for myself and helping my family, grow my children to college, make our life better by doing weaving because this was one thing I felt happy when I weave. The more people I met, the more knowledge I learned, I found that the weaving I am doing was not belongs to me anymore, it also belongs to our Moso Minority ethnic group, which represent our culture, identity, and values, it is a part of my responsibility to let outside people know in-depth our culture and traditions, I am willing to teach our later generation of my weaving skills. Anyone want to learn it, I will teach them from my bottom of my heart.”
Even with all of the hardships she has had to endure on her weaving journey, A Qi explained that no matter how difficult life gets, weaving would be one thing she would never give up.
