What Specialties Does Wuzhen Have?

Commonly known as lime resist-dye cloth or indigo resist-print cloth, it is an exquisite traditional Chinese folk craft. Entirely handmade and eco-friendly, it is woven from cotton yarn, coated with soybean flour paste, and printed with pigment extracted from indigo plants. Its main products include ready-to-wear garments, triangular headscarves, coasters, folding fans, tablecloths, door curtains, umbrellas, mobile phone pouches, wallets, backpacks, and various figurative hanging ornaments, featuring distinct folk and ethnic characteristics.

Wuzhen boasts a thriving handicraft industry. Every bamboo and wood item, from daily necessities to artworks, embodies the ingenuity of local residents. Exquisite wood carvings, root carvings and bamboo engravings look naturally formed, plain yet full of unique craftsmanship.

Shen Yongchang, founder of Yida Silk Shop, a time-honored silk brand in Wuzhen, had a son named Shen Xuewen. After inheriting the family business, he found that traditional silk fabrics woven on wooden looms were slow-selling in the market. Following extensive research, he resolved to replace traditional goods with jacquard brocade. In 1923, he personally selected more than ten apprentices and sent them to Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing and other cities to learn brocade weaving techniques. After years of painstaking trials and repeated experiments, he successfully developed a towering jacquard loom consisting of nearly 2,000 components with over a hundred production procedures.

It takes more than one hundred days to finish a piece of brocade on the giant jacquard loom, from designing the pattern draft to weaving the final product. The weaving process is extremely intricate, yielding only 5 to 6 centimetres of brocade per day — hence the well-known saying "An inch of brocade is worth an inch of gold". Wu Brocade is woven from top-grade natural silk, and some varieties are interwoven with pure gold threads. The finished satin brocade is firm, luxurious and elegant. Locals name this figured silk fabric Wu Brocade, as it absorbs China’s renowned brocade craftsmanship and integrates Wuzhen’s indigenous traditions.

Wuzhen sits at the heart of a region famed for sericulture and silk production. The local silk floss is firm yet soft, free of lumps, hard veins and impurities, with a pure white colour and an even texture as thin as paper. Locals call it big-ring floss or hand-made floss. Its lightness, warmth and air permeability are unmatched by modern space cotton.

Historically under the administration of Huzhou Prefecture, Wuzhen has a long-standing tradition of making Huzhou brushes. Crafted manually through over seventy procedures with goat, weasel and mountain hare hair as raw materials, Huzhou brushes feature four prime merits: sharp tip, neat hair ends, round shape and resilient bristles, allowing smooth and effortless writing and painting.