Communicatig Guanyin with Hair: Hair Embroidery in the Late Imperial China
Yuhang Li
(PhD Candidate, EALC, University of Chicago)
Friday, June 5, 4:30p.m.
CWAC, 152
Abstract
Hair embroidery is a particular technique practiced by lay Buddhist women to create devotional images during late imperial China. The embroiderers used their own hair as threads to stitch figures on silk. They particularly stitched Guanyin, the most prevalent female deity in China. In recent works on women’s talent, scholars have cursorily mentioned hair embroidery, but they have failed to study it in detail. In this chapter, based on textual references
and surviving hair embroidered Guanyin images, I explore the technique of hair embroidery, its religious connotations and then analyze the cultural significance of this practice. When women embroidered these images of Guanyin, they would create an object out of their hair, and put the product embodying an intimate part of their bodies in temples for all to see. In this way, women sought favors from Guanyin, asking her, for instance, to heal illness or demonstrate their filial piety towards their parents. Thus by offering a part of themselves to Guanyin, they attempted to be close to her. Investigating such practices sheds light on how intimate and non-intimate realms were constituted in relation to religious practice in late imperial China.
