The Reason for Making

Handmade on the Silk Road is a three-part observational documentary made by BBC. It followed three craftsmen ( a weaver from China, a wood carver from Uzbekistan, a potter from Iran) in their daily routine to carry on the local traditional craftswork of those based in the ancient trade route.

 In each episode any romantic, ideal image of making was striped bare as these craftsmen utilised their skills mainly to support the everyday living. The conditions they lived under were extremely modest and simple. Yet each of them had such pride in the making: Life is meagre; it is making that gives life its texture, meaning, and stirs the maker’s mind to think and feel.

 Seeing the environments that these craftsmen lived in makes me think of the Chinese village I grew up in. Most of the women in my village including my mum were skilled craftswomen. In the long winters where there was not much work in the fields, these women would gather and make things such as shoes, jumpers, winter jackets, quilts.

 The materials they used were mostly recycled, such as old clothes would be used to make the sole of shoes through washing, tearing, layering, patching, and needling. Some materials were home grown such as cotton used for making quilts and winter jackets.I miss those winters, and had wished I was passed on all those skills. Somehow I think I could be just as happy, living a life in a village, with a shelter, a wholesome family, and a connected and nurturing community.

 Watching the BBC program made me think of the lost traditions with time including those in my village, the reason for making things, what will happen to the endangered craft traditions, and what it means to us living in a mass produced society today.It feels like making comes from the intrinsic needs of us as human beings , from the deep wanting from the heart; often it is the making that takes us to a different measurement of time and space.

 Perhaps this is what the English sculptor Antony Gormley meant: albeit in the truth of the geological time that our life is as dust, the making is to give the indication that we were here…it is through making that the connection is made with the geological time, the eternity.

 Documentary URL link: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079cmnz