Batik, also known as laran or laxie in Chinese, is an ancient folk handicraft for fabric printing and dyeing in China. Together with tie dyeing and stencil printing, batik is known as one of the three Chinese printing techniques. Batik also has a special feature called “Ice patterns” due to the characteristic of wax of cracking.

The history of batik can date back to the period of Qin and Han Dynasties (221BC~220). In Sui and Tang Dynasties (581~907), it was quite popular. Batik technique is handed down from generation to generation in the area of southwest ethnic minorities, especially in Guizhou Province, the hometown of batik.

There spread a story about the origin of batik. The story goes that, in Miao (one of the ethnic minorities in China) cottage, a girl was not satisfied with the pattern of her clothes. One day, the girl dreamed that she was led by a flower fairy to a flower garden. Flowers there are so beautiful that they attracted the girl and also the bees. However, when she woke up, honey and beeswax were found on her skirt. After washing the skirt, she found various white flowers appeared on it. From then on, the method was adopted to make clothes and people named it Batik. It soon widely spread and many ethnic minorities mastered the technique.

The batik goes through three steps: making knots, dipping and dyeing, and drying in the sun. At the process of making knots, dipping and dyeing, people have no idea what the cloth will look like exactly. However, after that, miracles appear: Surprising and unexpected patterns appear on the cloth.

The batik shows the various patterns with white flowers on a blue ground or blue flowers on a white ground. Nowadays, other colors including red, yellow and green are added into the batik, which formed the multicolor batik. The designs are quite rich and colorful. Most of them are taken from the daily life or folktales.