Romance of silk

A Shu embroidery work with carps and flowers. [Photo by Huang Zhiling/China Daily]

More than 2,000 years ago, Sichuan's brocade was exported across Asia through the Silk Road during the Warring States Period (403-221 BC). The trade route is thought to have started in Chengdu, passed through neighboring Yunnan province and then to Myanmar, India and Central Asia, ending in Europe.

"It started 200 years before the North Silk Road, " says professor Tu Hengxian of the College of Textiles of the Shanghai-based Donghua University (formerly China Textile University).

Together with the Song and Yun brocades of East China's Jiangsu province and Zhuang brocade in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in the country's south, Shu brocade is one of China's four most famous schools of embroidery. It is the oldest from which the other three evolved.

So important was the brocade trade in Sichuan that during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), an office of the "brocade officer" was created by an emperor, similar to the role of a textiles minister in modern governments.

Brocade refers to the colorful silk woven textiles. It is a gorgeous past treasure.