Dulong Blanket | Weaving Rainbows

The Dulong are one of the smallest ethnic groups in China, with a population of just over 7,000 people. They live along the river valleys of the Dulong River, deep in the mountains of Gongshan Dulong and Nu Autonomous County, in southwestern Yunnan.

They are often called “the people who weave rainbows.” This name comes not from metaphor alone, but from cloth.

（Photo credit to Xinhua Net）

The Dulong blanket is their most distinctive textile form. Woven by hand on a simple backstrap loom, it is an unwoven brocade composed of horizontal bands of color. Traditionally, it was worn by day and used as bedding by night—where function and beauty were never separate.

There are two ways to understand why these textiles appear so vividly colorful.

One is symbolic.

In Dulong culture, the rainbow represents renewal after hardship—rain followed by clarity, difficulty followed by hope. Color becomes a quiet form of blessing, carried on the body.

The other is rooted in material history.

For generations, Dulong blankets were woven entirely from hemp—the only fiber available in the isolated river valleys. The tones were restrained, shaped by necessity rather than choice.

（Dulong River Valley. Photo credit to Xinhua Net）

A historic shift occurred in 1999, when the Dulong River Road opened, ending the last chapter in China in which an ethnic minority region remained without road access. With the road came connection—and with it, colored cotton threads and wool yarns from inland regions.

Dulong women began weaving these new materials together with traditional hemp. The change was gradual and intuitive. What emerged was not a break from tradition, but its expansion. The blankets slowly became multicolored—appearing on sofas, bedsides, and wrapped around bodies throughout daily life.

Today, Dulong textiles resist industrial logic.

They reject uniformity and exact repetition. Each piece is guided by memory, rhythm, and the hands that make it.

They wear the rainbow as clothing.

I use it as a tablecloth, a sofa throw—as if I were bringing the sunlight, the air of Yunnan, and the stories of an ancient people quietly into my everyday life.

Here, freedom is not declared.

It is woven.