A Study On Hotan Carpet Culture And Its Change

Uyghur carpets are a hand-making product with a long history, and they are also a product integrating the arts of drawing, spinning and weaving, carving, and knitting. The carpets are the results of hard working Uyghur people who are intelligent, brave, wise and creative. The technology of Uyghur carpet making is passed on from generation to generation of Uyghur people and the carpets are very important in the life of Uyghur people.The origin of Hotan carpets, which take the nature as the main contents of designs, was a cultural phenomena. In the past 2000 years, Hotan carpets has been improved in their contents, patterns, colour designs, production scale and amount and now they are regarded as one of the Hotan three treasures. This long development is a process from subjectivity to objectivity and vice versa. This process, in turn, is the one in which the national, regional and ethnic communication and cultural absorption happens. And we can see the multi-dimension culture of Uyghurs that is reflected in Hotan carpets. Therefore, Hotan carpets, as a kind of material cultural heritage have their multi-way values and meanings in the daily life of the Uyghur people. It is only because these values and meanings that the carpets will not be deserted by the time but they will be developed and preserved in a better way.The cultural values in Hotan carpets lie in the fact that they reflect the cultural traits of different regions and ages and that they, based on the Uyghur culture as their root, continuously learn new elements from other cultures.The historical values of Hotan carpets are that they are the witness of the civilizations that Xinjiang Uyghurs developed in different times and that they reflect the historical changes in economy, culture, ethnic people and religion. What is more, the history of making carpets in Hotan is about 2000 years long.The artistic values of Hotan carpets are that they are a carrier of ethnic culture, and that they demonstrate the distinctive ethnic style and regional features. So many artistic collectors treasure Hotan carpets. Although the designs of Hotan carpets directly copy the specific plants of the nature, they are not a simple copy and imitation. In fact, the wise Uyghur ancestors, after careful surveys and thinking, selected those plants that most reflect the beauty of the nature and integrated them, by use of exaggeration, imagination and reproduction, so as to reach the ideal artistic level beyond the natural beauty.So far as the social values of Hotan carpets, they reflect the life habits, aesthetic habits and ethnic characteristics of the Uyghur people. Carpets beautify their life environment and spread their culture and produce economic benefits, and in turn create the social benefits, too. Meantime Hotan carpets perform a function of transmitting Uyghur traditional culture. The most important reason why Uyghur carpets are transmitted from old times to the present time is that the technology of making them is passed on from fathers to their sons or from masters to their apprentices without discontinuity and this transmission involves the transmission of professional moral values and taboos from the old to the young.It is because of the above values and functions that Hotan carpets are passed on generation by generation so that they are not lost or deserted. They will be developed and improved in the time when the protection of the heritages of material cultures and intangible and oral cultures are attached great importance to.