"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 60"
The mist clung to the bamboo groves of Xishuangbanna, where rubber trees stood sentinel over rice paddies and Buddhist pagodas glowed golden through the haze. Su Yao's car bumped along a laterite road, passing Dai villages with stilted bamboo houses and women in sinh (wrap-around skirts) carrying baskets of mangoes on their backs. Near the town of Jinghong, beside a lotus pond in front of a 200-year-old temple, a group of weavers sat on wooden benches, their hands moving in harmony over wooden looms. Their leader, a woman with a silver waist chain and a pha tha (Dai brocade) shawl draped over her shoulders named Aye, looked up as they approached, holding a finished textile—vibrant reds and greens woven into patterns of elephants, peacocks, and lotus flowers. "You've come for the pha tha," she said, her Dai language soft and melodic like temple bells, gesturing to the bolts of brocade stacked beside a statue of the Buddha.
The Dai people of Yunnan have woven pha tha for over 1,500 years, a craft intertwined with their Theravada Buddhist faith and agricultural way of life. The pha tha—a richly patterned brocade made from cotton and silk—serves as offerings to monks, wrapping for sacred texts, and clothing for important ceremonies. Each motif carries spiritual meaning: elephants represent strength and wisdom, peacocks symbolize purity, and lotus flowers signify enlightenment. Woven on foot-treadle looms, the process is guided by the lunar calendar, with weavers starting new projects during the waxing moon to ensure prosperity. Dyes are made from plants grown in temple gardens: sappanwood for red, indigo for blue, and turmeric for yellow, with each batch blessed by monks to infuse it with merit. The weaving begins with a bai sri ceremony, where offerings of sticky rice and incense are made to the weaving spirits, and weavers chant prayers to the Buddha for skill and focus. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this sacred craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Dai traditions while adding durability to the delicate fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "spirituality" and "innovation" was as different as the misty mountains and the rushing Mekong River.
Aye's granddaughter, Linh, a 25-year-old who taught weaving at a cultural center while studying Buddhist art, held up a pha tha scarf with a pattern of dancing apsaras (celestial beings). "This is for the Water-Splashing Festival," she said, tracing the figures that bring good luck for the new year. "My grandmother wove it during Vassa (rainy season retreat), when monks stay in the temple. Each thread is tied with a prayer for merit—too many knots, and the apsaras can't dance; too few, and the blessings don't stick. You don't just make pha tha—you weave merit into cloth."
Su Yao's team had brought computerized jacquard looms and synthetic dye blends, intending to mass-produce simplified pha tha patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "cultural luxury" home decor line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-woven lotus motifs, the women froze, their shuttle sticks hovering mid-air. Aye's husband, Phra, a 68-year-old master weaver who had once made offerings for the king of Thailand, stood and folded his hands in a wai (traditional greeting) before speaking. "You think machines can accumulate merit?" he said, his voice steady but firm. "Pha tha carries the breath of prayers and the wisdom of the Buddha. Your metal has no breath, no wisdom—it is a stone, not a sacred object."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Dai weavers grow cotton in small plots beside their homes, harvesting it by hand during the dry season and spinning it into thread while listening to monks chanting. The silk is obtained from village silkworm farms, where cocoons are boiled in water infused with kratom leaves to soften them—a process that requires exactly 49 stirs, a number sacred to Buddhism. Dyes are prepared in earthen pots over wood fires, with each color mixed according to recipes passed down from mother to daughter, and stored in ceramic jars blessed by the temple's abbot. The seaweed-metal blend, despite its organic origins, was viewed as a profane intrusion. "Your thread comes from the salt sea, which dries our rice paddies," Aye said, placing the sample on a banana leaf. "It will never hold the Buddha's blessings."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the sappanwood dye, turning it a muddy purple and causing the silk fibers to weaken. "It angers the weaving spirits," Linh said, holding up a ruined swatch where the apsaras' wings had frayed. "Our pha tha grows more sacred with age, like a well-chanted sutra. This will decay like unblessed offerings, losing its merit."
Then disaster struck: a severe drought parched Xishuangbanna, withering the sappanwood and indigo plants in the temple gardens and drying up the streams used to clean fibers. The stored silk, kept in a bamboo cupboard, became brittle, and the looms—some carved with scenes from the Jataka tales—were damaged by the dry air. With the Kathina festival approaching, when new robes are offered to monks, the community faced a spiritual crisis. The temple's abbot, a 90-year-old monk named Venerable Pin, performed a puja to invoke the rain god, pouring holy water over the dying plants and chanting the Metta Sutta (Loving-Kindness Sutra). "You have brought something foreign to our sacred land," he said to Su Yao, his voice gentle but grave. "The earth is angry because the balance between tradition and innovation has been broken."
That night, Su Yao sat with Aye in her bamboo house, where a clay stove simmered with pineapple rice, filling the air with the scent of coconut and ginger. The walls were hung with pha tha offerings and family photos with monks, and a small shrine held a Buddha statue and a bowl of fresh lotus petals. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping Pu'er tea. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Aye smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of coconut candy. "The drought is not your fault," she said. "The earth breathes in and out, sometimes giving, sometimes taking. My grandmother used to say that even broken threads can be rewoven, like a broken prayer can be restarted. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that pha tha can grow, without losing its connection to the Buddha. Young people love our traditions, but they need to see them living, not just in museums."
Su Yao nodded, hope blooming like a lotus in the rain. "What if we start over? We'll help dig irrigation channels to save the dye plants, repair the looms, and soften the brittle silk with herbal treatments. We'll learn to weave pha tha by hand, using your foot-treadle looms. We won't copy your sacred motifs. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your lotus flowers with our ocean waves, honoring both your mountains and the sea. And we'll let Venerable Pin bless the metal thread in a bai sri ceremony, so it carries merit."
Linh, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her sinh rustling. "You'd really learn to weave the apsara motif? It takes three years to master the foot pedals—your legs will ache, your hands will memorize 200 different thread movements."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the chants you sing while working. Respect means joining your prayers."
Over the next three months, the team immersed themselves in Dai life. They helped dig irrigation ditches from the Mekong River to the temple gardens, their bodies soaked with sweat under the hot sun, and carried water to the dying plants in earthen jars. They attended dharma talks at the temple, learning about the Buddhist concept of anicca (impermanence) and how it applies to weaving. They sat at the looms from dawn until dusk, their feet moving in rhythm with the treadles, as the women chanted prayers for rain and wisdom. "The loom is like the Wheel of Dharma," Aye said, adjusting Su Yao's posture. "Your feet must move with the rhythm of the universe—too fast, and you create suffering; too slow, and you miss the moment."
They learned to dye fibers in earthen pots, their hands stained red and blue as Linh taught them to add lotus pollen to the sappanwood dye to "make the color glow like enlightenment." "You have to pick the sappanwood branches on Uposatha days (holy days)," she said, grinding the wood into a powder. "Merit stays in the wood when it's harvested with a pure heart." They practiced the fahua (flowering) weave, creating raised patterns that make the motifs seem to float, their progress slow but steady as Phra counted their mistakes with a patient smile. "The peacock's tail must have 108 feathers," he said, referencing the number of beads in a Buddhist rosary. "Each one is a step on the path to enlightenment."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and sappanwood dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of lotus stem mucilage and holy water from the temple, a mixture Dai use to preserve sacred texts. The mucilage sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the holy water—blessed by Venerable Pin—gave it a subtle sheen that Aye declared "shines with merit." "It's like giving the thread a Buddhist soul," she said, showing a swatch where the red now glowed against the metal's shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way the Mekong River connects to the South China Sea, designed a new pattern called Lotus of the Four Seas, merging Dai lotus motifs with wave patterns in seaweed-metal thread. The lotuses gradually open into waves, symbolizing how enlightenment spreads like water. "It honors your faith and our ocean," she said, and Venerable Pin nodded, running his hand over the design with a smile. "The Buddha's teachings flow like water," he said. "This cloth shows that truth."
As the rains finally came and the dye plants sprouted new leaves, the community held a Kathina celebration, with monks receiving new robes, traditional dances, and a feast of sticky rice and grilled fish. They unveiled their first collaborative piece: a pha tha banner with the Lotus of the Four Seas pattern, its silk and cotton fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that caught the light like sunlight on water, and traditional elephant borders that seemed to walk across the fabric.
Venerable Pin blessed the banner with holy water, as the weavers chanted in unison. "This cloth has two hearts," he said, his voice carrying across the temple grounds. "One from the mountains of Yunnan, one from the great oceans. But both beat with the same truth—that all things are connected."
As the team's car drove away from Xishuangbanna, Linh ran alongside, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of pha tha dyed red, stitched with a tiny lotus and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in a banana leaf. "To remember us by," read a note in Dai and Chinese. "Remember that mountains and sea both reflect the Buddha's light—like your thread and our silk."
Su Yao clutched the package as the bamboo groves faded into the distance, the mist rising to meet the clouds. She thought of the hours spent weaving beside the temple, the chants that seemed to weave themselves into the threads, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the silk and cotton. The Dai had taught her that tradition isn't about being trapped in the past—it's about carrying sacredness forward, letting it evolve while keeping its connection to the divine.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Ryukyuan team: photos of Mana holding their collaborative bashofu kimono at an eisaa festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new lotus—Yunnan mountains and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, temple bells rang, their sound a reminder of the wisdom that transcends cultures. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless traditions to honor, countless threads to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to the spirit of the craft, honoring the hands that create—the tapestry would only grow more sacred, a testament to the beauty of all things woven together in harmony.