— From the Guangzhou Intangible Cultural Heritage New Year Shopping Month to the Beijing International Neighborhood Festival, from the fashion stage of the Shenzhen ICIF to the sister-city talks in São Paulo, Brazil, the thousand-year-old Lu brocade of Juancheng County, Shandong Province, is striding onto ever wider stages. This pure-cotton, hand-woven jacquard textile craft, long practiced in southwestern Shandong, is radiating an unprecedented brilliance in the new era.
Lu brocade is a folk pure-cotton, hand-woven jacquard textile unique to Shandong Province, prized for its exquisite and elegant patterns, brilliant colors, fine and close texture, and comfort and durability. Its weaving process is extraordinarily intricate: from picking cotton and spinning thread to mounting the loom and weaving, the work passes through as many as seventy-two purely handcrafted steps. At the ancient wooden loom, the weaver works the treadles with her feet and throws the shuttle with her hands, conjuring more than 1,990 dazzling patterns from just 22 basic shades of yarn — a feat of boundless variety and consummate craftsmanship. The palette commonly features bright red, peach pink, lake blue, indigo, green, black, yellow, brown and white; the interplay of different motifs and colored threads yields a kaleidoscope of artistic effects. During the Qing Dynasty, Juancheng Lu brocade was presented to the imperial court as tribute. In 2008, its weaving technique was inscribed on the national list of intangible cultural heritage, and in 2018 it was included in the first batch of the National Traditional Craft Revitalization Catalog — the invitation cards for the Qingdao Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization were even wrapped in Lu brocade.
In recent years, Juancheng County has adhered to the principle of “preserving heritage and encouraging innovation in equal measure,” advancing the creative transformation and innovative development of the craft. In 2022, Juancheng Lu Brocade Crafts Co., Ltd. was designated a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage workshop. To date, Lu brocade products span seven major categories — fabrics, bedding, clothing and accessories, decorative wall hangings, and bags and handbags — encompassing more than 1,000 patterns and varieties. In 2025, the Technical Specification for Lu Brocade Weaving was formally initiated as the nation’s first dedicated technical standard for the craft, filling the gap of “no dedicated specification” in Shandong Province’s Lu brocade weaving sector. That same year, Lu brocade accompanied provincial leaders on official visits to Europe and Southeast Asia as a provincial gift, shining on the diplomatic stage. Also in 2025, the project “Bringing Brocade into Tea, Weaving the Beauty of the East — The Lu Brocade IP,” by Juancheng Lu Brocade Crafts Co., Ltd., was selected in the Shandong Province Intangible Cultural Heritage IP Application Case awards.
Lu brocade has not only made frequent appearances at major exhibitions across China; it has also become a bridge of cultural exchange between China and the world. In January 2026, Juancheng Lu brocade appeared at the Guangzhou Intangible Cultural Heritage New Year Shopping Month as a representative project of Shandong Province. In May of the same year, it made a striking debut at the Beijing International Neighborhood Festival, where diplomats and friends from many countries stopped to experience it firsthand.
Lu brocade is also playing a significant role on the front lines of rural revitalization. Through market-oriented marketing, Juancheng County has brought substantial economic returns to the people engaged in brocade weaving. Dayan Township, home to the production base of the project’s safeguarding unit, was named one of Shandong Province’s first batch of typical townships for “intangible cultural heritage helping to lift people out of poverty and drive rural revitalization.” The county commerce bureau has also organized Lu brocade production and sales enterprises to expand e-commerce marketing over the Internet, bringing the thousand-year-old fabric into the lives of more and more people.
From the ancient wooden loom to the international stage, from the skilled hands of village women to the exploration of standardized production, Juancheng Lu brocade is weaving — thread by thread, warp and weft — a new chapter of our times in which tradition and modernity meet. (Liu Zhaokui)
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