One Flower, Two Cities: The North–South Schools of Chinese Velvet Flowers
A single craft, born of silk and brass wire, took root in two places a thousand miles apart — and each place made it its own.
Chinese velvet flowers (ronghua, 绒花) never died out completely. They survived in two living lineages: in the south, carried forward by Nanjing and Yangzhou; in the north, by Beijing. This piece looks at the most telling pairing — Nanjing and Beijing.
A fair caveat first: because historical records are fragmentary, no one can say for certain which school came first. What we do know is that both trace back to the rise of China's ancient textile industry, and that their raw materials and core techniques are almost identical.
WHAT THEY SHAREThree things the two schools have in common
1 · Both began as the privilege of royalty and nobility. One school of thought holds that Nanjing ronghua originated in the Tang dynasty, entering the imperial court as tribute. In Beijing's case, the Old Capital Relics Gazette records that "Manchu and Han women took to wearing flowers as a custom, and those who styled the banner headdress most loved bright, novel artificial blooms" — a reference to Beijing velvet flowers of the Kangxi–Qianlong era.
2 · The making is remarkably similar. Both schools use mulberry silk as their only material and rely entirely on the hand. The core steps line up: prepare the silk, comb the strands, twist them onto wire, trim the shapes with scissors, and assemble the strips into a flower.
3 · So are their forms, uses, and meanings. As history moved on, ordinary people wore velvet flowers too. Whether a noblewoman or a commoner's daughter, what they pinned to their hair carried the same wishes — eternal youth, enduring glory, protection and good fortune — answers to deep folk longings. The shapes are endlessly varied: a single sprig, a full tuanhua "cluster blossom," a phoenix crown, even small animals.
WHERE THEY DIVERGETwo differences worth knowing
1 · Strictly speaking, they don't even share a name. In Beijing the craft is not called "velvet flower" at all — its formally recognized heritage name is "Beijing Velvet Birds" (北京绒鸟), tied to the now-defunct Beijing Velvet Bird Factory. That factory specialized in birds and fowl and aimed at foreign markets: by the mid-1980s its annual output reached 8 million RMB, exporting cartoon figures, Christmas trees and festive trinkets.
Nanjing ronghua, true to its name, made its reputation on flowers — which is exactly why the period drama Story of Yanxi Palace reached for Nanjing pieces as the consorts' headdresses.
2 · A few steps go by different names. The step Nanjing calls gōutiáo ("hooking the strip"), Beijing calls shuānpāizi ("binding the paddle") — folding annealed brass wire and twisting the two ends in opposite directions. The step Nanjing calls dǎjiān ("tipping"), Beijing calls shātiáo ("cutting the strip") — rotating the strip in one hand while shaping its tip into a point or a tiny sphere with the scissors.
"Two flowers on one branch — but never truly apart." Across a thousand years and a thousand miles, what holds them together is the same soft yet unbreakable strand of silk.
Perhaps that is the real magic of intangible heritage: it has a soul, it is living history, and it has never truly left our lives. The greatest thing the north and south share is the skill and wholehearted devotion of every generation of makers. The greatest difference is the singular aesthetic and personal style of every individual artisan.
This story was adapted from our Chinese-language journal 云青非遗造趣社 (Yunqing Intangible Heritage Club) on WeChat · Photos: museum collections, stage and screen productions, and our workshop visits.