There weren't many kinds of entertainment when I was child, and we had to get by with games of our own devising. But that made our lives all the richer, because it meant there were different "programs" each day.

One type of entertainment we discovered back then--which had both aural and visual appeal--was watching the quilt man fluff up the cotton for the inside of quilts. Tbe big quilt-beating bow suspended from his back and the wooden mallet he held in his hand made a low, reverberating noise that at times rang out sharp and clear. The sound had a natural rise and fall to it, a complex yet orderly melody that was quite pleasant to hear.

A story among the people goes that an old woman once broke down in tears when she heard a man playing the ch'in, or Chinese zither. Pleased with himself, the musician asked her whether his performance hadn't been too touching. "No," she replied. "It reminded me of my late son, who used to beat cotton for a living!"

Although such a story could hardly occur nowadays, when almost all quilts are all machine-made, it contains quite a bit of truth. Artistry arises from labor, and works of art were once closely related, or even equivalent, to objects for practical use. So isn't it possible that quilt pounding could evolve into music? Otherwise, how could we have been so captivated by it?

Before it was rendered obsolete by machine production, cotton quilt fluffing was a common trade in the countryside and even became a subject for painters of rural life.

The traditional method of fluffing up quilts took shape during the Yuan dynasty (1271 to 1368), when the Woman of the Yellow Way (the Chinese zodiac) is said to have improved the cotton-fluffing bow by lengthening it from one-and-a-half to four feet and adding a rope string, which increased its effectiveness.

By the end of the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644), the method had been further refined. The bow was made of wood, with a string of waxed thread, and suspended from a pole, which increased the speed of operation.

Despite advances in technique over the ages, Taiwan's "quilt fluffing" business had gradually disappeared by the 1960s. I have only a vague impression that the quilt maker, besides being asked to make new ones, could also be asked to fluff up old quilts that had flattened out with use.

The quilt-fluffing process, according to a report by the Shuang Chie Media Communications Corporation, goes like this: First, the right amount of cotton is spread out on a wooden frame. Next, the quilt man goes back and forth beating the cotton many dozens of times, until the cotton looks soft and fluffy and sticks together. The cotton is held in place by lead wires and covered with an inner lining made of hemp gauze, which is ironed smooth and sewn up. The cotton stuffing is then slipped inside the quilt cover, and the job is done.

This complicated procedure depends completely on hand labor, and no matter how practiced he might be, a quilt man could finish at most one quilt a day, so it's no wonder his work couldn't compete with machine-made products.

Nonetheless, it really is a pity such a wonderful craft has disappeared. I like to dream that quilt fluffing might be raised into an art form and preserved as a cultural asset.

Also, hand labor always has a quality to it that machines can never match.

[Picture Caption]

Fluffing Up Cotton Quilts, by Tateishi Teshin.