100
Good Wishes Quilt
Project 2000
introduction
| photos | instructions
In the spring of 2000, adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents
on the APC listserv learned of this tradition and several people became
interested in making a 100 Good Wishes Quilt for their child from China.
One list member volunteered to compile a list of names and addresses of
parents wishing to make a quilt so that they could exchange fabric squares.
This web site will showcase the resulting quilts.
For information on how to participate in this project, please see the
"instructions" link above. On this instructions page are helpful
tips for making your own quilt and information about people who you can
hire to assemble your quilt. The photos page features pictures of and
stories about the quilts completed so far as part of this project.
To welcome and celebrate a new life, there is a tradition in the northern
part of China to make a Bai Jia Bei, or 100 Good Wishes Quilt. It is a
custom to invite 100 people to contribute a single square patch of cloth.
The 100 patches are sewn together into a quilt that contains the luck,
energy, and good wishes from all the families and friends who contributed
a piece of fabric. The quilt is then passed down from generation to generation.
We have not been able to find very much information about this tradition,
but another adoptive parent shared the following paragraph that she found
while reading the book "Imperial Woman" by Pearl S. Buck. The book is
about the final Empress of the Qing dynasty. At this point in the book,
she is a concubine in the Imperial household, but has birthed the only
male child of the Emperor. She has to leave her baby alone for a while
and is thinking of ways to protect him, as well as obligate the other
powerful Manchu families to back her son's claim to the throne. The book
reads:
"She must offer the child as an adopted son, by symbol, to other powerful
families in her clan. Yet what friends had she? She thought and she
pondered and she devised this plan. From the head of each of the highest
one hundred families in the Empire, she required a bolt of the finest
silk. From the silks she commanded the palace tailors to cut one hundred
small pieces and from these make a robe for her child. Thus he belonged,
by symbol, to one hundred strong and noble families, and under their
shelter the gods would fear to harm him."
100 Good Wishes Quilt Web Site
All Contents copyright 2000.
Webmaster: Joanna Norman
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