A Weaving Workshop in Caizhao Village

In 2014, a Lhoba textile and clothing teaching center opened in Caizhao village, in what is now Milin City. A Tibet culture and tourism department report says the center hired the craft practitioner Yayi as a teacher and organized systematic classes for young women in the village. The workshop gave instruction a local home, where learners could meet the craft through regular teaching.

The same report identifies Milin Lhoba weaving as a regional intangible cultural heritage item, listed in 2007. In 2021, a Nyingchi government account described another Caizhao training session: one inheritor taught 18 apprentices clothing making for a month, while another taught 11 apprentices weaving for 15 days. These dated classes show how teaching continued through named instructors and organized groups.

In October 2015, local craft practitioner Ya Daer led the formation of a traditional Lhoba craft company based at the Caizhao teaching center, according to the later report. More than twenty village women joined its learning and production work. The group developed over ten kinds of handmade goods and made more than one hundred pieces for sale through a shared channel. The report says each participant earned at least 2,000 yuan in annual cash income at the time.

The figures describe a particular period, but they show how the center linked instruction with collective production and sales. The loom and the cooperative belonged to the same village story: skills were taught, goods were made together, and a shared channel connected that work with buyers.

The reports name teachers, apprentices and a cooperative, placing Caizhao’s weaving story in a specific village. A regional overview also mentions cotton, plant fibers and animal wool among materials used in Milin Lhoba weaving. These sources describe a field of practice and a way of organizing instruction; the garments themselves carry the close detail of fiber, pattern and technique.

At Caizhao, the documented sequence runs from a teaching center opened in 2014 to organized apprenticeships and a village company formed the following year. Yayi and Ya Daer stand at different points in that account—as teacher and cooperative leader—while the learners and makers carried the work forward together.