Stores
Sites
Taobao
This is one of the main online shopping malls in China. Some people have managed to ship directly, but for me, somehow my phone number was used by another for account abuse, so I use a shipping proxy.
ParcelUp
This is a proxy service for Chinese shopping, it’s also very nice because the search is in Chinese, so you can ask for what you want precisely.
Superbuy
This is probably the most popular proxy service, they have a very sophisticated site. I have used them and been satisfied.
Reliable Stores
These are stores I have personally purchased from.
Forest Fabrics – This is a Hong Kong Fabric store that sells high quality chemical fiber kinran.
SiLiHeCo – This is an etsy store that sells some of the softest, highest quality hemp I’ve ever purchased.
FengXing – This is an aliexpress store that sells digitally printed ramie. The ramie is soft and light, good for summer. The printing was slightly off grain but still very lovely and in period for song dynasty China.
New Art Silk – This is a silk seller on taobao that I have ordered rinzu from, they are the only one that actually shipped the right thing out of four silk orders I placed.
茉莉名妆店 – Scroll store; they have a4 size scrolls that hang, which is nice for scribal sca work.
和扇堂旗舰店 – Fan store; has nice gold mica xuan paper bat fans.
东洋四宝堂 – Calligraphy store, I got some nice brush rests here.
helenhe2008 – Sells fine bedding hemp, extra wide bolts
古风好扇 – Fan store; has chemical silk bat fans in lots of fun colors.
Interesting Stores
These are stores that I have not purchased from but look very promising.
洋五月。-This taobao store sells kimono bolts.
李跃淋 -Fine ramie/linen store.
丝绸面料打样中心 – Silk broker that sells a lot of traditional silks.
古韵陶瓷小铺 – Tiny ceramics for calligraphy, like adorable zodiac animal water droppers.
Tie Dye Shop – Sells indigo dyeing supplies. There’s actually a whole section called ‘bai painting‘ on taobao that’s like a secret portal to an even cooler, cheaper dharma trading.
Useful Vocabulary
Fibers
Linen:亚麻
Hemp: 大麻, 汉麻
Ramie: 苎麻
Silk: 绡,丝
“Real” Silk: 真绡
Bast fibers in particular are hard to distinguish, often something listed as 汉麻 will turn out to be ramie and not hemp. I think there’s a difficulty because 大麻 is a restricted word on taobao and aliexpress, so 汉麻 is often used to “get around” this restriction. Sometimes you will see 汉麻in the title and 苎麻 in the material section.
A lot of chemical fibers get listed under “silk” so please be careful if you are interested in mulberry silk.
Weaves
These are terms that seem to produce fruitful results in search engines, not necessarily the pinnacle of good grammar or spelling.
Weave: 织
Gauze: 纱布,丝(for silk, see below)
Jacquard: 提花
Brocade: 锦缎
Habotai: 平絹 (flat silk), 真丝电力纺 (electric spun silk tabby)
Silk Gauze: 真丝绡, 真绡纱
Silk Jacquard: 提花真绡
Silk Jacquard Gauze: 提花真丝绡, 提花真绡纱
Silk Brocade: 锦缎真绡
Modern Chinese terms for Ancient Weaves
| Phonetic | Characters | Phonetic |
| Han qi | 汉绮 | tabby patterned with warp floats |
| jialuo | 假罗 | open tabby (‘mock leno’) |
| jin | 锦 | polychrome compound warp-faced tabby or twill |
| juan | 绢 | plain tabby |
| luo | 罗 | gauze |
| luosha | 罗纱 | gauze |
| qi | 绮 | tabby patterned with twill |
| qirong jin, rongquan jin | 起绒锦, 绒圈锦 | jin patterned with pile warp |
| qiwen juan | 畦纹绢 | warp rep |
| sha | 纱 | open tabby |
| wenluo | 纹罗 | patterned gauze |
| xiewen | 斜纹 | twill |
| zhou | 绉 | crepe |
Example Searches
I cannot use taobao itself, because my phone number is somehow tied to someone else’s account abuse, so I use a proxy that allows chinese searches.
Jacquard Gauze Silk
Plain White Cloth (Gives interesting results)
Kimono Fabric
A Word of Caution
Before I purchase a large amount of any fiber, I always buy a small swatch, inspect the quality, and then order more. This has never failed me, until I ordered from one vendor, and the first swatch was wonderful, and then I ordered a second large order, and I got a different fabric, 8 meters of very scratchy ramie, that I couldn’t return.
I don’t know what happened. Was it deliberate switch, a mixup with the broker, or just the seller getting mixed up? I asked my husband, who is from northern China, what he thought, and he said that many of the stores can be as simple as someone selling from their apartment, where a mixup is very easy to occur. He also suggested chinese customers might not be as picky as I am, and as long as they got a bolt of white thin ramie, they probably wouldn’t mind as much about the quality changing, and the vendor may not also consider it a significant change. So, if you are a very precise person like me, please be careful.