On 8 November 2025, at the symposium commemorating the tenth anniversary of the archaeological excavation of the Han-dynasty Haihunhou tomb in Nanchang and devoted to the regional cultures of the Han period, Yang Jun, a senior research fellow at the Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, disclosed that a recent re-examination of a corpus of textile ornaments retrieved from the tomb has identified lacquer-reinforced plain gauze (jiaqi fangkong sha), tabby silk (pingwen juan), tabby-ground chain-stitch embroidery (pingwen juandi suoxiu), and warp-compound woven structures (jing bianzuan zuzhiwu); among these, lacquer-reinforced plain gauze predominates quantitatively. Chain stitch (suoxiu), the earliest extant Chinese embroidery technique, occupied the dominant position in the embroidery repertoire from the Shang–Western Zhou period through the late Eastern Han.
The chain-stitch fragments excavated from the Haihunhou tomb retain a remarkably saturated chromaticity, presumably achieved with silk threads dyed with cinnabar. Their iconographic idiom parallels the celebrated Han embroideries from Mawangdui (Changsha) and Laoshan (Beijing)—notably the “Riding-the-Clouds” (chengyun xiu) and “Longevity” (changshou xiu) patterns. Although the supporting textile substrates have suffered severe biodegradation, the stitch trajectories and decorative syntax of the chain stitching remain legible on the surviving lacquer coffer fragments and coffin boards; nevertheless, their extraction and stabilization present exceptional technical challenges.
Distributionally, the chain-stitch embroideries occur on lacquer coffer debris recovered from the southern corridor and on the frontal panels of the inner coffin. Chromatically, the cinnabar-derived hues exhibit virtually no perceptible fading after more than two millennia, thereby furnishing a vivid material vignette of the mortuary sumptuousness that characterized the life-world of the eminent tomb occupant, the Marquis of Haihun.
