China’s ‘Mermaid’ Hezhen People | SCMP

Here's a slightly off-beat post on China's Hezhen people, who are also known as "The Fish-Skin People". 

The Hezhen are famous their fish skin clothes. Making such clothes is a dying tradition, as it's complicated and time consuming.  The process starts by taking the full skin of a silver carp and drying dry it. The second step is to remove the fish scales and hammer the skin with wooden mallet to soften it, and making it as soft as cotton cloth. The final step is to sew the fish skin with silver carp skin threads and fashion it into clothes.   

One of the Hezhen women involved in making the fish skin clothes spent five years making 33 pieces. After the fish skins are sun-dried, she would roll a wooden rod on the skins until flat as paper. Rather than pounding the skin with a mallet, she used her bare hands to rub the fish skins thousands of times until they were as soft as a piece of cotton fabric.

The Hezhen have been eating raw fish since long before sushi was invented. They also eat fish skin, fish eggs, and soft fish bones in a raw state.