The application of dyes has a long history in our motherland. It is said that people can dye the pulp of plants more than 4500 years ago during the Yellow Emperor period. According to China's writings and unearthed cultural relics, our ancestors used dyes to dye silk fabrics in various colors since they could raise silkworms and reel silk. There are many characters used to describe various colors in China's writings, and the types of colors are also divided very finely, such as red, green, purple, crimson (pronounced, red), scarlet (pronounced, red), purple (pronounced, black) and so on, and each glyph has a "purple". Moreover, the silk thread from 65438 to 0959 found in the circular tomb of the Yin Dynasty in Wangyukou, Anyang, Henan Province proved that it was dyed by the Yin people more than 3000 years ago.
The dyes used in ancient China were all obtained from plants or animals, mainly natural dyes extracted from plants. For example, extract indigo from indigo leaves, alizarin from madder, carmine from cochineal insects, curcumin from ginger juice, hematoxylin from hematoxylin and so on. For thousands of years, plant dyes have been widely used in China, and they have spread to foreign countries with silk. China is the first country to adopt natural dyes.