Both baltik and blue calico are traditional printing and dyeing arts and crafts popular among Chinese.

The process of baltik making is delicate: first draw some designs or contours of images - flower, bird, fish or insect, on a piece of white cloth. then use a special brass knife to scoop melted wax to fill in those designs or contours as it hardens on the cotton cloth. The cloth is immersed completely in a jar of indigo dye bath so that unwaxed parts take no color. The dyed cloth is boiled to melt off the wax and to leave clear patterns in white on a blue ground. Since wax and is easy to crack, dye penetrates fine cracks naturally formed in solidified wax, leaving hair-thin blue lines on undyed white designs and enhancing the charm of the final product. Baltik can be dyed with a single or multiple colors, while some ethnic people adopt four or five colors to make the cloth motley and look even more gorgeous. In the ethnic areas, baltik is used extensively to make clothes art quilt covers, headscarves, belts, etc.

Blue calico is also white-and-blue cloth which is produced in many province of China. The method of making blue calico is to cover a piece of white cloth with a peper-cut, then spread a layer of a mixture of lime, bean powder and water over it and dip it in an indigo dye bath. After being dried in the shade, the layer of the mixture is scraped off and there is a finished blue print with two colors, either white background with blue designs or blue background with white designs. Pictures on such cloth are usally flowers, human figurines or legends. Blue calico is used for making clothes, quilt covers, door curtains, canopies and belts.

Baltik and blue calico with strong nationalistic feature has become more and more popular in modern urban life.