Batik ( wax-printing) symbolizes the cultural identity of minorities in southwestern China. However, in its long history , batik was widely used as one of the traditional styles of clothing in the central and western parts, but nowadays it has become a fad for different minorities to show the special features of their ethnic culture. This paper holds that in the wide expansion of modern life, a society undergoes a series of transformation in which the dominant people give up some of its own tradition and adopt some styles of life that are universally accepted. Meanwhile, the minorities undergo similar transformation in which they preserve part of their tradition by changing them into their differential signs for their identities in the process of modern penetration. In a sense, this is similar to what Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger have called " the invented tradition. " It should be noted that the formation of a differential sign is not due to the lack of such signs but to the fact that the invented sign has commercial value. In other words, commercial value is a very important factor in the production of culture, therefore, the meaning of culture is not determined by the competition between the strong and the weak in generational transition as Clifford Geertz would believe it to be.