A success story weaved out of true dedication
Travel outside China? An impossible dream, or so Wei Qinghua, now 51, thought when she was a teenager. Wei, from the Dong ethnic group in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, has seen her embroidery skills realize her dream and the entry stamps of many countries, in Europe and elsewhere, are in her passport.
But one particular trip, to London, was special as her embroidery works were received by Vice-Premier Liu Yandong during an exhibition.
The two-day exhibition, named Weaving the Threads of Culture and Time, featuring traditional Chinese handicraft jointly held by China’s Ministry of Culture and the Chinese embassy in London, attracted thousands of viewers.
The year 2017 marked the 45th anniversary since China and the UK established ambassadorial-level diplomatic ties. The exhibition, which opened on Dec 7, was part of the events celebrating the anniversary. Wei, together with three other women of the Miao ethnic group from Sanjiang county in Guangxi, displayed hundreds of their works at the exhibition with many winning international awards.
Having traveled from her hometown to London, Wei’s delicate embroidery artwork amazed visitors to the exhibition, and received accolades from Liu.
The approach of improving people’s lives through embroidery and lifting them out of poverty is a noble aim but it also ensures that skills are handed down to future generations, Liu said at the event.
The Dong ethnic group is one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities, with a population of less than three million, mainly living in south China. The group is renowned for its traditional embroidery. Wei started to learn the craft when she was very little, and has honed her skills over decades. After years of intense and strict training, Wei became an inheritor of embroidery at the age of 40. For Wei, learning the craft is a family tradition and almost all her female family members have mastered the intricate skills involved.
Phoenixes, dragons and flowers are common motifs featured in folk art, which are reproduced on embroidered products, she said. Artworks on display sometimes take three to five years to accomplish. Yet due to language and culture barriers, these handicrafts were not well promoted to the outside world. During the 1980s, rapid urban economic development led to a large number of young people leaving the village for jobs in cities outside of Guangxi.
“But as an embroidery inheritor, if I left the village, the craft would not be handed down to the next generation, and I decided to stay with it after some hesitation,” she said.
“Only by selling our embroideries to more people outside will the craft be more widely appreciated,” she said.
In recent years, the Women’s Federation of Liuzhou has been actively organizing local women to use their skill to earn an income and several embroidery bases have been set up. Today, embroidery has become a more important approach to improving people’s lives.
She said the praise from Liu during the London exhibition had also greatly encouraged her to improve her technique.
Another outcome from the exhibition is that an art innovation platform, supported by the Institute of Directors in the UK as well as the China handicraft workshop, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation with Rongshui county and Sanjiang county in Guangxi. This will enhance support and boost promotion as well as marketing. One local garment company in China is now studying Wei’s embroidery work.
“Now my biggest hope is that I can improve my skill so that my embroidery will be more widely known to international garment brands,” she said.
“Once applied, this will help me to turn my embroiders into commercial artists, and lead local women out of poverty,” she said.