Taking traditional skills into the future

　　Miao ethnic people in traditional dress dance at Yanu Festival in Fenghuang. Photos by Wu Wenxing from Fenghuang County Publicity Department

　　 Inheritors of many intangible cultural heritage items in Fenghuang county, Hunan province, not only practice what their ancestors passed down but also innovate and develop new products to meet consumer demands. 

 　　When Xiang Xiuping was a little girl, she lived beside a road that local Miao ethnic people traveled on to go to the market, and noticed how beautiful and delicate their traditional clothes were. Since then, she has been interested in Miao embroidery, although she belongs to the Tujia ethnic group.

　　She began collecting Miao embroidery pieces in 1996. After she was laid off from a tobacco factory in 2000, she opened an embroidery workshop that employed other laid-off workers.

　　During the past decade, she has worked managing companies, storehouses and restaurants, and used nearly all her earnings to buy embroidery for her collection.

　　"The works are not only art, but also a silent language that tells the history of a civilization," she said.

　　Xiang owns a shop in the old town of Fenghuang that sells and displays Miao embroidery. It has traditional Miao costumes, art pendants, toys and clothes combining traditional embroidery skills and modern designs.

　　The star piece in the shop is a 148-meter-long embroidery finished in March 2013. It was designed by Xiang and took 48 women, including Xiang, 26 months to complete.

　　The work shows an old man in a Miao village telling stories of the ethnic group's history from the prehistoric age until today. Xiang spent about 10 years collecting the stories.