Guizhou Miao Embroidery: Using Needle and Thread to Present the World Ancient Techniques

MILAN, Sept. 23, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On September 24, the "Chinese Miao Art Exhibition "will be jointly held by the Consulate General of China in Milan and Guizhou Provincial People's Government during the 2023-24 Milan Spring/Summer Fashion Week at Ballroom 5, ALAZZO CLERICI VIA CLERICI, Milan, Italy.

Miao Embroidery, as the legend goes, was born during the migration of the Miao nationality. Over thousands of years, the Miao people embroider natural beings and its history on clothes for which the Miao Embroidery is also called the "history book one wears".

Long Luying, a female Miao embroiderer from Shibing County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, led a group of Miao embroiderers to lift themselves out of poverty using their skillful hands and also draw global attentions for Miao Embroidery.

"Miao Embroidery is the treasure of Miao nationality. I learned from my family at a young age. To me, such a beautiful thing needs to be seen, appreciated and loved. We need to inherit and protect its techniques." said Long Luying, the inheritor of this intangible cultural heritage. She added that how to enable embroiderers to feed themselves and their families while looking after their kids is the objective and goal of her establishment of the Wushui Yuntai Workshop.

"Wushui Yuntai, originated from the Wuyang River and Yuntai Mountain in Shibing County, means developing ethnic culture of hometown to make everyone affluent." said Long Luying. Relevant data shows that Long has conducted 48 trainings on career skills and intangible cultural heritage skills for rural females, reaching a total population of over 6,000 persons. She also established 4 training bases of Miao Embroidery and 9 production sites in villages. With all these efforts, she helped increase the income of over 1,000 females and lifted 669 registered impoverished households out of poverty.

The series works of "Wushui Yuntai" and "Butterfly Mom" designed and made by Long has entered several international art exhibitions and been used in many cultural exchange activities. Her works were sold to over 10 countries and regions including the Europe, America, Japan and the Southeast Asia.

Because of Miao Embroidery, many people both domestically and internationally became attached to Guizhou, so was the case for Xia Hua, a native of Liaoning. Since 2003, Xia Hua, Chairman of EVE Group, has for several times led designers to visit Guizhou, the place with plentiful intangible cultural heritages to seek inspirations from ethnic culture and create unique aesthetic products of the Chinese culture. Such visit has lasted to this day and Xia Hua also achieved remarkable "scores": established 1,200 family workshops, and set up the "Chinese Ethnic Aesthetic Pattern Database" and "Chinese Craftsman Database". Currently, the databases have included over 8,000 types of patterns and over 22,000 craftsmen, and reached cooperation with over 400 brands and over 1,600 designers globally...

To further protect, inherit and develop Miao Embroidery, the Department of Culture and Tourism of Guizhou Province adopted such measures as constantly promoting the construction of Miao Embroidery workshops, building up the inheritor groups, greatly improving the R&D of cultural creative products of Miao Embroidery, undertaking digital recording of Miao Embroidery, ensuring the existence evaluation of Miao Embroidery and creating Miao Embroidery experience spaces.

As of now, the province boasts 17 national representative projects related to Miao embroidery as part of its intangible cultural heritage, along with 54 provincial projects. At the national level, there are 7 recognized inheritors of Miao embroidery-related intangible cultural heritage, while at the provincial level there are 47 such inheritors.