Stitch in time saves nine

By Xie Fang (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-25 08:02

Jiang Zaihong at her workshop. Chen Yong

Jiang Zaihong is never bored with embroidery even though she first picked up an embroidery needle at the age of 6. The 40-year-old thinks of the needle as a baton conducting a wonderful symphony and this always cheers her up.

"Embroidery is a hard craft. It cannot make you rich, but it can make you feel proud when you have completed a satisfying piece of needlework," she says at the 9th China Arts and Crafts Exhibition, held last month in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

Her artwork Lotus won the gold prize at the exhibition.

Jiang is the country's youngest handicraft master at the national level, specializing in Hunan embroidery.

"I have spent my whole life on one particular thing and that is embroidery," she says. "Even if I cannot be a great master, at least I can be an expert. Even if I cannot be an expert, I can always gain a sense of accomplishment from my work. I will keep embroidering until the last day of my life."

China's best embroiderers are from Hunan, Suzhou, Guangdong and Sichuan provinces.

With a history of more than 2,000 years, Hunan embroidery specializes in lion and tiger patterns, while Suzhou embroidery features pets like cats and puppies. Guangdong embroidery is famous for golden dragons; and Sichuan is known for giant pandas and fish.

As time has passed, many stitching methods from different regions have been mixed together. However, Hunan embroidery has preserved a unique stitch called "peng mao zhen", which "brings to life an animal's hair," Jiang says.

The Jiang family has been involved in embroidery for seven generations. All the women in the family excel at needlework.

Jiang's mother is known far and wide as a superb embroiderer and their home was always crowded with local girls, often from neighboring villages, who were eager to learn from her.

Though surrounded by these eager learners, Jiang concentrated on her own work.

"I have to think carefully when making every stitch. It is not enough to just embroider patterns. It is essential to give the figures as much brightness as they have in real life," she says.

In the mid 1980s, the Hunan Provincial Research Institute of Hunan Embroidery employed Jiang, where she discovered that painting could improve her needlework.

Jiang took remedial classes for painting in her spare time, but she didn't dare tell her colleagues, as she was afraid that she might fail to learn the art.

So, she always wrapped her portfolio with oilpaper when quietly leaving the dormitory, which led her roommates to think she might be conducting some mysterious business, she recalls with a laugh.

After two years of hard study, her sense of art improved greatly, especially in terms of the usage of color. Meanwhile, she was trained by embroidery masters to learn "peng mao zhen".

According to Jiang, it requires more than 300 different colors and six different sets of needles to embroider a tiger correctly.

"The bigger needles are used to embroider the tiger's back and legs, or muscles, to show its strength, while the smallest needles stitch the hair around its chest and the top of the tail," she says.

Jiang went to the local zoo to observe animals. "I watched the tigers even more carefully than my son," she says with a smile.

In 2006, she received the title of national handicraft master, three years after she launched the Kaifu Institute of Hunan Embroidery.

Because of her increasing popularity, Jiang has a dilemma - she has been invited to so many events and conferences she doesn't have much time to embroider any more.

"My aspiration is to write a book recording the progress of Hunan embroidery, which was formerly instructed orally by masters. But the problem is that I have no time to do it at the moment," she sighs.

Currently, Jiang makes no more than two pieces of embroidery a year and she hasn't sold any since 2006, as she wants to stage a solo show in the future.

Jiang also points out the Hunan embroidery industry has declined over the past two decades. For instance, in the 1980s, more than 95 percent of girls in Hunan's Changsha county had become embroiderers after their study in middle schools.

Nowadays, just 5 percent of the county women are engaged in the industry. The rest of them leave for the big cities to make a living.

"It is necessary for the local government to carry out policies that will foster the industry," she says.

(China Daily 12/25/2008 page22)