Yugur woman mixes business, philanthropy and art in a successful melange

Businesswoman Serkyi is a modern day Renaissance woman, known among the Yugur as a tribal "junkwoman", museum owner, horseback-riding elementary school teacher, khata maker and painter.

In her newly finished Yugur museum, which holds more than 1,000 articles she collected from tribal herdsmen in Sunan Yugur autonomous region, Gansu province, Serkyi is preserving and protecting the cultural heritage of those who live between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus.

Serkyi, 54, is known as a "junkwoman" in her tribe because "she collects everything about the Yugur, from needles to worn-out tools used to make leatherware to rotten burial gifts", said her daughter, Marjan Sun.