Old needlework display in Chengdu

Jiang Mei is so preoccupied with her needlework that she ignores visitors approaching her to look at her Sichuan-style embroidery work of fish and hibiscus.

The 30-year-old from Anyue county in Southwest China's Sichuan province, takes the curiosity for granted and doesn't bother to raise her head until a visitor asks her questions.

Next to her at the Chengdu Shu Brocade and Embroidery Museum is her teacher Peng Shiping, who looks attentively as his 28-year-old daughter Peng Lin embroiders a fish on silk. The 55-year-old master of Shu embroidery would stop her if he found her stitches to be imperfect. Jiang and the Pengs are professional embroiders who live in the capital of Sichuan.