Inner Mongolia embroiders prosperity

HOHHOT－Basking in the morning sun as it streams through the window, Liu Menglan is stitching lifelike flowers on clothes with her dexterous hands.

For Liu and some other women from North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, the spacious embroidery studio has upended their lives－in a good way.

"I never imagined a life like this. My family earned almost 60,000 yuan ($9,331) last year," Liu says. She is capable of making 40,000 yuan a year from embroidery products, while back in 2015, her extended family lived on an annual income of less than 5,000 yuan. "We couldn't even afford the forage for our sheep and didn't have anything left at the end of the year," Liu recalls.

Liu and her fellow seamstresses are just some of the 26,000 women from the Horqin Right Wing Middle Banner of Hinggan League to capitalize on their talent in embroidery and secure a stable income.

In 2017, she began to learn her embroidery skills through a training program supported by the local government, one of 140 such training programs that were launched in the 173 villages across the banner. "The skills helped 2,895 impoverished rural residents increase their annual incomes by an average of 2,000 yuan," says Bai Jingying, a local official in charge of promoting embroidery skills to fight poverty.

Liu's family has moved into a new home, and her husband works as a ranger, earning an annual income of over 10,000 yuan.

Through its National Human Rights Action Plan (2016-20), China vowed to strengthen support for cultural development in areas inhabited by non-Han ethnic groups, and implement training programs to develop traditional craftsmanship. For some, traditional handicrafts, such as paper-cutting and carving, have enriched their daily lives.

Feng Suyan, a local from Tuquan county, has taken to the art form after she attended paper-cutting classes taught by Zhao Rixia, an intangible cultural heritage bearer of the craft in Inner Mongolia, six years ago, and is now a passionate paper-cutting artist. Whenever she has free time, she will make something and share it on social media.

Zhao launched her workshop in 2015 and has taught over 1,000 students, with the local government's support. "Most came to learn it just for fun. Paper-cutting represents a traditional culture, and at the same time, it enriches people's lives," she says.

Xinhua