An art that comes from the genes: traditional Yi embroidery

KUNMING — Li Ruxiu, 60, walks the runway wearing a cockscomb-shaped hat and black, red, yellow and green clothing, displaying traditional Yi ethnic costumes to tourists.

Li is a member of the Yi ethnic group and has been showcasing traditional Yi costumes featuring handmade embroidery in Yongren county of Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture in Yunnan province for more than 50 years.

"I have been obsessed with embroidery since I was a girl," Li says.

She learned to do embroidery work when she was 8 and could make her own costumes when she was 12, she says.

"Yi girls here who can hold a needle can embroider. Embroidery is a skill in our genes."

Yunnan is home to about 5 million Yi people. With ancestral embroidery skills, Yi people needle nature designs onto their costumes, such as flowers, butterflies, birds, tigers and cats, as well as the sun, the moon and stars.

For more than 1,300 years the Yi have passed on their embroidery traditions, a form of intangible cultural heritage. However, steep mountains used to cut off the unique culture from the outside world, and for a long time the art of Yi embroidery remained a mystery.

Local authorities have thus taken a series of measures, including training embroiderers, holding fashion shows and promoting Yi costumes in big Chinese cities.

Li's daughter Yu Kunyao opened a Yi embroidery studio in the county after she graduated from college, incorporating new fashion elements and winning over young consumers.

"Life is like embroidery," Li says. "It needs patience and dexterity."

Fan Zhiyong, vice-president of the Yi embroidery association of Chuxiong prefecture, says: "Yi embroidery is amazing. People like it but have no idea how to apply it to modern life."

Fan has devoted herself to returning Yi embroidery to something more than just art hanging in a museum.

After graduating in 2007 she returned to her hometown to establish the Yunnan Naxi Cultural Creative Development Co Ltd and registered the brand Nasu, leading more than 300 embroiderers to take part in Yi embroidery.

Concerted efforts have yielded promising results. There are now 56 Yi embroidery associations and cooperatives as well as 538 embroidery workshops in the prefecture, including 12 companies each with an annual output value of more than 5 million yuan ($700,000).

Yunnan has invested more than 30 million yuan to promote the Yi cultural industry, whose output value rose from 20 million yuan in 2012 to 200 million yuan last year.

Among the 57,000 female embroiderers in Chuxiong prefecture, Li Guoxiu earns more than 6,000 yuan a month from working at Colorful Yi Embroidery Culture Co Ltd in Nanhua County.

Ding Lanying, head of the company and mother of two daughters, has been dedicated to helping rural mothers work near home, enabling them to take care of their children.

As a provincial inheritor of intangible cultural heritage in Yunnan, Ding has mastered more than 70 Yi embroidery techniques. Last year her company developed more than 1,000 products in more than 300 categories, such as handbags and shawls, with an income of 15 million yuan.

Now Ding's elder daughter has become a county-level inheritor of Yi embroidery.

"Yi embroidery is our life, and we have worked hard to make the old art brand-new," Ding said.

Xinhua