Patterns of success

Yang Mei, 45, is from Qimo subdistrict of Zhijin county, Bijie city of Guizhou. Together with her husband, she moved to Guiyang, the provincial capital, one year after they got married. For about 20 years, they built brick walls, transported sand and carried stones in baskets on their backs at construction sites, earning a combined monthly salary of about 4,000 yuan.

Yang says they didn't have much choice.

"Embroidery is the only craft I know. However, in my hometown, there's hardly anyone who would pay well for it when almost everyone is a master of embroidery," Yang says. "We used to create embroidery just for daily use and self-gratification. For example, we would work for days to create a beautiful wedding dress with complex embroidery patterns that symbolize luck, in order to bless the marriage of the wearer."

One day in 2010, Yang was severely injured while unloading some sand. "I can never do heavy work again," she says, her words dripping with pain and regret.

After a year of recovery, Yang found a new job as an embroiderer at a company in Guiyang which sells products with ethnic cultural characteristics.

After six years there, in 2017, Yang returned to her hometown to develop the local batik and embroidery industry. She brought with her bundles of plain scarves and gathered several of the local women to add ethnic-style embroidery to them, before sending them back to Guiyang for sale. Surprisingly, the scarves sold very quickly.