Artisan's passion on oil paper umbrella pays off

Production involves over a hundred individual steps, from cutting the bamboo and threading the pieces together, to pasting on the paper shade, drying it in the sun and brushing it with oil. The whole process takes between 15 days and several months, depending on the umbrella's design, and this complexity means that it's still made by hand.

Individual prices range from about 100 to 700 yuan ($15 to $108) and at its peak between 2017 and 2019, the store was selling about 20,000 umbrellas a year. Sales declined sharply during the pandemic, however, and Li still does not have an e-commerce outlet.

But she is no stranger to difficulties. Li's husband made his living as a root carver, and she was once forced to give up her business and go to Beijing as a migrant worker because they were not making enough to feed elderly family members and their three children.

"At the time, few people bought oilpaper umbrellas because cheaper umbrellas had caught on," she said. "None of my family supported my wish to continue."

In 2009, she won third prize at a provincial contest for craftsmen, which boosted her confidence. Afterward, she worked for two years with a TV opera crew sewing sheets and duvet covers, which brought her between 100 to 200 yuan a day. In 2012, she borrowed money and took out loans to open her store. At the time, her husband had just been diagnosed with heart disease.

"I told him not to worry and that I could make money from my hobby," she said. In 2016, he passed away. Out of love and to assuage her grief, Li poured all her energy into the umbrella business.

She had never forgotten that red umbrella in her grandmother's neighborhood store, an object so beautiful, that the 5-year-old girl couldn't take her eyes off it.

"It cost 2 yuan. My parents earned 0.5 yuan a day. It was impossible to buy that kind of luxury," she said. "So it became my lifelong obsession."