Ancient craft blooms again

Liu admits that she had occasionally thought of giving up, as the skills are difficult to master, but Cai's encouragement, and the sense of achievement after seeing her first finished work, prompted her to continue.

"Now, I can see myself improving step by step, and I'd like to continue to work on this traditional skill," she says.

The Beijing-style velvet bird (flower) making skill was enlisted as an intangible cultural heritage of Beijing in 2009. As a sixth-generation inheritor, Cai has always been thinking how to better pass on and develop the 300-year-old skill.

He believes that, as well as inventing new tools to increase efficiency, he needs to develop new products with innovative styling and coloring that fits with modern aesthetics.

"Unlike some machines, which help jade carvers to cut the jade, there is not some tool that can help make velvet flower making easier," Cai says.

He is planning on combining velvet products with modern decoration or small furniture items, so that his new products can be both pleasing to the eye and functional.

One of his ideas is to make a velvet butterfly orchid and change the pistil into a bulb so that it could be used as a night light.

Cai is also harnessing the power of social media to help popularize Beijing velvet flowers making.

From the history of the skill to the detailed steps of making a velvet flower, Cai posts on short video platforms like Bilibili and Douyin, as well as lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu, and has so far garnered more than 320,000 likes in total.