Embroidery is weaving a new way of life for the women of Dongxiang

• Published date: 09 October 2020
• Publication title: Shanghai Daily

A highway from Lanzhou, capital city of China's northwest Gansu Province, to the region's Dongxiang Ethnic Minority County in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, shows how the people there took pains to bargain with their mountains to build roads. As the road meanders further, it cuts through the Xigu Tunnel, Guang's Plateau Tunnel, Mou's Great Mountain Tunnel, Jia's Mountain Tunnel, Tile Stone Mountain Tunnel, West Mountain Ridge Tunnel and Gang's Barracks Tunnel, until it reaches the last No. 7 Road Girder Tunnel toward Dongxiang. A traveler might have a slight feeling of claustrophobia due to the length of the tunnels as their vehicle advances, then a bright dot of exit emerges and sunshine penetrates.

"It was winter when I first visited Dongxiang. A lack of water caused the soil there to be exposed. When a gust of wind passed, dust drifted. So later when I saw flamboyant Chinese peony in front of many households, I thought they were fake. But residents told me the flowers were real. And they looked well tended.

"People in Dongxiang don't complain about their place. They cherish a hope," said Zhao Yan, who is from Shanghai and chief secretary of Xihan Action, a public welfare project devoted to the inheritance of traditional Chinese culture and a better life for craftspeople and disadvantaged groups.

This was Zhao's third time visiting Dongxiang and she was bringing with her a package of sample face masks with Dongxiang embroidery patterns on them.

The face masks were designed for free by Australian designers invited by Xihan Action. They then underwent a redesign that added embroidery patterns in Dongxiang duoxiu, or peck stitch embroidery, based on suggestions from a Dongxiang local intangible culture inheritor. Temperature control technology developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences was also used in making the masks.

Zhao was to show the samples to Ma Xiaoxiao, a local anti-poverty leader and founder of the Dongxiang Embroidery Workshop for Poverty Alleviation, and Axiye Ma, a prefecture-level Dongxiang embroidery intangible cultural inheritor and the assistant sample producer for the embroidery pattern on the masks.

Coverings for all ages

Traditional Dongxiang ethnic minority costumes include a Hui hat or a covering for the women. Single women wear a frilled Hui hat in bright colors and married women wear a covering that wraps around their hair. A covering's color also differs in accordance with a woman's age: they wear a green covering when they are young black when they become middle-aged and white when they are getting old.

At Ma Xiaoxiao's Dongxiang Embroidery Workshop for...