An embroidery workshop in an impoverished county in Inner Mongolia not only promotes Mongolian culture, but also helps local women out of poverty.
An embroidery workshop in an impoverished county in Inner Mongolia not only promotes Mongolian culture, but also helps local women out of poverty.
Today, few people now wear this ancient style of clothing. This has led to a decreasing number of artisans of the craft.
In order to attract more people to uphold this traditional culture, a workshop was built in 2016, which is co-managed by the local University Graduates Employment and Startups Association and the Xiangrui Embroidery Poverty Alleviation Service Company.
“We live in an impoverished county. As one of high-level cadres of the CCP, I have a responsibility to find ways to help people out of poverty,” said Bai Jingying, the initiator of the poverty alleviating project.
“In 2017, we trained a total of 5,782 women. When they went home, they came back with one or two more people, so we reached 10,000 last year. This year there are about 21,000 women who are making money from embroidery. Among them, there are 2,895 poor families with an average annual income of 1,809 yuan. This year that income is expected to reach 3,000 yuan,” Said Bai.
Zhao Guirong, 34, is an embroidery artisan famed in her village. She began to learn from Bai in March last year. She earned almost 40,000 yuan by doing embroidery in one year.
So far, 15 of the banner’s villages have changed their major industry to embroidery, with sales reaching 4.5 million yuan in 2017, and 2.3 million yuan in the first five months of this year.
According to Yang Fulin, the chairman of the association, the workshop has employed about 50 university graduates to do management and marketing. They help design the patterns, choose the embroidery for different products, and sell them on different platforms.