Farmer's Collection of Ethnic Daur Items a Rich Harvest
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20 | Thursday, April 9, 2020 HONG KONG EDITION | CHINA DAILY LIFE uizhou province, nestled weather and daunting terrain makes among the hills in South- collecting herbs very difficult and west China, is the place dangerous. with the second-largest There are currently 67 profession- Goutflow of workers in the country. In al cooperatives operating in Zhijin 2018, the number reached 9.28 mil- Patterns of success county, employing 3,500 women, lion people, which equates to a quar- including 2,200 people who have ter of its permanent residents. As emerged from poverty as a result. large groups of young men choose to By leveraging traditional embroidery techniques, women in Guizhou province Yang reveals that the needlework- leave to seek better pay and jobs with ers can make between 2,000 and greater stability in more industrial- are crafting a brighter future for themselves, Xu Haoyu and Yang Jun report. 4,000 yuan a month, and an increas- ized cities, most women stay home ing number of young women of their to take care of the children and the families are willing to work in their elders. hometowns at jobs which offer a fair However, since the provincial gov- wage, and leave them plenty of time ernment launched its Jinxiu Plan — and energy to take care of family. to promote the development of the Luo Ying, 42, is in charge of an local handicraft industry — in 2013, embroidery and batik cooperative in around half a million women in Guiz- Chadian town of Zhijin county. hou have found employment closer She used to work in a garment fac- to home with the more than 1,000 tory in Fujian province, before handicraft enterprises and profes- returning home to take care of the sional cooperatives that make up a 6 children and the elderly in 2012. Two billion yuan ($849 million) industry. years later, in 2014, she opened a The rich culture of ethnic groups store selling batik products in the in China, including embroidery and town before establishing a coopera- batik techniques they have learned tive with four other people in 2018. since childhood, is now a ticket out Luo says during the years spent far of poverty for those housewives, and away from home, the annual salary even the coronavirus outbreak can’t of around 10,000 yuan barely kept stop them from earning a better liv- her fed, but her life got much better ing. after the establishment of the coop- Yang Mei, 45, is from Qimo subdis- erative. trict of Zhijin county, Bijie city of She adds that the cooperative now Guizhou. Together with her hus- employs more than 100 female band, she moved to Guiyang, the embroiderers, including 73 poor provincial capital, one year after people, and the income created last they got married. For about 20 years, year reached 1.2 million yuan. The they built brick walls, transported monthly average income for the sand and carried stones in baskets craftswomen is between 2,000 to on their backs at construction sites, 6,000 yuan, depending on the work- earning a combined monthly salary load and sales volume. of about 4,000 yuan. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, Yang says they didn’t have much however, the embroidery business choice. has met a bottleneck. “Embroidery is the only craft I Yang and Luo both explain that know. However, in my hometown, they used to send representatives to there’s hardly anyone who would first-tier cities to exhibit and sell pay well for it when almost everyone embroidery products, but now, as is a master of embroidery,” Yang says. Above: Yang Mei (left), people are encouraged to stay at “We used to create embroidery just founder of an embroidery home to avoid spreading the virus, for daily use and self-gratification. cooperative in Zhijin coun- they are not able to reach more con- For example, we would work for ty of Guizhou province, sumers. As a result, sales have days to create a beautiful wedding communicates with a reached a low point. dress with complex embroidery pat- colleague. SHANG YUJIE / FOR According to Luo, from January to terns that symbolize luck, in order to CHINA DAILY Left: Embroider- March last year, the cooperative com- bless the marriage of the wearer.” ers in the county present pleted orders to the value of 300,000 One day in 2010, Yang was severe- ethnic works through yuan. This year, though, since the ly injured while unloading some livestreaming during the women returned to work after sand. “I can never do heavy work coronavirus outbreak. Spring Festival in February, the coop- again,” she says, her words dripping PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY erative has only received two orders with pain and regret. with a total income of 70,000 yuan. After a year of recovery, Yang Yang is facing the same situation. found a new job as an embroiderer “Many garment factories, which at a company in Guiyang which sells As we can now used to be our big clients, are still products with ethnic cultural char- temporarily shut down,” Luo says. acteristics. support the Many of the young women are After six years there, in 2017, Yang family while communicating with consumers returned to her hometown to devel- online via livestreams, presenting op the local batik and embroidery doing embroidery the embroidery process and chatting industry. She brought with her bun- at home ... we no with viewers. One of Luo’s most dles of plain scarves and gathered recent orders came from someone several of the local women to add longer have to who has been following their live- ethnic-style embroidery to them, make a living stream. before sending them back to Gui- “As we can now support the family yang for sale. Surprisingly, the elsewhere.” while doing embroidery at home, scarves sold very quickly. Yang Mei, founder of an with the baby sleeping in the back In 2015, two years after the Jinxiu embroidery cooperative and the elders by our side, we no Plan was launched, Yang invested in Zhijin county, Guizhou longer have to make a living else- 50,000 yuan and established a coop- province where, and the number of ‘left-be- erative with four other people. the bridge between e-commerce more than 300 needleworkers, come back during holidays, or for hind’ children and ‘empty nesters’ is It seemed to be a reasonable enterprises from bigger cities and including over 100 people who are funerals, which can only be hosted going down,” Yang says. “We will investment for Yang, especially craftswomen who live in rural areas. regarded as poverty-stricken. The by men according to local custom,” conquer any challenge together, when she learned that the provincial “Those companies show us the oldest is aged 69, and the youngest, Yang says. “Before the Jinxiu Plan, 500k even the virus outbreak.” government would provide a special fashion trends, and we create the who often offers help, is Yang’s most women, especially those over women fund of 15 million yuan to support products as they want. They provide 8-year-old daughter. 50, earned little money by selling in Guizhou have found Zhao Yandi contributed to this story. the plan every year. The China Wom- modern tastes, and we offer fine “In our town, more than half of the herbs that they had gathered on the employment closer to en Development Foundation partici- craft,” Yang says. males work elsewhere for a higher mountain at street markets.” home in the local Contact the writers at pated in the plan, which serves as So far, the cooperative has hired and more stable income. They only She adds that the changeable handicraft industry [email protected] Farmer’s collection of ethnic Daur items a rich harvest HOHHOT — E Tiezhu admits the resident’s home. that, at first, he collected old items of “I want to buy it for an exhibition the Daur ethnic group just to make at the museum in my township. I money. hope to make our ethnic history and However, as he brought more old culture known to more people,” he objects together, the 58-year-old explained to the resident. farmer, who is a member of the Daur Moved by his sincerity, the resi- community from Tengke township dent finally sold the birch bark uten- in the city of Hulunbuir, North Chi- sil to him at a lower price of 500 na’s Inner Mongolia autonomous yuan. region, found he could not bear to Over the past 12 years, E Tiezhu sell them. has collected 205 old Daur items, “They would be worth a lot of from cooking utensils and house- money now,” he notes. “It’s not easy hold items to hunting equipment to collect these things of our ethnic and daily clothing, covering almost group. They are priceless treasures.” every aspect of the daily life of the With rapid economic and social Daur people. development over the last 20 or 30 Now, the museum has become the years, the Daur people, one of the Left and right: A Daur culture exhibition displays more than 60 sets of relics and more than 100 pictures to showcase the history and most culturally vibrant place in the Chinese minorities mainly living in customs of the ethnic group in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang province, in December 2017. PHOTOS BY WANG YUNLONG / FOR CHINA DAILY township and receives over 40,000 Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang visits a year. province, have witnessed many old Working as the curator and the items and customs gradually fading utensils, hand-spinning tools and Daur items impressed the cadres in ing the exhibition and the govern- Once he took a fancy to a birch docent for the museum, E Tiezhu out their daily life.