Vision helps shape village’s future

Seen from afar, low-rise buildings featuring white walls and grey tiles huddle together amid stretchy green farmlands across which a river meanders through a valley.

On both sides of the valley, mountains covered by lush trees reach up to the sky, blocking the outside chaos and bringing a pastoral and tranquil vibe.

It is the first impression when arriving at Zhonghuang village, Jishou city, Xiangxi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture, in Central China’s Hunan province.

The village boasts a history of more than 700 years and is home to mostly ethnic Miao people and more than 60 distinctive folk houses that were built on stilts of different heights beside the river or in steep mountain areas.

This stunning view and deep ethnic heritage has prompted Yi Hua to tap into her expertise in Xiang embroidery and add to the rural charm to draw in visitors and boost tourism.

“All the rural architecture and natural landscape scenery has been very well preserved,” says Yi, who was born in the prefecture and has practised Miao embroidery for more than a decade.

The village conditions are perfect for what Yi has been doing in recent years – carrying forward ethnic culture, especially Miao embroidery. That was why she and her team started to work on the design and tourism operations of the village last year.

“We hope to retain the village’s existing scenery and ethnic images, and industrialise Miao embroidery, batik and cloth-weaving in the village to revitalise traditional ethnic culture,” Yi says.

Yi has given Miao embroidery training to local villagers, who are now wearing Miao costumes daily and can be spotted weaving with old-fashioned wooden looms or embroidering traditional animals and plants patterns on dark blue cloth.

Yi and her team are also working to develop an ethnic intangible cultural heritage corridor in the village that will open to the public this summer vacation. In addition, more Miao elements have been applied to the overall village renovation.

“For example, the butterfly is an important totem of the Miao people, and it symbolises motherhood and love, so we have made a point of integrating butterfly elements in local architectural design,” Yi says.

The village transformation is part of the project Valley Residents, an effort by Yi and her team to use local ethnic elements in rural settings to promote the tourism and culture industries and improve villagers’ income.

Yi has developed a predisposition towards Miao embroidery and related culture as she was immersed in many ethnic celebrations throughout her childhood in Xiangxi.

To provide for her family, Yi studied communication technology in college in the provincial capital Changsha and worked at a local telecommunications company after graduation.

Fortunately, she kept up with her painting and dipped into Miao embroidery in the interim.

“The more I practised, the more my interest grew,” she says.

In 2009, Yi quit her steady job, and went to Shanghai and Guangzhou, Guangdong province, to study design professionally. After two years of learning, Yi came back to Xiangxi and opened up her own workshop by renting a discarded warehouse of barely 108 square feet and setting up two sewing machines inside.

“I basically lived and worked at the workshop,” Yi recalls, adding that she had to take care of everything, from fabric procurement and design to sewing and marketing.

As she honed her skills, Yi worked her way up to becoming a prefectural inheritor of Miao embroidery. Seeing Yi’s commitment to her cause, her husband Lin Jie joined forces and the couple established Valley Residents.

The project has set up ethnic craft cooperatives, including the Miao embroidery ones, in several villages of Hunan, and gives training to more than 1,000 embroiderers.

Miao embroidery products from Valley Residents have been sent by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as gifts to senior foreign diplomats and experts, and were showcased at international events, including the 2015 World Expo hosted by Milan, Italy.

Zhu Youfang contributed to this story.