A stitch in time: Reviving the ancient art of Suzhou embroidery

CHEN BIXIAN, a 25-year-old resident of Shanghai, has spent most of her life studying and practising traditional Chinese embroidery. Better known as Azi online, Chen tells MANDY ZUO why she gave up her job as a designer to start an embroidery studio Who first taught you embroidery? I started learning Suzhou embroidery from my maternal grandfather when I was seven. He ran an embroidery workshop in our hometown, the Jiading district of Shanghai, which used to be under the jurisdiction of Suzhou, where this style of Chinese embroidery originated. It’s one of four classical Chinese embroidery styles popular in the Yangtze River Delta during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). During the cultural revolution, my grandfather was forced to give up the family business but continued embroidery as a personal hobby. He became a professor at Shanghai University and retired a few years ago. What do you like about a pastime that appears time-consuming and rather dull? There is a Chinese saying that one minute of a dancer’s performance onstage requires 10 years of practise. With embroidery, you might spend years on one piece but few people will look at it for even a minute. For me, however, it’s become something like eating rice. It’s not tasty but I’m used to it. But if I stopped eating it, I would miss it. Chinese designers have their moment on Paris haute couture catwalks In the beginning it was really dull. When you embroider, your right hand is always beneath the cloth and your left hand above it, with the needle piercing from below to above. Beginners often mistakenly stick the needle into their left hand because they can’t see where their right hand is. But when I saw the glittering embroidery after finishing it, with light reflecting off it, I would forget all about my pains and start a new piece. I learned embroidery from my grandfather for 17 years. It took me three years to finish a four-leaf screen, featuring plum blossoms, orchids, bamboo and chrysanthemums, which my grandfather acknowledged as my graduation work. You majored in environmental design at university. Why didn’t you study something related to Suzhou embroidery? It was partly because my parents wanted me to be an office lady, which seemed to them a secure and easy job. Also, it was out of my affection for the Qiuxia Garden, a classical garden in Jiading opposite my home where I spent much of my childhood and adolescence. I love each and every plant in the garden and it inspired my interest in environmental design. What did you do immediately after graduation and later? I became a designer at a Shanghai institute in 2013, responsible for drawing architectural details, but hadn’t given up embroidery. I made up my mind to quit my design job two years later. At that time, there were not so many embroidery products in the market and most of them were made by machine. No one would bother trying to differentiate those done by machine from those made by hand. There was also a glut of items featuring cross-stitch, a simple embroidery method that made people think embroidery was cheap. A brand of their own So I came up with the idea that before selling Suzhou embroidery, I would need to sell the concept that it was a difficult skill. I partnered with several friends and held weekend embroidery classes to offer lessons to those interested, to show them that it is difficult to do and worth a good price. Another reason I left my design job in late 2014 was that it often required overtime work that left me too tired to do both things at the same time. I was torn between staying and leaving, but I finally chose a career in embroidery, which at the time was not that popular and poorly respected. What does your studio offer? First, we have different classes to suit different people. The simplest course is a two-day class on embroidering a handkerchief. Then there’s a five-day course on making a small pouch. There’s also a six-day course for quick learning, and a 40-day class for extended improvement. For those who can’t make it to my classes in Shanghai, I have designed a self-teaching package, including instructions and all the materials, but it is very basic. I also work with some cosmetics and real estate companies to offer tailor-made products for their clients, such as personalised scarves. The last part of what we offer is the sale of embroidery pieces made by my apprentices. Who are your target clients and are they return customers? In the beginning, they were mostly students and people who loved Han Chinese clothing. They welcomed new things and loved to make pieces by hand. With an improved portfolio of products later, we reached more businessmen’s wives. They usually like traditional culture but, due to a lack of education when they were younger, also want to buy related products and learn some basic skills. Now some literature and art professionals have joined, such as editors and writers, who are very romantic and like reading as well as traditional art. Tour of beauty: from galleries and installations to auctions My most dedicated client has now studied for nearly three years, but few stick with it. For most of them, it is just a passing fad. Suzhou embroidery involves repetitive and painstaking work. It hurts the shoulders and neck when you sit there with your head lowered and your hands repeating the same motion maybe hundreds or thousands of times a day. Is there a system to protect the intellectual property rights of successful products in this field? Unfortunately, no. Copying from others is still a rampant problem. In Suzhou, you might find that when you enter a workshop where someone is embroidering, they will stop working immediately. If you stand in front of a certain piece of work for a few moments, you may be asked to leave and told it is a new piece which hasn’t been copied in the market. What challenges does the market face? One major limitation in Suzhou embroidery is that the silk thread used can become rough after being handled, making it unsuitable for items for daily use. The pieces are better to not be handled or washed so most products today are kept in glass frames and hung on walls. I have thought about this issue and tried to integrate embroidery with items that are not washed or touched often. For example, I like to embroider on bags for musical instruments, and cloth for tea tables that are only for decoration. It can also go on a neck pouch, or a handbag. Handmade handbags will be my next priority. China's first lady Peng Liyuan's fashion style has made her a global sensation I believe a skill that has been practised and appreciated for thousands of years will not disappear easily, as long as we bring it close to our daily lives. There’s no future if we stay with only works in glass frames, which are not affordable to everyone. But if we use the skill in other ways, such as on handbags, it could become popular very quickly because those items don’t take a lot of time to make and are relatively inexpensive.