Zhang Juyue, a 34-year-old from the Qiang ethnic group who has dedicated her life to preserving and reviving Qiang embroidery, feels she is racing against time.

"In another 10 years, it might be difficult to find enough embroiderers to carry on this work," she says.

The Qiang group, with a population of about 310,000, is one of China's oldest, and is called "the ethnic group on clouds" as they usually live in high altitudes shrouded in mist and clouds.

Qiang embroidery, a national intangible cultural heritage passed down through generations of Qiang women, is essential for making clothing and an important carrier of the Qiang people's history, culture and customs, as they do not have a written language.

"The patterns in Qiang embroidery hold many hidden stories. For instance, the 'square flower' mentioned by local women is derived from the bricks of ancient city walls, symbolizing their memories of wars," Zhang says.

"These outward-pointing arrows represent the women's desire to protect their husbands," she says, pointing to the design on a shoe.

Over the past decade, the Qiang embroidery cooperative Zhang founded in her hometown in Lixian county of the Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture in Sichuan province, has expanded to over 20 full-time employees. At its peak, it employed more than 300 Qiang women in part-time embroidery production.

Her workshop in the Taoping Qiang village in Lixian has developed more than 1,000 Qiang embroidery cultural and creative products, attracting over 10,000 university students each year for study tours.

Zhang was born and raised in the Jiaochang village in Lixian. In her generation, few girls in the village could do Qiang embroidery.

"My mother's generation began prioritizing education over embroidery," she recalls. "Since I was a child, people started to wear factory-made modern clothes. Now, traditional Qiang embroidered garments are only worn during festivals."

Zhang's renewed understanding of Qiang embroidery came after the magnitude 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, which led to the permanent loss of numerous Qiang buildings, artifacts and cultural inheritors.

Following the earthquake, the Aba prefecture government launched a Qiang embroidery support program in cooperation with a charitable foundation, bringing in orders of Qiang embroidery products to the women to help increase their income.

"It made me realize that Qiang embroidery could be transformed into a variety of products and integrated into modern life," she says.

While studying at a university in Chengdu, the provincial capital, Zhang began selling Qiang-embroidery shoes, insoles and sachets at a street stall near the entrance to a downtown tourist spot. She also opened an online store on Taobao to sell Qiang-embroidery products and specialties from her hometown.

After graduating from university, Zhang returned to her village and invited the local women to help fulfill the surging orders. However, she soon found the task challenging — lacking expertise in Qiang embroidery, it was difficult to gain their trust and provide them with proper training.

In 2013, Zhang attended a training class hosted by Li Xingxiu, a national inheritor of Qiang embroidery, where she systematically learned the needlework techniques.

"With the skills I acquired, I would embroider a sample for each product and provide training to the other embroiderers to ensure that they met the standards required for selling," she says.

Li Bi, her mother, recalls that during the early stage of entrepreneurship, Zhang often stayed in her room all day designing embroidery patterns.

With the country's increasing emphasis on the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage, Zhang gained more opportunities for advanced studies.

Over the years, she attended free training courses at eight universities under a national intangible cultural heritage research and training program initiated by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of Education in 2015, which aims to help inheritors combine traditional craftsmanship with modern designs in their creations.

"These courses not only helped me improve my design concepts but also gave me access to many resources," Zhang says.

What excites Zhang the most is that, with the support of the Shanghai-based Public Art Coordination Center, one of the hosts of the training courses, she had the opportunity to collaborate with international fashion designers to create high-end dresses.

The Qiang embroidery dresses she participated in designing, named Entrusted by the Mountains and Above the Colored Clouds, were showcased at the 2015 Paris Fashion Week.

"That was beyond my wildest dreams. The experience really broadened my horizons," she says.

Zhang says her primary focus in the past decade was to ensure the survival of her cooperative. Looking ahead, she aspires to create more profound works to explore wider possibilities and present the art in more ways.

The major problem she currently faces is the lack of participation from young people.

"People my age either lack embroidery skills or prefer more stable or easier professions," Zhang says.

She frequently visits local schools to carry out promotional activities for Qiang embroidery, aiming to cultivate individuals willing to inherit this traditional craft.

"My 5-year-old daughter is interested in Qiang embroidery. I'm not saying that she must take it up but if she chooses to, I will support her," she says.

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