Women from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region participate in Jin embroidery training, a craft from Shanxi province and showcase their embroidery works to tourists.
Women from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region participate in Jin embroidery training, a craft from Shanxi province and showcase their embroidery works to tourists.
Since 2018, the centuries-old Changshengchuan tea brand from Hubei province has involved Xinjiang residents in the tea business through various cultural exchange events.
Since 2018, the centuries-old Changshengchuan tea brand from Hubei province has involved Xinjiang residents in the tea business through various cultural exchange events.
In 2023, the Changshengchuan tea brand hosts a tea ritual training program for local residents in the Bortala Mongol autonomous prefecture in Xinjiang.
In a sunlit workshop in Wujiaqu city, northwestern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, a group of women bends over embroidered canvases, their needles flashing as they stitch the rugged beauty of desert poplar trees into vivid life.
Their skill, however, hails from Fanshi county of northern Shanxi province, over 3,000 kilometers away.
This cross-cultural exchange is part of a decade-long initiative blending intangible cultural heritage with targeted poverty alleviation, bringing economic empowerment and cultural renewal to rural women.
It began in 2015, when He Zhijian, a fourth-generation master of Jin embroidery from Fanshi, first arrived in Wujiaqu under a pairing assistance program.
"Local Xinjiang embroidery was bold and rustic, using wool and thick yarns suited for large items like tapestries," He explains.
"But it lacked the refinement for delicate cultural products," he adds.
Fanshi work is characterized by its intricate color gradations, delicate silk threads, and highly refined needlework.
Where Xinjiang embroidery favors bold geometric patterns and vibrant flat color fields, Jin embroidery specializes in subtle shading, fine detail, and pictorial realism, which has often been used for decorative panels, apparel ornamentation, and finely crafted cultural objects.
"It is precisely what made Jin embroidery a valuable complement to the Xinjiang tradition," He notes.
Over the past decade, He and his team have made multiple trips to Wujiaqu, training 30 core embroiderers.
Faced with differences in techniques, the Jin embroidery team started teaching from the most basic stitches. "We taught them which stitches to use for embroidering eyes, which for hair, giving embroidery a theoretical foundation and systematic methodology," He says.
Ten women who excelled in training traveled to Shanxi for advanced hands-on training.
Afterward, they became teachers themselves, across the autonomous region in what He describes as a "snowball effect".
Beyond technique, the Jin embroidery team also helped develop cultural and creative products with Xinjiang characteristics.
They noticed that the knives used by local nomadic communities lacked protective sheaths, making them prone to damage and posing safety risks.
The solution was exquisitely crafted embroidered cases.
They also combined Shanxi's paper-cutting techniques with Xinjiang's totemic motifs, creating unique designs, and developed innovative products rich in symbolic meaning, such as "Five Poisons" pillows — traditional wedding items believed to ward off nightmares.
"These products preserve the local cultural elements of Xinjiang while incorporating the refined craftsmanship of Jin embroidery, making them more aligned with modern aesthetic tastes and tourism demand," He states.
Years of practice have brought the embroiderers in Xinjiang to an intermediate level of mastery, equivalent to municipal-level intangible cultural heritage bearers.
"Their works now demonstrate not only technical excellence, but, more importantly, reflect a successful fusion of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary aesthetics, making them well-suited to broader market demands," He says.
Today, more than 200 embroiderers work in local cooperatives, each earning an average of 20,000 yuan ($2,808) per year, according to him.
"They now can make money at home while minding their children," He says.
To date, the Jin embroidery business and the Xinjiang embroiderers have developed a deep collaborative mechanism in which orders are provided from He's operations and fulfilled by Xinjiang-based craftswomen.
When order volumes exceed local capacity in Xinjiang, Shanxi provides production support. The two sides have also created a "barter trade" framework, enabling mutual promotion and sales of each other's products.
Meanwhile, another centuries-old trade is renewing ties between central Hubei province and Xinjiang.
Jian Nisi, deputy director of Hubei Changshengchuan Tea Research Institute, stood at a cultural exhibition in Hotan in August holding a dark brick of tea that drew many curious local residents.
"For Uygur and Mongolian families, our brick tea is the foundation of their milk tea. It's more than a drink, it is the drink of life on the grasslands," Jian says.
Since its founding in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Changshengchuan's tea traveled through ancient tea routes to border regions, becoming a daily necessity for multi-ethnic communities.
To this day, it remains a designated producer of specialty ethnic goods, supplying border areas under plans organized by the national ethnic affairs authorities.
As a key component of Hubei's pairing assistance program in Xinjiang, Changshengchuan worked closely with Bortala Mongol autonomous prefecture in the north of Xinjiang since 2018.
"We hold regular training sessions at the prefecture's cultural center twice a year, teaching tea art techniques and sales skills," Jian says.
So far, Changshengchuan has developed 170 distributors and partners in Bortala, most of them local women.
E-commerce training has helped local partners expand sales online.
"Many homemakers have become tea art specialists or salespeople through the program, earning monthly incomes between 5,000 and 6,000 yuan — all without leaving their hometowns," Jian says. Moreover, Changshengchuan not only sells brick tea in Xinjiang but also uses its Hubei distribution network to bring local specialties, such as Hotan jujubes and roses, to wider markets.
"Innovative tea products that incorporate these ingredients have been well received," Jian says.
With these partnerships, Changshengchuan has achieved steady sales growth in Xinjiang.
Annual sales in Bortala jumped from 120 tons at the beginning to nearly 2,000 tons, while regional sales across Xinjiang grew from around 5,000-6,000 tons to nearly 10,000 tons, Jian says.
"We are not just doing business — we are continuing an ethnic unity story centuries in the making," Jian says.
"We will keep helping local communities prosper through tea," she adds.
Both projects represent just a fraction of the extensive pairing assistance efforts carried out by provinces and municipalities across Xinjiang.
To date, China has established a four-tier representative intangible cultural heritage cataloguing system at the national, provincial, municipal, and county levels, enabling systematic protection of the outstanding traditional cultures of all regions and ethnic groups.
Cultural heritage has thus become both a vehicle and a bond that promote interactions among China's diverse ethnic groups.
Yangzhou jade carving municipal representative inheritor Xue Qun came to Hotan earlier this year, eager to learn from such exchanges.
"When inheritors from different regions and disciplines communicate freely and learn from one another, it creates a powerful synergy," she notes.
"We complement each other's strengths, improve our techniques, broaden our perspectives, and explore new markets."
The connection between Yangzhou jade carving and Hotan jade dates back decades.
In the 1980s, the Yangzhou jade factory partnered with an arts and crafts company in Hotan to establish a jade carving workshop, infusing Hotan's prized jade with Yangzhou's renowned craftsmanship.
In recent years, Yangzhou has trained over 100 jade carving practitioners from Hotan, two of whom have been recognized as autonomous regional-level masters of arts and crafts in Xinjiang. Yangzhou has also helped Hotan develop a range of culturally innovative jade products that have been well received in the marketplace.
Minawar Mutallip, a county-level inheritor of farmer paintings in Xinjiang's Makit county, has been a beneficiary of cultural exchange.
In 2017, feeling that her artistic practice had reached a technical plateau, she secured an opportunity to travel to southeastern Fujian province and study lacquer painting.
There, she began experimenting with incorporating materials such as alkaline powder and eggshell into her traditional farmer paintings, creating an innovative hybrid art form.
"Learning lacquer techniques wasn't easy — it came with the countless challenges of merging different artistic disciplines," she says. "But I'm determined to use more creative methods to depict the landscapes and the culture of Xinjiang."
Contact the writer at yangfeiyue@chinadaily.com.cn
