A young artist seeks to make Suzhou silk embroidery, a millennia-old art, more contemporary and alive. 

The current trend in Suzhou embroidery is a simpler and elegant style. 

The city of Suzhou in east China’s Jiangsu Province is the birthplace of the famous Su embroidery, one of the four main styles of Chinese silk embroidery, used to make a wealth of things from screens and garments to dazzling pictures. In Zhenhu, a small, picturesque town in Suzhou, the tradition of Suzhou embroidery goes back 2,000 years and of its nearly 20,000 residents, more than 40 percent are engaged in the embroidery business. Zhou Xiaojing is one of them. With her nimble needle and threads, the young embroiderer has created many captivating pieces of art.

Zhou Xiaojing is working on a project in front of the embroidery frame. 

A Childhood Bond 

Xiupin Street is a charming cultural street in Zhenhu, lined with more than 300 embroidery shops or studios. Zhou’s studio is also located on this street.

Embroidery is the lifeblood of this town, traditionally referred to as "making a living." Growing up in this embroidery hub, Zhou imbibed the culture as a young girl. "My grandmothers, my mother, and all the other women in the family embroider. It’s a skill that women here rely on for living,” she told China Today. “When I was five or six, I started learning embroidery from my mother. I was really fascinated by it, so, like my mother, I have also made embroidery my career.”

But mastering Suzhou embroidery is no easy task. It takes an aspirational embroiderer three to five years in general to learn the basics, and at least another 10 years to acquire more advanced techniques. "If you don’t love this craft, it’s hard to stick around," Zhou said. Many of her childhood friends abandoned this family practice, considering the low income, rigorous training, and other factors.

Zhou had her own personal difficulty to overcome to hone her skills. “I can refine my technique through practice but it is hard to make the patterns look lifelike on fabric. This bothered me for a while,” he said. Her solution was to study the real world for inspiration to make her embroidery more lifelike. She explained, “To embroider peonies, I observed how the real ones unfold and their petals curl; to embroider a water town, I visited an ancient town to feel the vibe there; to do a goldfish, I bought a goldfish and studied its appearance and how it moved through the water.” She combines the real features of her subjects with her concept, a process she thinks has improved her technique.

Miracle of “128 Strands”

Zhou’s embroidered goldfish – which is double-sided embroidery with stitches on both sides – has gone viral online. The two fish look alive, as if truly swimming in water. The most striking part is their tails, which shimmer with radiant colors. Zhou said it is one of her favorite creations. To convey the goldfish’s elegant movements, she needed to use extremely fine silk threads. So she tried out a rigorous experiment. She split a single silk thread into 128 strands, using just one of them in her embroidery.

“The divided threads are incredibly light and thin. If you take a deep breath while embroidering, they might simply disappear," she said, describing the challenging task. "Also, you have to control the strength of the stitch. Even a slight unevenness in pressure can break the thread. On top of everything else, you need a rich palette of colors to create the graceful, flowing movements as well as the multi-colors of the goldfish. However, when you split the thread into 128 strands, they become nearly invisible. While working with these thin threads, I often could not see them clearly, which was a real test of patience and skill.”

But the result has been gratifying with many people praising the goldfish online. Since Suzhou embroidery has lost much of its popularity today, she is delighted that her double-sided goldfish work was seen and admired by so many people. “It helps to introduce Suzhou embroidery to more people,” she said. “I hope this piece will inspire more people to learn about this art and appreciate it, and bring more attention to our traditional handicrafts."

Zhou Xiaojing's embroidery work "Evening Banquet" uses more than a thousand colors. Photos courtesy of Zhou Xiaojing

Conservation and Innovation 

Zhou thinks Suzhou embroidery should adapt to the times so that this prized tradition is passed down. In her work, she tries to integrate conservation with innovation. To do that she has been attending courses at various art academies, exploring different artistic styles and experimenting with integrating modern elements into embroidery.

"Historically, Suzhou embroidery focused more on themes like traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy. Nowadays, young people like minimalism,” she said. In addition to creating decorative items, Zhou has turned her attention to making articles of daily use, using her embroidery to create things that have both utility and aesthetic value.

"Besides traditional items like screens, we’re incorporating Suzhou embroidery elements into hair accessories, earrings, earphone cases, phone covers, clothing, and furnishing, " she said. She is working to create Suzhou embroidery that exhibits both utility and aesthetic values.

In 2006, Suzhou embroidery was included in the list of China’s national intangible cultural heritage items. Zhenhu, the primary birthplace of the art, produces 80 percent of the work and its embroidery industry has an annual output of around RMB 1.5 billion. The art is also gaining worldwide recognition, as exquisite items are given to foreign heads of states as state gifts and also used at major state events.

The local government has ramped up efforts to conserve and develop the art. Zhenhu has an industrial cluster consisting of an embroidery street, an embroidery gallery, and an embroidery art exhibition center, covering all key work such as research and design, production, patent applications, and intellectual property protection. Local embroidery masters are also chipping in. Their studios are exploring ways to blend traditional craft with modern elements and make their work more practical and contemporary.