Preserving Traditional Han Embroidery:
An Embroider's Story
Profile
Eunice Tan spends time with Chen Hui, a driving force in promoting Han Embroidery, and talks about her passion in the Chinese art
By Eunice Tan - October 18, 2019
Ms Chen Hui, President of the Hubei Han Embroidery Association
I
t’s 8:38 am. Chen Hui walks in, talking on the phone with probably someone important, as the serious look on her face seems to indicate. It’s early but she’s already straight into business. She looks up with a smile on her face before ending the call, hair pinned up halfway, wavy hair giving her an elegant look.
I’m at Chu Feng Han Xiu Café at Tan Hua Lin, an arts neighbourhood in Wuhan. The café is run by her daughter and an outlet for the Hubei Han Embroidery Association to sell their goods.
Chen Hui is the President of the association and the third living generation of embroidery artists, a traditional art form that dates back more than 100 years.
It’s hard to catch her at the rate she’s attending to different people, both on and offline. When she finally sits down, she gulps a cup of tea. She checks her phone once more before she puts it at the corner of the table, ready to talk about her passion.
“Today’s a busy day, let’s start.”
In 2018, the government approached her family embroidery business and suggested to form the Hubei Han Embroidery Association. It does one main thing – to gather the government, experts and female embroiders to create a platform to promote the Han embroidery culture.
She started embroidery because it was family tradition. “Handmade things, such as embroidery, is a culture carrier, a method in preserving culture,” she said. With the development of machines, products that are produced are in her view ‘dead’.
“A machine sews 100 flowers and it will all be the same. If everyone learns embroidery and does the same pattern, there won’t be two that are the same. With machines, the culture is not alive.”
Her passion to continue the Chinese traditional art is evident, expressed not just through excited eyes and gesturing hands.
The designs of the products, Chen Hui explains that some are made by both teachers and students, others by the disabled. “One of the association’s aims is to help the disabled and poor find a bigger purpose in life,” she says.
Embroidery classes and programmes are held at community centres and can cost up to 1,500 yuan (S$300) a year per person. However, it is free of charge for the disabled. The disabled earn revenue from their embroidery products sold at the store, enabling them to continue life purposefully. For many of them, it’s no longer just learning a skill but it has evolved into a passion and hobby.
The poor in rural areas also receives free classes. “It’s a way to find the best [embroiders]. Although these people live in rural areas, we find hidden talents who don’t have the ability to learn it another way.”
Sometimes, the fees of her embroidery classes depend on a case by case basis. She gave free lessons to someone because she took her in as her disciple, for example.
“Everyone has different goals, whatever demands or needs they have, it is to pass on the tradition and I do whatever I can to be a mentor to inculcate young people.”
It is evident that passion truly drives this woman, not money.
Despite expressing her pride for having the platform to empower others, she mentions that it is also a challenge. There is pressure from the government to teach skills to the poverty to give them a better life but “if people don’t want to learn, despite how good the master is, it won’t be effective.”
However, it keeps her motivated. Her biggest accomplishment isn’t the number of awards she has won or the fact that British Prime Minister Theresa May owns one of their products. It is purely “helping the disabled by giving them security, dignity
and confidence”.
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She sits opposite me, a coffee table separating us but I feel like I’ve been sucked into her world with the amount of life she brings into talking about what she does.
Her future plans? She says simply: “I just want to carry on Chinese culture so people can understand and appreciate, and to improve economic status.”
“Chinese people are proud of our tradition, it is our tradition and culture. It is my responsibility to continue it,” she explains with a sense of conviction.
The association has expanded to countries such as Canada and Australia, and even North Korea. She finds no problem promoting Chinese culture to non-Chinese, as “young people feel that arts have no boundaries”.
When I ask her when she will retire, the president of the association looks at me as if I am joking. She chuckles before looking straight into my eyes, with a reply that makes me admire in awe, only hoping I can ever find this much passion in something.
“I will never retire. I will always do this, even when I’m old. The older I get, the better I will be as a mentor. For the rest of my life, I will preserve the culture.”
I will never retire. I will always do this, even when I’m old. The older I get, the better I will be as a mentor. For the rest of my life, I will preserve the culture.
- Ms Chen Hui
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