What's Included
- ✓ All embroidery materials, silk thread, and frame
- ✓ Traditional Guizhou tea and local snacks
- ✓ Take-home silk embroidery panel (your creation)
- ✓ Professional photography of your work
- ✓ Certificate of participation in English and Chinese
- ✓ Guided tour of the cooperative's gallery
- ✓ Village walk before or after the session (optional)
About This Experience
You'll spend three hours in the embroidery cooperative of the Xiaohe Miao village outside Kaili. After a brief introduction to the history and cosmological significance of the patterns — translated in real-time — you'll be given a small silk frame pre-stretched with natural linen backing, and a selection of hand-dyed silk threads.
Master Yang Aming or one of her senior apprentices will guide you through your first stitches. There is no pressure to produce a perfect piece — the point is the encounter with the process, with the silence and the rhythm that has been part of village life here for two thousand years.
Groups are kept to a maximum of 6 people to preserve the intimate, workshop atmosphere. This is not a tourist demonstration — you will sit alongside cooperative members who embroider as their livelihood.
Meet Your Guide
Yang Aming has been embroidering since age six and has trained over 200 apprentices in the 15 years since she was designated a national-level ICH inheritor. She speaks Miao and Mandarin; our bilingual interpreter will translate throughout. She will personally guide your first stitches and explain the meaning of each pattern you create.
What to Bring
- → Comfortable, loose-fitting clothing
- → Reading glasses if needed
- → Camera (photography encouraged)
- → Patience — the first stitches take time
Free cancellation up to 24 hrs before