Fengxuemei
Lineage & School of Heritage
Fengxuemei began learning the craft from her mother at the age of eight. Gifted with intelligence and exceptionally devoted to tiaohua, she was able within less than a year to produce fine-quality finished cross-stitch skirts; by the age of eleven or twelve she was already a well-known tiaohua expert in her village.
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Female, of the Yao ethnic group, born in 1959, a native of Longhui, Hunan Province. While preserving the traditional tiaohua style of the Huayao (Flowery Yao) people, she improved certain defective features of tiaohua costume, such as head wraps, leg wraps, and waistbands. Her tiaohua works feature predominantly animal motifs, with designs nested within designs in a balanced and symmetrical arrangement. The colors are strongly contrasted: the principal motifs are rendered in black and white, surrounded by colorful flowers worked in seven-hued silk thread. Fengxuemei works her tiaohua on a plain coarse homespun cloth ground with white cotton thread, without the need for traced patterns or embroidery frames; the whole design is held in mind before stitching, and the work bears a distinctly regional and ethnic character. She teaches the tiaohua craft patiently and meticulously, and many of the Yao sisters of the mountains who learned from her have become skilled tiaohua practitioners. Her representative works include Tuanyu Chengxiang (Auspicious Soft-shelled Turtle), Tian'e Zhanchi (Swan Spreading Its Wings), and Xiongying Buxie (Hawk Seizing Its Prey), among others.
Honors & Recognition
National representative bearer of Tiaohua (Huayao Tiaohua), a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。