Eunice Tan
Meet Chen Hui, The Woman Who Dedicates Her Life To Preserving The Chinese Arts
Profile Story | September 2019
Eunice Tan spends time with Chen Hui, a driving force in promoting Han Embroidery, and talks about her passion in the Chinese art.
Ms Chen Hui, President of the Hubei Han Embroidery Association
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Photo by: Reagan Tan
It’s 8:38 am. Chen Hui walks in, on the phone with someone important, I’m guessing with the serious look on her face. It’s early but she’s already straight into business. She looks up with a smile on her face, hair pinned up halfway, wavy hair giving her an elegant look.
We’re 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. I feel exhausted just watching her. She wears a brown maxi dress but from the looks of it, she also wears the pants around here. Her dark brown orbs check 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.”
Throughout our conversation, her phone rings consistently. She ignores it most of the time, not allowing it to interrupt her train of thoughts.
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Chinese people are proud of our tradition, it is our tradition and culture. It is my responsibility
to continue it.
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In 2018, the government approached her family embroidery business and requested 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. She believes that handmade things, such as embroidery, is a culture carrier, a method in preserving culture. With the development of machines, products that are produced are ‘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 obvious, expressed not just through excited eyes and gesturing hands. As I look at designs of the products, Chen Hui explains that some are made by teachers or students, others by the disabled. One of the association’s aims is to help the disabled and poverty find a bigger purpose in life.
Embroidery classes and programmes are held at community centres, costing up to 1,500 yuan a year. However, it is free of charge for the disabled. They also earn revenue from their products sold at the store, enabling them to continue life purposefully. The poverty in rural areas also receives free classes. She adds that she likes going to rural areas because they find hidden talents who wouldn’t be identified otherwise.
Sometimes, the fees of her embroidery classes depend on a case by case basis. She once gave free lessons to someone because she took her in as her disciple.
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I will never retire. I will always do this,
even when I’m old...For the rest of my life,
I will preserve the culture.
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“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 Theresa May owns one of their products. It is purely helping the disabled by giving them security, dignity and confidence.
She sits opposite me, a brown 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”.
Before I leave, I ask her one more question – when will she retire. She looks at me as if I am joking and 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.”
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