Axi Wujiemo is 30 years old, and arrived in the village in Xide when she was 13, after her parents were diagnosed with leprosy. Before then, she was able to attend primary school, so can speak a little bit of Mandarin, but only enough to get by.

When she was 17 years old she got married and a year later had her first son. Today, she has five sons, the youngest being 2 years old and the oldest 10. Having so many young children to care for is hard because they are not old enough yet to help her or her husband with manual labor or to go out and work for themselves in the fields or factories. However she jokes that when they are older it will still be difficult, saying, “Having five sons is going to be very expensive when they are older! When each of them get married, the dowries are going to be around 12,000 to 15,000 RMB per wife, so it’s going to be so costly when they get to that age.”

In addition to having a large and young family, Axi Wujiemo must also care for her two elderly parents and her disabled half-brother. He has a severe limp and a sway to his walk causing him to require crutches. He lives with their parents in the building constructed for the elderly PALs and those in the village with restricted mobility. She is very grateful to the project for giving him medical advice and help. He receives medicine once a month, which has helped to relieve pressure on the family to provide medical assistance and payments.

Her husband works in the fields most days and helps out around the house when he can, but otherwise will go into the city and get casual jobs. Despite having that source of income, they still need to make more money to support themselves sufficiently.

Eight years ago, The Leprosy Project employed some teachers to come and instruct the women of the village on how to embroider Yi patterns and since then, Axi Wujiemo has been able to perfect some relatively simple patterns. In a month, she can make many individual pieces to sell and provide another source of income. Some of the more complicated patterns take a lot longer and require more skill as there is more detail. She says, “doing the embroidery is great because it’s a fairly simple source of income for me and my family, but sometimes when I am too busy, I don’t have as much time to complete pieces. This is why I normally stick to the simple patterns so I can produce more in less time.” There is not one particular pattern she enjoys sewing the most, she just sews what she likes or what she thinks other people will like.

She has many wishes for the future, those being for her parents to remain healthy, for her half brother’s condition to improve, and for her children to work hard and get good grades at school so they can lead independent and self-sustaining lives. For now, however, she knows there is only so much she can do, so has resolved to continuing her work with embroidery and upholding her responsibility to care for her children and her parents, believing that by helping to make a living, she can make sure her five boys can have a better life than what she had.

Interview and translation by Georgie Reading
Edited by Isobel Caldwell

 Walewujian is 30 years old and lives in a village in Xide. She began doing embroidery eight years ago when the Leprosy Project hired some embroidery teachers to come to the village and teach the younger women about Yi embroidery and patterns. Prior to this, she already had sewing skills and would mend clothes and do some simple patterns. However, when they were learning how to embroider, Walewujian would spend extra time perfecting the patterns using discarded templates and instructions. “I feel happy that I have the skill and ability to embroider these patterns, and when I finish a piece and see that it looks good, I feel happy seeing my achievements and the product of my labours.”

Walewujian says that though the patterns they embroider do have meaning and significance in Yi culture, they do not know exactly what any one pattern means. Due to not being able to get an education and not being able to learn how to read or write, the women have had no way to properly record the meanings of each pattern and so they have simply passed the images down through the generations. She says that they are more concerned now with the overall look and aesthetic of the embroidery pieces, and use them to make bags or as patches on clothes.

She does know about the meanings of certain colours that are used. She says that the main traditional Yi colours are red, yellow and black. Fire is very significant in Yi culture, as they believe that you need it your entire life, whether for warmth, light or protection. In Yi culture, they always cremate those who have passed away so fire is present from the start to the end of your life. Red symbolizes fire, yellow symbolizes the flames of a torch as the torch festival is their biggest festival in Yi culture. Additionally, during the torch festival, it is common to see some members of society carrying yellow umbrellas. Black is a very common colour in Yi clothing and culture. Even today, elderly Yi people all wear traditional clothing and you will never see them wearing white, only black with various patterns on them. It represents the Yi nature and character, which is mainly solemn, serious and dignified. Various other colours such as green, pink and blue have been integrated into Yi patterns, but they are mostly used to look nice, rather than hold a particular symbolic meaning.

Walewujian is now able to sew any type of picture or pattern on request, for example, rabbits or dinosaurs, to which she adds a certain Yi flair. Her family encourages her to do the embroidery as it is a ready source of income and is also something that she enjoys. The money she makes from the embroidery is spent on supplies for her family, depending on what they might need most at the time. “I wish to learn more new patterns and incorporate more complicated styles of sewing into my embroidery, so as to further my skill set.”

Walewujian is from Meigu County in Liangshan. When she was 10 years old, her father passed away, and soon after, she was sent to Xide village to move in with the family of her husband to be. She has never had the opportunity to move back to her home village and neither her older sister or younger brother knew how to visit her in Xide, so overtime she has lost contact with them. Her mother moved to Xide village about 15 years ago, so she is able to see her often.

Her family was quite poor and neither of her parents saw education as imperative, so Walewujian was never able to go to school as a child. She never learned to read, write or speak Mandarin, and knows now how much that limits her in daily life. She has four children- one daughter and three sons- and three are currently attending primary school, the youngest not being old enough to begin school just yet. The children help her out around the house when they are home and work hard during the holidays and weekends. She says that her proudest moment was when she had her children, but it gives her even more hope seeing them getting an education. “Education is very important. For example, if you don’t learn to speak, read or write Mandarin Chinese, life will be extremely difficult if you when you go outside of the village, and it will be near impossible to create a prosperous life for yourself outside of a Yi village.”

Interview and translation by Georgie Reading
Edited by Isobel Caldwell

Wazhaerluomo is 31 years old and she lives in the Xide village. She is a single mother of four, so she has many responsibilities, including caring for her children, her parents, who also live in the village, and the family livestock. When her first husband passed away, his family arranged for Wazhaerluomo to remarry his younger brother. Her second husband also passed away, and now she is unable to re-marry because many of the villagers believe her to be cursed.

One year, she won the beauty contest in the torch festival, although she can’t remember how long ago this was. She doesn’t think of herself as beautiful, and feels quite shy and embarrassed when talking about it. Every Yi girl has a selection of traditional dresses, so on the day, she chose the one that she thought was the nicest and put it on, without any special preparations.

She is able to speak some Mandarin, having learned it while working in an electrical factory in Jiangsu to make money for her family as the sole breadwinner. She found that being in the factory made looking after her family much too difficult, so she moved back to the village after four months. It was too much to expect four children under the age of 12 and two elderly people to care sufficiently for themselves in her absence.

After the embroidery teachers came to the village eight years ago to teach the women Yi embroidery skills, she would make embroidery pieces in her free time. She enjoyed practicing and improving her sewing skills when she could.

“Sometimes my life can become quite busy having to maintain the household and care for everyone, but I love doing embroidery because it is fun and when I finish a piece, it gives me a great sense of accomplishment. Sometimes I have too many other responsibilities and can only half finish a piece, which is disappointing, but I still love to reap the benefits of doing the physical work myself, as well as be able to earn some money from it.”

Her happiest days were when she was young and carefree, but now she has a lot of burdens to bear. When she was younger, it was just her parents she had to care for, but at the time they were still young and independent so there was not as much that she had to do. Now, without a husband, and with two elderly parents and four children to look after, her life seems constantly tiring and busy.

The embroidery has given her a good opportunity to become independent and make her own money and she is able to do one to two embroidery pieces a day. 

She sometimes makes clothing for herself and her children, but otherwise buys their clothes. Last year, she started to make her own traditional Yi outfit. So far she has made the three-piece shirt, but wishes to continue on and make the trousers. They take about one year to complete and often are decorated with real silver, so they will also cost a fair amount of money to make. The price to buy an already made pair of traditional Yi trousers can be up to 10,000 RMB from a store or tailor. 

She says that her children are all very helpful and obedient at the moment, but she is not sure what they may be like in the future. She hopes that her children will all continue to go to school, receive an education and become self-sufficient and independent, allowing them to grow as people and have futures with more opportunities. She is very thankful to the project for helping them because she is now able to make these pieces and earn an income for her and her family without having to move away and work in a factory She is grateful that the embroidery helps her provide an education for her children.

interview and translation by Georgie Reading
Edited by Idobel Caldwell

In July nine volunteers from Xichang College received training from Project staff Kelly Xu, Fang Jingru, Rihai Riga and Make Hamo.

Kelly Xu and Fang Jingru explained the conditions in the villages and discussed their own experiences in communicating with villagers. Staff established targets for health and hygiene education and expected results. Volunteers enthusiastically engaged in the training and gave many useful comments.

Through the training, staff was able to create templates for future training in other villages. The format for data collection was also enhanced in order to refine the assessments of hygiene performance.

After the training, the staff and nine volunteers traveled to Qianjin, a remote mountain village in Xide County with a population of 500. Due to the remote location, many of the elderly residents have never left the village and the children have received little education. Most of the villagers have no concept of personal or household hygiene. The poor standard of sanitation in the community leads to the easy transmission of many infectious diseases.

The Project staff and volunteers started by giving basic training to 42 students from the village. The three groups then visited each home in the village to talk about hygiene and the effect it has on health.

Every household received training in home hygiene, including cleaning furniture and floor, sweeping the areas around their home, and washing their clothes and bedding. Both students and their parents were keen to participate. Villagers understand that they must persist in keeping their home and the village clean to help prevent the spread of disease and to beautify the village.

 Jibu Wuzhi cannot remember her father’s face, he died when she was just 8 years old. From that time on her mother struggled to feed and clothe her and her older brother and sister. Asked what her happiest childhood memories were, she said that after her father passed away they never had enough to eat, but sometimes relatives would give them extra noodles or rice. Also during Yi New Year, when most families would slaughter a pig, they would have a chicken. The chicken represented a year’s savings. This was also the time relatives would share food & clothing with them. Jibu Wuzhi was diagnosed with leprosy at the age of 11. She continued to live at home, but after the death of her mother two year later, Jibu Wuzhi was taken by a cousin to live on her own in the leprosy rehabilitation village of Xide.
Her cousin gave her cereal when she went to Xide, but it lasted for less than a month. Having no formal status in the village and no money for transportation she was forced to walk back to her home village to change her residency. It was a three day trip each way. After she changed her status she was able to get a food subsidy from the government and could use some of her food to sell and exchange for clothes. Jibu Wuzhi was 14.

For the first year Jibu Wuzhi lived with two older women in a straw hut. The other villagers pestered her to marry; she wasn’t interested. A few times she was so afraid that she would be forced to get married, she ran away. Her neighbors finally gave up on playing match maker.

The man who finally became her husband had moved to the village with his father who suffered from leprosy. His mother had died years before. Though he himself did not have leprosy he stayed on in the village. The courtship started with Jibu’s husband presenting her with gifts including small toys, clothing, and fabric. After about a year he proposed. At first she rejected him, but he persisted saying that if she didn’t like him she should give the gifts back. After some consideration, Jibu Wuzhi realized that she didn’t have any means to support herself. Her right leg was weak and she liked the thought of having someone to take care of her. She accepted his proposal. Jibu Wuzhi was 16, her husband was 21.

They now have two daughters, one son and five grandchildren who still live in the village. Life is much better. She has her own livestock, steady income and enough to eat.

Jibu Wuzhi is a member of the Xide Embroidery Cooperative. She was taught to embroider by the teacher employed by The Leprosy Project. Some patterns she embroiders following the patterns shown to her by the teacher, others are her own creation. It takes her about 5 days to complete an embroidered bag. The embroidery program has improved her life significantly. Jibu Wuzhi is diabetic and she has to pay for her drugs. Before she joined the Embroidery Cooperative she had to sell her livestock to pay for her treatment. Now she can use the extra money she earns from embroidery to pay for her medicine. Her embroidery also gives her the opportunity to give gifts to friends and relatives.