Long after we left the Hmong Sisters Festival in May 2023, its colours, sounds, and celebration remained with us. So did the Hmong pursuit of beauty and joy in life—and the many questions it left unanswered. A few months later, we returned to Shidong with those questions, and Hua’s Hmong Embroidery slowly began to take shape through the fieldwork.
Hua’s Hmong Embroidery｜《苗·花·绣》
Created by Kexiner Liu / 刘可欣儿
Documentary｜Shidong, 2023
Why do so many Hmong women embroider? Why do they devote years to the work? What do the patterns mean, and what histories and stories make their way into every stitch?
The documentary follows Huajie—“Flower Sister”—and three generations of women in her family. Its camera records split-thread stitching, ceremonial garments, and embroidery pieces, but also the lives around them: women embroidering together during the agricultural off-season, a mother selling pieces at the market, a daughter still learning, and Huajie herself, who began selling embroidery at seven or eight, later worked in Guangzhou and Shanghai, and even produced work for Hermès.
The film asks how embroidery becomes more than a skill: an aesthetic system carrying nature, life, women’s experience, family history, and cultural memory.
The Story Behind Hua’s Hmong Embroidery
It Began with Questions Left by the Sisters Festival
At the Sisters Festival in May 2023, the ceremonial dress of Hmong women left a deep impression on us. The garments were more than festival decoration; they seemed to express a Hmong commitment to the beauty of life.
After we left, the questions multiplied. Why did so many women embroider? Why would someone spend years making a wedding garment? Where did the animals, plants, and human forms in each piece come from? What was the relationship between embroidery and Hmong culture?
We returned in October because those questions would not disappear. The documentary began not with an answer already decided, but with a need to keep asking.
The Field Was Far More Difficult Than We Imagined
The complexity of fieldwork quickly exceeded our expectations. Early searches led to dead ends, and planned interviews and locations repeatedly fell through. Curiosity kept us moving until we met Huajie again, having encountered her briefly during the Sisters Festival.
Huajie had earned a living in Guangzhou and Shanghai and had produced embroidery for Hermès. Yet within Hmong society at home, she seemed no different from the other women around her. What moved us most was not simply her ability, but her instinctive love of embroidery and beauty.
With Huajie, the film finally had a person to follow. Even then, village life continued to interrupt the plan. An Hong helped us receive information and adjust quickly, while unexpected events repeatedly carried the story somewhere our schedule had never anticipated.
A Morning of Fishing Brought Us Closer
On the morning of Huajie’s daughter’s birthday, she invited us to catch fish in a muddy field. At first, those on the bank hesitated. Only one teacher and two younger students followed her into the water.
Then the rest of us saw them laughing, moving freely through the mud, and lifting one fish after another. Before long, we had all jumped in. We had a wonderful time with Huajie.
That unplanned morning dissolved much of the distance between us. Fieldwork depended not only on theory, questions, and cameras, but on sincere and empathetic relationships. Sometimes a carefully pursued goal led nowhere, while an incidental moment allowed us to enter one another’s lives.
Inside the Rhythm of Hammered Cloth
At An Hong’s Su-style mansion, we interviewed Huajie as the steady thud of cloth being hammered sounded behind us. We spoke for an entire afternoon.
In the Hewan garden and on the suspension bridge beside the market, we photographed Huajie in ceremonial dress for the documentary poster. At the market, we filmed her mother selling embroidery and listened as she sang old songs about embroidery and marriage. We happened upon a wedding procession, celebrated Huajie’s daughter’s birthday at their home, and returned late at night to film empty village scenes lit by warm yellow windows.
The filming ended, but these sounds, images, and encounters remained.
What remains from a documentary is not always the most complete image in the plan, but an unexpected encounter, a conversation allowed to continue, and warm light passing through a village window at night.
Learning to Read Each Stitch
Through Huajie, details we had once overlooked began to make sense. During the agricultural off-season, Hmong women gather in small groups, spreading out their thread, exchanging stories, and learning from one another. Time passes quietly through the movement of their hands.
Girls learn from their mothers at an early age. At fifteen or sixteen, they may begin making a dowry that takes years to complete. Huajie’s family was poor, and she learned appliqué and began selling embroidery at seven or eight to support the household. Embroidery was beauty, but also labour, livelihood, and knowledge passed among women.
One Thread, Divided into Sixteen
Huajie demonstrated the split-thread stitching for which Shidong is known. A single silk thread may be divided into eight or twelve strands, sometimes as many as sixteen, then drawn through soapberry leaves so that each fine strand becomes smoother, firmer, brighter, and more resistant to dirt.
Satin stitch is then used to fill the pattern and lock its edges. Because the process is so precise and time-consuming, split-thread work is often reserved for wedding and ceremonial garments. A single wedding outfit may require at least a year, and the most intricate can take four or five.
Time is not merely a cost outside the work. The separated strands, repeated stitches, and years of waiting are part of the work itself.
A Living World on Cloth
Hmong animist belief does not separate human beings from nature. That understanding remains visible in embroidery. More than fifty animal forms appear in Qiandongnan dress—dragons, roosters, ducks, geese, cattle, lions, dogs, and many others. They may stand alone, appear among people, flowers, and fruit trees, or combine a human head with an animal body.
These forms are never direct copies of nature. Each embroiderer exaggerates, transforms, abstracts, and chooses colour according to personal judgement. Every piece Huajie showed us was unique. Embroidery preserves not a fixed catalogue, but an aesthetic of life that is continually remade.
Three Generations, and a History in Miniature
In this way, Hua’s Hmong Embroidery came into being.
We learned how to read an embroidery piece, and in three generations of women in Huajie’s family, we saw three different relationships with the craft. Grandmother, Huajie, and daughter did not experience embroidery in the same way. Their differences may offer a small portrait of how Hmong embroidery has moved, over half a century, among family labour, everyday skill, the market, and contemporary expression.
The film hopes to leave behind not only the beauty of embroidery, but the reasons these forms continue to be stitched from one generation to the next.