Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute and School in Lijiang

Brief Introduction of Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute
Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute is located at Baisha Ancient Town(at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain), one part of the World Cultural Heritage site – Lijiang Ancient Town, which is a comprehensive art academy with the purpose of protecting, inheriting and promoting the traditional handmade embroidery culture of Lijiang ethnic minorities. It covers an area of 3200 square meters and has four courtyards, including seven exhibition halls: Chunhe Gallery, Embroidery Inheritance Classroom, Ming and Qing Dynasty Rhyme, Splendid Rhyme, Qin and Han Dynasty Wind, Presidential Printing Court and Tang and Song Dynasty Elegance Hall.

This Institute was opened in 2003 with the support of the government. It invites internationally renowned Naxi painters, state-level artists Zhang Chunhe(张春和) as its general art consultants; renowned Naxi painters He Zhengpin(和品正) as Dongba Art Consultants; the director of the Art Exchange Center of China National Culture Federation and Yunnan famous heavy color woodcut printmaker – Xu Yunkui(徐云奎) as its principle, and Mo Meiyan(principle), a renowned embroiderer, as its embroidery preceptor.
Missions of Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute
There are eight masters, sixteen teachers and more than two hundred professional and non-professional students in the institute. The aim of the institute is to protect and inherit the embroidery culture of the minority nationalities in Lijiang, to innovate and develop the embroidery culture of the minority nationalities in Lijiang, and to carry forward the embroidery culture of the minority nationalities.

The main missions of establishing this institute are as follows:
(1) to protect and inherit the traditional manual embroidery of the Naxi and other minority nationalities around;
(2) to teach the embroidery skills of the local Naxi and other minority women, and to train more inheritors and successors of the Naxi ethnic minority embroidery, so as to strive for developing Naxi minority embroidery into one of the local cultural pillar industries;
(3) to protect, inherit and promote Naxi Dongba culture and art in Lijiang.
Achievement of Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute
Since its establishment, especially since 2015, the institute has actively responded to the calls of provincial Women’s Federation, municipal Women’s Federation and county’s Women’s Federation, and the relevant departments of Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, Cultural Industries Office, and Immigration Office, etc, organized women in villages and towns of Yulong County to learn the employment skills training of traditional manual embroidery, and trained nearly 200 embroiderers.

It also employ the qualified trainees or sale their embroidery works by proxy, which opens up a new way for women of all ethnic groups in Yulong County to get rid of poverty and become rich. What’s more, it established the embroidery base of Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute at Jiuhe Township and Lisu Embroidery Branch of Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute at Liming Township, to better inherit and promote minority embroidery culture and do a good job in fighting poverty in Yulong County.
Honors and Awards of Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute
The institute also manage the works from masters, teachers and students to exhibit in Shanghai,Beijiang, Kunming and other cities. And many of the works won goldern and silvier prizes in different scales.Yang Jinfeng, a Naxi embroidery master won the reputation of “Yunnan Provincial Embroidery Master” from rencent years great work.Xiongyang, a Pumi embroidery master won “Yunnan Provincial Superior Ethnic Embroidery Master” from a competition in 2016.

Because of the great contribution of cultural maintaince, premotion and the women’s employment. Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute was honored as “Model of Women’s employment”,”Pioneer of the Provincial Handcrafts and Women’s Employment”,”Foundation of Human Resources Training” etc.

The institute has been given more and more attention and highly appraised and affirmed by different government departments concern form both municipal and provincial level.

Keep Reading:

Countyards of the Institute
Team of the Institute
Embroidery Products
Institute News and Events

Yunnan Tours including Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute
During the Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute tour, you will have the chance to learn how to make the local Naxi ethnic embroidery and Dongba pictograph writing on the Dongba paper. At the same time ,you can enjoy the stunning scenery and profounf culture of Lijiang and Yunnan. Check the pre-arranged tour packages we prepare for you and you can also contact us to tailor-make your own kind of Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute tour!

1 Day Lijiang Eco-Tour with Baisha Old Town

7 Days Lijiang Education Tour for International School Students

14 Days Kunming-Dali-Lijiang-Shangri-La Cycling Tour

The local embroidery workshop at Jiu’an, near the city of Lijiang, is mainly staffed by migrant women who moved to the village after a dam construction project meant they had to leave their original hometowns in Yulong County.

The women, coming from many of the nation’s ethnic minorities, including the Lisu, Naxi, Pumi and Bai people, learned their basic skills from experts in the local Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute.

They sell handicrafts through the institute’s marketing channel, whereby each product is marked and categorized by a serial number.

“We urge them to make amendments if there are any defects, in case it would affect the embroidery’s final price,” explained an expert.

Initiative of Grassroots Women’s Federation

Since 2015, the grassroots women’s federation in Yulong has been supporting the institute to organize relevant training sessions. So far, this initiative fostered over 200 craftspeople and further benefited the local women’s poverty-alleviation scheme.

Introduction to the Baisha Naxi Embroidery Institute

This institute received the honorable title of Women’s Handicrafts, Startups, and Employment Model Base from Yunnan Women’s Federation recently.

The federation at the county-level of Yulong also awarded the institute the title of Women’s Innovation Exemplary Base.

“The institute has involved over 200 people, including embroidery experts, teachers, students, and artists,” said the school’s president, Chen Zhi.

“In terms of its educational themes, one is to pass on traditional ethnicities’ embroidery skills, while the other is to foster local women to promote this artistic industry.”

Chen also showed one of the institute’s most highly-regarded products – a work combining different aspects of local Dongba culture from the Naxi ethnicity.

“This work, titled Shenlutu, was created by Yang Jinfeng, a provincial-level embroidery master.

“Yang, 32, spent eight years completing this 60-meter-long artwork, which would later compete for the World Guinness Record of biggest horizontal scale artwork ever and the longest time-spent on a single piece of embroidery,” Chen added.