"On the day we divorced, Lu Jingchen flung the embroidery design I'd worked on for three nights into the rain. 'Su Wan, your embroidery is so tacky it can't get any worse. You're not fit to be Mrs. Lu.'
I took the old Xiangyun gauze my grandfather left me and set up an embroidery frame in the old courtyard. The couching of Suzhou embroidery and the raised stitching of Guangdong embroidery were crafts engraved in my bones, and the confidence that would carry me back into the design world.
When my Splendid China collection appeared at Milan Fashion Week and the world's media went wild over its intangible cultural heritage embroidery, Lu Jingchen, eyes red, blocked the entrance below my studio. 'Wanwan, I was wrong.'
I smiled and turned away, walking right into the hot ginger tea Gu Yanchen held out to me. He was the investor who understood my commitment to preserving the craft, the partner who helped me finish my embroidery designs, and the man who pinned the magnolia I embroidered to his suit lapel.
From an abandoned Mrs. Lu to an intangible cultural heritage designer who dazzles the world, my stitches hold both my comeback after divorce and the exquisite craftsmanship passed down by our ancestors for a thousand years."
