Su Wei was an outstanding employee at a major internet company. After five years of grinding herself to the bone, she ended up sick and saddled with 300,000 yuan in debt, only for the company to kick her out under the guise of “optimization.” The moment she left, her boss started making snide remarks in the department group chat: “Some people just have delusions of grandeur. They turn down a perfectly good job to mess around with some useless old-fashioned craft.”
That “old-fashioned craft” was kesi tapestry weaving, which Su Wei had been fascinated by since childhood. “An inch of kesi is worth an inch of gold,” yet this traditional art had long been left behind by the times.
Everyone was waiting to laugh as she ran out of options and slunk back to her cubicle.
Su Wei had no intention of giving them the satisfaction.
She rented a shabby room in an urban village, set up an old wooden loom, and decided to use this “useless” craft to pull herself out of the mire.
At first, nobody paid attention to her online shop. The few orders she got were from college classmates who felt sorry for her.
Then one day, on a whim, she reimagined traditional, elaborate auspicious beast designs as chibi paper-doll characters from a popular game.
The moment she posted the finished work online, it blew up.
[What kind of magical craft is this! How can my baby be so cute!]
[Am I allowed to look at something this amazing for free? Please, hurry up and make more. I’ll pay you!]
[@XX Game Official, look at this collaboration. It’s a thousand times better than your crappy plastic merch!]
Later, a luxury brand came knocking, begging her to design an exclusive couture collaboration.
The relatives who once told her to “be realistic” started trying every trick to get their kids apprenticed to her.
And the former boss who had kicked her out of the company was “optimized” too after his department’s performance declined. Word was, he kept striking out in his job search.
