Reborn in 1992: The Embroidery Master Who Led Her Village to Prosperity

At forty-two, she worked herself to death at her embroidery frame. When the inheritor of Suzhou embroidery, an intangible cultural heritage, opened her eyes again, she had returned to 1992.

Her father was a gambler, her mother favored sons, and they sold her to a forty-two-year-old cripple in a neighboring village for a 300-yuan bride price. The original owner had jumped into the river. She climbed back out.

“Give me seven days. I’ll pay back your 300 yuan, and the engagement is off.”

Everyone laughed at her wild claim.

She gathered indigo plants, made dye, tied off flower patterns, and embroidered delicate designs. She dyed twelve-petaled flowers onto an old bedsheet, and the goods sold out at the supply and marketing cooperative that very day.

The cripple brought people to smash her dye vat? She had them arrested on the spot and made them sign a promissory note.

A clothing factory salesman stole her patterns? She kept the evidence, registered her trademark, and refused to back down.

Investors demanded a 60 percent stake and tried to cut off her supply? She set up a cooperative, laid down rules, studied the policies, and used the law to crush her opponents.

From a small order of ten headscarves, to a large order of five hundred garments from a clothing factory, then to a department-store counter in the provincial capital, an export sample order, and a gold medal at a national exhibition...

She turned a traditional village craft into a nationally recognized intangible cultural heritage.

Lu Jianguo, a demobilized soldier, helped her guard the vat, deliver goods, and stand as guarantor, never saying much.

Until the day the engagement was called off, when he stood in her doorway with a wooden bucket in hand. “I guarded the vat, delivered the goods, and stood as your guarantor. Su Xiulian, you owe me more than 300 yuan.”