Suzhou embroidery industry

There are more than 20,000 people living in Zhenghu Town, Suzhou New District, and 8,000 of them engage in Suzhou embroidery production. Suzhou New District has constantly promoted the development of the Suzhou embroidery industry in recent years. It built Embroidery Street, which is over 1,700 meters, an 8,000 square meter Chinese Embroidery Art Gallery and an embroidery art exhibition center with a building area of 21,000 square meters.

More than 400 embroidery shops have been opened in Suzhou New District, as well as over 40 related professional shops providing related support such as computer aided design, silk fabric sales, and packaging and logistics, forming the most complete industrial embroidery industry chain in the country. Embroidery Street, after all these years of development, has become the largest retail center for embroidery in China.

Suzhou New District invested 3.4 billion yuan ($541 million) over three years to construct Suzhou Embroidery Town, which is now one of the provincial characteristic towns of Jiangsu province.

“In my opinion, Suzhou embroidery, as a traditional culture, is not only a skill, but also the expression of a mentality and art,” said Liang Xuefang, who learned embroidery from her mother at the age of 10. She added that as Suzhou embroidery needs inheritors, they let people participate in creating Suzhou embroidery rather than simply purchasing it.

Suzhou has also formed a cluster of influential Su embroidery masters in China. So far, more than 80 Su embroideries have been given to international friends as a “national gift”, and about 90 Su embroideries have been collected in museums or other collections all over the world. Suzhou has two national intangible cultural heritage inheritors, 14 provincial embroidery masters, eight provincial embroidery celebrities, 56 senior embroidery artists and 245 embroidery girls with junior or primary titles.