Weaving Offers a Way to Tackle Poverty

Yang Chenglan weaves cloth at a poverty alleviation cooperative workshop in Fengdeng Dong Village, Rongjiang County, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, on May 28. [Xinhua/Yang Wenbin]

Yang Chenglan is a post-80s woman of the Dong ethnic group, from Fengdeng Dong Village, Rongjiang County, Southwest China's Guizhou Province. She gave up an urban job to return to her hometown and started her own business with her husband.

The couple transformed two abandoned houses into workshops and started their business of producing and processing clothing products such as hand-woven fabrics, garments and home accessories, and has sold them on an e-commerce platform.

Yang established a traditional weaving and dyeing cooperative in 2018, attracting impoverished households in the village and others nearby to join.

She led villagers to engage in weaving, cloth dyeing and cultivating indigo plants and helped them get rid of poverty while inheriting the skills of making traditional handicrafts.

Yang Chenglan sets a dyed homespun cloth scarf in Fengdeng Dong Village, Rongjiang County, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, on May 28. [Xinhua/Yang Wenbin]

Yang Chenglan (1st, L) and villagers pour a dye made from plants into the vat in Fengdeng Dong Village, Rongjiang County, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, on May 28. [Xinhua/Yang Wenbin]

Yang Chenglan (Front) smiles as a trainee show her hands blackened by plant dye in Fengdeng Dong Village, Rongjiang County, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, on May 28. [Xinhua/Yang Wenbin]

Yang Chenglan airs the local homespun cloth in Fengdeng Dong Village, Rongjiang County, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, on May 28. [Xinhua/Yang Wenbin]

Yang Chenglan uses a mobile phone to promote the local traditional homespun cloth dyeing skills via livestreaming in Fengdeng Dong Village, Rongjiang County, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, on May 28. [Xinhua/Yang Wenbin]

(Source: Xinhua /Translated and edited by Women of China)