Bohai Mohe Embroidery

At the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival program, China: Traditiona practice, skill, or talent that is passed down from generation to generation. and the Art of Living, Sun Yanling from Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang Province demonstrated the art of Bohai Mohe embroidery, which she learned from her maternal grandmother at the age of six. As a child, she watched her grandmother sew small designs on hats and insoles. Her ancestors produced handicrafts for the Bohai imperialrelating to an empire, an emperor, or the home of royals. court, and her family has continued this craft for more than one thousand years. Mohe people traditionally lived in very cold regions where it may snow seven months out of the year. According to Sun, this explains why they developed a distinctive embroidering technique based on their need to stitch animal furs together for clothing: “If you make stitches that are parallel to each other, they will be like sharp knives and just cut through the skins. However, locals invented a type of stitching called the ‘chicken claw’ stitch that hooked the skins together very well.”