Yang Xiaoting's embroidery work Mona Lisa. Provided to China Daily

One of her works, depicting a gathering of all the ethnic groups in China, took her a year to finish. Someone offered to buy it for 1 million yuan ($160,000), but she declined.

"In olden times, most women in Hubei could embroider, but now few of the local young can use the needle, let alone do Han embroidery," she says.

"It is hard to attract the young people with old themes. I want to revive the old art and promote it to more people," says Yang, adding that she has a lot of respect for the old masters and still has much to learn from them.

Yang's studio is in Tanhualin Historic Street, a popular pedestrian mall in Wuhan filled with cafes and shops that attract the city's young. Her apprentices, all women, run three other shops on the same street.

Contact the writer at wangru@chinadaily.com.cn.