Yang Huazhen, 67, a national-level inheritor of Tibetan weaving and cross-stitch embroidery techniques, vividly recalls how she created her first embroidery piece.

"When I was 8, my father took me to visit a friend whose daughter had a lovely doll bought in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan," she says. "I couldn't help thinking about that doll and had dreams about it smiling at me."

She found some fabric that her mother set aside to make new clothes, cut it into pieces and sewed herself a doll with a needle and thread.

"My mother was angry that I took the fabric and, that Chinese New Year, I had no new clothes to wear. However, looking at my doll, whose smile was crooked and eyes were mismatched, I felt very happy," she says.

Yang was born in a village in Xiaojin county of the Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture in Sichuan province, where Tibetan and Qiang people live together.