The master, one of only a handful still practicing this ancient craft, shuttles the silk at the bottom of the loom. While his assistant pulls the strings at the top, an admiring crowd looks on. The men breathe life into a symbol of an ancient culture. Double-sided embroidery produces a design on a silk mesh which can be reversed to produce a different picture. In watching two women who work with invisible threads, one discovers the care and patience demanded of practitioners of this art.
Progress is slow and painstaking.
The designs they work on were started over eighteen months ago so that the pictures would be well-developed by the time they reached American eyes. The displays about medicine give one an idea of just how advanced early Chinese science was. The copper model to the left as one enters the second room was used for testing the student's knowledge of needle placement. The Chinese believed that the best way to cure disease was to prevent it by maintaining the proper balance between yin and yang . A variety of herbal remedies are hidden in the doors of the huge cabinet in the same room.