Heritage crafts find new life

Culture in play

Young designer Wang Xi, now an associate professor at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, has led a creative team to fuse Guizhou's intangible cultural heritage — Miao embroidery — with two of the province's grassroots sports sensations: the Village Basketball Association (Village BA), a local basketball tournament, and its soccer counterpart, the Village Super League, or cunchao.

This cross-disciplinary approach led the team to design cheerleading costumes, cultural merchandise, and other creations inspired by Miao embroidery. Their work earned the 2025 Red Dot Design Award — one of the world's most prestigious design honors.

The idea for this fusion emerged during the team's field visits to Guizhou. At the cunchao field and under the Village BA hoops, they watched the Miao people's Lusheng dance move in rhythm with the roar of the crowd, while elders in traditional dress held children in their arms as they cheered.

"Rural sports were not isolated competitions but natural vessels for ethnic culture," Wang said, adding that as a living emblem of Guizhou's intangible heritage, Miao embroidery captures that spirit in its most delicate form.

Then came a flash of insight. The team noticed how the players' running paths echoed the curved rhythms of embroidery stitches, and how their leaps and shots mirrored the tension of pulled thread.

"Both come from the same origin,"Wang explained. "Embroidery shows the vitality of the hands while rural sports express the vitality of the land."

During the design process, the creation of cheerleader uniforms left the strongest impression. The team deconstructed traditional embroidery motifs, transforming the granular texture of hand stitching into dotted patterns, and the winding motion of thread into dynamic, flowing lines. They also replaced the embroidery's traditional deep reds and indigos with bright yellows and oranges — preserving cultural identity while appealing to younger audiences.

Explaining why the project won the Red Dot Award, Wang said it succeeded by balancing cultural authenticity and emotional resonance.

"Global designers have seen too many decorative 'Oriental elements'," he noted."We didn't simply paste Miao patterns onto jerseys. Instead, we turned embroidery into the players' strength and the energy of competition — giving tradition a vivid emotional expression and showing that intangible heritage is not just a relic, but a language that conveys universal feelings."

By involving local embroiderers, the team also helped turn heritage from a display piece into a living industry, combining cultural preservation with social value — a quality that clearly impressed the judges.