A woman from the Shui ethnic group in Guizhou province carries her child on her back in a bei shan or baby carrier. (Photo by Qin Gang/China Daily)
The donation was made by Ada Tang Lee Wai-ching, vice-chairman of the Fu Hui Education Foundation, a charity based in Canada and Hong Kong. She learned of this collection of baby carriers through Lee Mei-yin, a collector of ethnic Chinese costumes and a researcher at the Dunhuang Academy China.
In 2012, Lee met an American collector named Mark Clayton in Los Angeles, where she gave a lecture on Miao embroidery.
She was taken to Clayton's storage facility where she was astonished to see thousands of pieces of ethnic Chinese embroidery which he had collected.
She says because of the rising costs of storage and preservation, Clayton then wanted to donate 5,000 baby carriers to museums in the United States so that more people could appreciate the beauty of Chinese embroidery, but was turned down by such institutions.
Lee then offered to move the baby carriers to China and she persuaded her friend Tang to buy them from him.
Lee was able to convince Tang, vice-chairman of Hong Kong electronics and appliances retailer Broadway Photo Supply Ltd to buy the items as the businesswoman is known for passion for ethnic handicraft.
Tang, who has been deeply involved in charity work in Sichuan province over the past two decades, frequently travels to poverty-stricken villages in the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, where she and the Fu Hui Education Foundation run teaching programs and offer scholarships to ethnic children.
She says the voluntary efforts have helped hundreds of children complete middle school.
Speaking of her involvement in the embroidery project, Tang says: "The baby carrier is the start of a joyful childhood and a future of happiness. The donation can preserve ethnic embroidery. I also hope it will help deepen research into ethnic cultures in China."
Tang plans to donate the remaining pieces she has bought to the museum of Renmin University in Beijing and an education foundation in Hong Kong.
If you go
9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays, until Sept 18. 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6400-1476.
