Sichuan in stitches

Huang Zhiling/China Daily

 "In some amazing designs, one side displays a cat, and the other a fish. Both figures are done on a single piece of transparent fabric and both are completed at the same time."

Shu brocade weaved in China's Chengdu

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Peng has won many prizes for his double-sided embroidery pieces in international fairs. It takes him about one year to complete a single work.

In 1989, his double-sided embroidery featuring Sima Xiangru and Zhuo Wenjun on one side and two pandas on the other, won a gold prize in the First Beijing International Fair.

Before he began that work, he was not sure how the pandas' front paws should look. He spent days studying books and pictures of pandas to get a clear idea of the structure of their paws, nails and hair.

"Some days, all I thought about was how pandas moved with their front paws," he says.

To improve his needlework skills, Peng took painting courses at night after he joined the Chengdu Shu Embroidery School. He also buys paintings that inspire him. On the wall in the living room of his apartment, for example, is a gigantic painting of a panda by Li Yan, a master painter from Hunan province.

Pandas are a recurring subject in Shu embroidery. To observe them, Peng visits the Chengdu Zoo twice a year.

His wife, Zhang Youhua, says Peng works on embroidery for more than 10 hours every day. One needle he has used for three years has been worn to one-third of its original length. Peng always keeps his five needles in the pocket to keep them warm so that they will not rust.