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Embroidery as a textile embellishment technique plays an important role in people's daily life. Esthetic embroidery artworks possess cultural values. With the development of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), these technologies have been studied and applied in the embroidery process. This study aims to survey how these technologies facilitate embroidery from different aspects.

This paper surveys how the technologies of robotics and AI are applied in the embroidery field. The applications are mainly reviewed from three aspects: computerized robotic embroidery systems has been widely used for the mass production of embroidered textiles, the advanced technological systems and techniques have greatly facilitated the development of smart textiles and the artificial intelligence plays an important role in the inheritance, innovation and protection of traditional handicraft artwork of embroidery.

The programmable robotic embroidery machines have greatly improved the production efficiency of embroidered textiles and promoted the development of electronic textiles. The AI, mainly the deep learning technology, brings significant benefits to esthetic embroidery creation. Technology-based embroidery has become a hot research topic in the field of textiles.

This paper summarizes the application of robotics and AI technologies in the field of embroidery, which provides readers a comprehensive and systematic understanding about the research progress of modern technology-oriented embroidery. This helps readers gain inspiration from the technology perspectives.

This paper discusses the chain stitch embroidery technique and examines interesting new findings made during my field research of Miao embroidery. The Miao people of Guizhou, China, use two different types of chain stitch. One is a standard chain stitch similar to Western style. The other one, which I termed “ancient” chain stitch, is distinctly different in execution and appearance, and is a technique that only Miao are known to practise currently. Numerous examples of fine chain stitch embroidery have been excavated from archeological sites in China, including the Jiangling Mashan No.1 Chu Tomb, Jingzhou, Hubei, Warring States period (770 - 221 B.C.) and the Mawangdui No.1 Tomb, Changsha, Hunan, Western Han period (206 B.C. - A.D. 8). These extant embroideries clearly illustrate a unique expression of fine, fluid, curvilinear lines which are only possible using “ancient” chain stitch. The relevance of this connection is highly significant in its implications of a shared history between the Miao people and ancient Chinese civilizations.

Presents, at some length, the story of the writer’s father, sharing the history and experiences of a generation who prospered in the Chinese laundry industry. Chronicles the introduction of the wholesale shirt laundry, presenting new innovations and ideas and branching out into new regulated businesses in other fields, showing how emerging problems were tackled and overcome. Cites that most of the information is from memory, observation, letters and manuals. Considers the development and changes in the industry from 1930 to 1970, looking also at the accompanying changes in standards of living.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the efforts of an ethnic Miao migrant worker association to recreate and engage with festivals both in the host society of the Pearl River Delta and back home in Southeastern Guizhou province of Southwest China. It analyzes how and under what conditions the disadvantaged migrant workers collectively demonstrate and assert their cultural identity in festival activities, rekindling and strengthening their ethnic consciousness.

Based on ethnographic field data, this study focuses on the connections between migrant workers’ lives in modern host societies and their traditional culture back home. Special attention is paid to the temporal dynamics of migrant workers’ cultural identity and socio-economic development.

The leaders of the Miao migrants’ association created network linkages to channel the flow of labor, capital and culture between the host society and the migrants’ hometown, and made efforts to secure institutional embeddedness at both ends of the flow. Their use of festivals and related heritage as cultural capital has facilitated the cultivation of network linkages and institutional embeddedness for economic advancement and overcoming ethnic prejudices and institutional disadvantages.

By illustrating how the economic development has been imbricated with culture, this research enhances understanding about the role of network linkage and institutional embeddedness in the flow of labor, capital and culture between host society and home place of migrant communities.

With the implementation of economic reforms in the countryside the family is again becoming the basic unit of production, which decides what work to do and where, who should perform which tasks, and how income and profits should be spent. Socialist principles should ensure that benefits accrue to women from the economic reforms but they are also creating new problems. Following a general discussion of women's roles in the economy and the nature of the present reforms, the article gives detailed consideration to three areas of particular concern to women: obtaining education, relieving household chores, and restraining birth rates. The author suggests that the traditional preference for sons is a further factor working against women's interests.

There is a wealth of value hidden in regional cultural heritage, but its preservation status is not optimistic. This study introduces a method that focuses on the inherent cultural value of regional cultural heritage to preserve it by value construction and release.

Based on the great value of regional cultural heritage due to spatial adjacency and temporal continuity, this paper focuses on its inherent cultural value to explore the preservation path and chooses Shichahai cultural heritage digital resources for a case study. This paper draws lessons from the narrative method of ancient Chinese historiography, constructs a cultural space and tells cultural stories. A linked data organization model for digital resources is created to construct a conceptual cultural space. Then, the space is materialized by linked dataset creation. The authors tell cultural stories discovered from the space, which are presented by various user interfaces using visualization technologies.

A cultural space promotes the development of a fine-grained description of regional cultural heritage and aids in relationship discovery to enhance the value construction ability. Additionally, storytelling via interactive user interfaces is helpful in the utilization and dissemination of knowledge extracted from a cultural space and enhances the value release of regional cultural heritage. In this way, a path with the inherent cultural value of regional cultural heritage as the core is established, and preservation is achieved.

This study focuses on the inherent cultural value of regional cultural heritage and proposes a new path to preserve these resources. This approach will enrich research on the preservation of regional cultural heritage and contribute to the construction and release of its cultural value.

China is primarily a nonreligious country with less than 10% of people following Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, or other religions. Two major communication paths, the land and sea Silk Roads, directly affected the distribution and development of Muslim tourism and attractions. The combination of Islam with local custom and culture is a unique feature in China, and contributes to its development as a form of ethnic rather than religious tourism. As a result, research in China focuses on ethnic product development, minority sports and anthropological tourism, themed events, and intangible cultural heritage.