Inner Mongolia embroiders prosperity

HOHHOT－Basking in the morning sun as it streams through the window, Liu Menglan is stitching lifelike flowers on clothes with her dexterous hands.

For Liu and some other women from North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, the spacious embroidery studio has upended their lives－in a good way.

"I never imagined a life like this. My family earned almost 60,000 yuan ($9,331) last year," Liu says. She is capable of making 40,000 yuan a year from embroidery products, while back in 2015, her extended family lived on an annual income of less than 5,000 yuan. "We couldn't even afford the forage for our sheep and didn't have anything left at the end of the year," Liu recalls.