Embroidery, as a folk art with a long tradition, occupies an important position in the history of Chinese arts and crafts. It is, in its long development, inseparable from silkworm raising and silk-reeling and weaving.

As the first country in the world that discovered the use of silk, China has a history of raising Silkworms about 5, 000 years. The production of silk thread and fabrics gave rise to the art of embroidery. According to the classical Shangshu (or Book of History), the "regulations on costumes" of 4,000 years ago stipulated among other things including the "dresses and skirts with designs and embroideries". This is evidence that embroidery had become an established art by that remote time.

In 1958 a piece of silk was found in a tomb of the state of Chu of the Warring States Period (475 - 221 B. C.). It is embroidered with a dragon-and-phoenix design. More than 2, 000 years old, it is the earliest piece of Chinese embroidery ever unearthed.

The art became widespread during the Han Dynasty (206 B. C. - 220 A. D.); many embroidered finds could be dated back to that period.

Today, silk embroidery is practiced nearly all over China. The best commercial products, it is generally agreed, come from four provinces: namely Jiangsu, (notably Suzhou), Hunan, Sichuan and Guangdong, each with its distinctive features and representative works. Embroidered works have become highly complex and exquisite today. Take the double-face embroidered "Cat", a representative work of Suzhou embroidery, for example. The artist splits the hair-thin colored silk thread into filaments - half, quarter, 1/12 or even 1/48 of its original thickness, and uses these in embroidering concealing in the process the thousands of ends and joints and making them disappear as if by magic. The finished work is a cute and mischievous-looking cat on both sides of the groundwork. The most difficult part of the job is the eyes of the cat. To give them luster and life, silk filaments of more than 20 colors or shades have to be used. Recently, on the basis of two-face embroidery have developed further innovations-the same design on both sides in different colors, and totally different patterns on the two faces of the same groundwork. It seems that possibilities hitherto unknown to the art may yet be-explored.