Luo Ying, 42, is in charge of an embroidery and batik cooperative in Chadian town of Zhijin county.

She used to work in a garment factory in Fujian province, before returning home to take care of the children and the elderly in 2012. Two years later, in 2014, she opened a store selling batik products in the town before establishing a cooperative with four other people in 2018.

Luo says during the years spent far away from home, the annual salary of around 10,000 yuan barely kept her fed, but her life got much better after the establishment of the cooperative.

She adds that the cooperative now employs more than 100 female embroiderers, including 73 poor people, and the income created last year reached 1.2 million yuan. The monthly average income for the craftswomen is between 2,000 to 6,000 yuan, depending on the workload and sales volume.

Due to the coronavirus outbreak, however, the embroidery business has met a bottleneck.

Yang and Luo both explain that they used to send representatives to first-tier cities to exhibit and sell embroidery products, but now, as people are encouraged to stay at home to avoid spreading the virus, they are not able to reach more consumers. As a result, sales have reached a low point.