The power of a single photograph

It started with a photograph. X Æ A-Xii, Elon Musk's six-year-old son, appeared at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 14 wearing a traditional Chinese silk jacket and carrying a small brown shoulder bag adorned with a bright, hand-embroidered tiger face.

Within hours, the image went viral on Chinese social media, sparking memes, emojis and a surge of online curiosity. Suddenly, a Guilin-based Chinese brand, Ya Xiao Qi, or Yastee, was on the global radar.

"I've never seen a bag so cute and so cultural at the same time!" one Xiaohongshu user wrote. Another commented:"This is the best example of Chinese craftsmanship going global — love how it's handmade and unique."

The viral fame seemed instant.

"A customer sent me a message on the social media platform WeChat asking if it was really our bag. It was around 6 pm on May 14. At first, I was really happy, but I had no idea it would blow up and attract so much attention afterward," says He Jiliang, co-founder and co-owner of Ya Xiao Qi, adding that the bag had already pre-sold three months' worth of production, and is now sold out.

The bag's design draws inspiration from the traditional tiger-head hats and tiger-head shoes of Northwest China, but it is made in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, stitched by local female artisans.

The idea came to designer Liu Siwei during a trip to Gansu province, where she encountered tiger-head figurines recognized as part of China's intangible cultural heritage. Using these motifs as a starting point, she reimagined the elements into a wearable bag.

Every detail carries meaning: the embroidered toad on the tiger's tongue symbolizes wealth, while the butterfly on the nose represents layered blessings and good fortune."Each bag is hand-stitched by female artisans of ethnic groups," says Liu, who was born and raised in Guilin. "It takes about a week to complete just one."

Like Liu, He was also born and raised in Guilin. He says that the story behind the bag stretches back decades, deep in the mountains of Guilin.

In the quiet streets of Pingle county, Guilin, where He comes from, dozens of women known locally as "xiu niang", which refers to women who practice traditional hand embroidery, lean over worktables, hands nimble and precise, stitching tiger heads, lion-dance motifs and dragon patterns into hats, bags and small hanging ornaments. Each stitch is deliberate, each detail meticulously checked.

"These stitches were once only on festival costumes or wedding dowries," says Liu, also the brand's co-founder."Our mission is simple: to let these nearly forgotten stitches be seen and appreciated again, in a way that is fresh and playful."

After graduating from Guangxi Normal University with a major in art in 2004, He spent years in the fast-paced apparel industry in Guangdong province. A return trip to Guilin in 2019 changed everything. He encountered Liu's embroidered creations and saw their potential.

"I realized this wasn't just a product," he says. "It was creativity rooted in Chinese culture, something mass production cannot replicate." Within a year, he moved back permanently and set out to build a business that could honor the craft while reaching global audiences.

The path was far from easy. "Hand embroidery requires patience," He notes. "When training 10 women, often only one would stick with it."

Initially, the workshop relied on elderly women from local villages. Over time, the team attracted young mothers seeking flexible work that allowed them to care for their children while earning an income. Today, the brand employs over 350 full-time xiu niang across Guilin and neighboring counties and has trained thousands of them. Many women who previously lacked formal employment opportunities now earn a living from home while preserving centuries-old skills.

The products themselves are a playful fusion of tradition and modernity. In addition to the tiger-head bags, the workshop produces baseball caps, zodiac-themed fishing hats, keychains, and other accessories that incorporate lion-dance and dragon motifs.

They have also applied traditional embroidery techniques to create series inspired by famous paintings and classic stories, incorporating elements such as the Mona Lisa and The Nutcracker into hats, backpacks and hanging ornaments.

"Many foreign tourists visiting China love products with Chinese cultural elements," He says. "But for orders sent abroad, combining these with internationally familiar paintings or stories makes them even more relatable and appealing."

One of the brand's largest overseas orders came from Dubai, where a client purchased 3,000 lion-dance brooches for a Chinese pavilion in a shopping mall.

Since the brand's launch in 2020, the team has expanded across China, opening physical stores in airports in cities like Lhasa, the Xizang autonomous region; Shenzhen, Guangdong province; Beijing; and popular tourist destinations including Dali and Lijiang, Yunnan province, and Guilin and Yangshuo, Guangxi.

From a handful of grandmothers to a network of over a thousand artisans across multiple counties, the brand has created an ecosystem that preserves craft, empowers communities, and connects tradition with global markets, says He. Many artisans are able to work from home, earning a steady income while caring for their families.

"We plan to expand production, explore cross-border e-commerce, and experiment with new cultural fusions, blending Chinese handicrafts with global motifs while maintaining the meticulous handwork that made the tiger-head bag a viral sensation," He says.