REN DATAO has spent seven years cross-stitching the famous Chinese painting, “Along the River During the Qingming Festival,” and now she wants to sell her cross-stitch work to raise money for her mother-in-law, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.

“Along the River During the Qingming Festival,” also known by its Chinese name, Qingming Shanghe Tu, is a painting by the Song dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan. It captures the daily life and the landscape of the capital Bianjing during the Northern Song (960-1127). As a treasured cultural relic, the masterpiece is now kept at the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City.

Ren’s cross-stitch work is 25 meters long and 62 centimeters wide. According to her, the painting has 684 characters, 122 houses, 124 trees, 96 farm animals and eight palanquins, which were embroidered with 49 different-colored threads, depicting the urban atmosphere of the capital city during the Northern Song dynasty and the living conditions of people from all walks of life at that time.

Ren is from Zunyi City, Guizhou Province. She came to Shenzhen in 2002 and works at a local factory. At first, she cross-stitched some small works to decorate her home. Gradually, she wanted to create large pieces.

She saw the painting “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” on TV and was deeply attracted to it. Therefore, she decided to take the challenge and cross-stitch the famous painting with such grand historic scenes and complicated patterns.

She made the first stitch on the evening of March 28, 2011. Since then, Ren has spent most of her spare time on the embroidery, working through a total of 2,500 days and nights.

Because Ren has spent so much time sitting and bowing her head while cross-stitching, she has begun to suffer from great pain in her cervical and lumbar vertebrae, as well as poor eyesight. “I do not regret having done it,” she said.

Ren started cross-stitching the painting out of interest and intended to keep the piece in her collection. But now she plans to sell the work to raise money for her mother-in-law.

Ren’s mother-in-law suffers from severe osteopathy and has difficulty walking. Her family has sought doctors all over Guizhou, but the illness has yet to be cured.

“I made the work with painstaking effort. It’s like raising a child and I’m really reluctant to sell it. I would never let it go if I were not facing this obstacle,” Ren said. (Zhang Yu)