"Clothes made from Songjiang cloth are soft, and do not wrinkle easily. A piece of hand-woven cloth infused with love was the best dowry that a mother could give to her daughter at that time."

But it was only in 2012 that she started learning about the history of Songjiang cloth from her husband, an artist who collects the cloth and draws inspiration from it. She quickly learned that not many people today know about this traditional craft.

"We felt that this cultural heritage will fade away in a decade if no one did anything to revive it," she says.