Yao Hongying, a senior industrial artist specializing in Suzhou silk embroidery, was born in Suzhou, the hometown of Chinese silk embroidery, in 1970. She grew up in a village where almost every lady was good at embroidering, including her grandmother, mother and sister. Naturally she became interested in hand embroidery work at the age of eight. Her embroidery skills were already good enough after learning from her mother and sister when she graduated from senior high school. Later she even sharpened her embroidery skills after she apprenticed herself to the great embroidery master Wang Wenzu in Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute. In 1999, after she became a certified craft artist, Yao Hongying founded her own embroidery studio in Zhenhu. She won the award of excellence in the Chinese Arts and Crafts Fine Works Exhibition in the same year. Since 2002, she has won many gold, silver and bronze medals at different arts and crafts shows. In 2005, she held her first embroidery exhibition in Taiwan which hit the headline in the local media.

Embroidery flowers and bird, oil painting, and portraits are all Yao Hongying’s specialty. But Yao Hongying is especially good at embroidering religious subjects such as Buddha, Guanyin and arhats.

Yao Hongying's silk embroideries exhibited in New Zealand