Hu Xingyue, a costume designer from Fujian province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Magical medicine

Another participant of the poem show was Hu Xingyue, a costume designer from East China's Fujian province. She specializes in cheongsam, or qipao dresses. Her two passions share a sense of delicacy and resilience.

When she completes a dress for a client, she'll attach a card with an ancient poem.

Hu's love for ancient poems also originated in her childhood.

"I was living in a village with my grandmother, as my parents had to leave me to run a small clothing business in the city," Hu, now in her 30s, recalls.

Her "companion" in her childhood was a book, 300 Tang Poems, which she got from a neighbor.

As she grew up, ancient poems became a "friend" she could confide in.

"I went to a boarding school, and prepared for the college entrance examinations while my parents were away," she says. "Due to the heavy workload, I was under huge pressure, got depressed and could not sleep.

"Those nights, I read poems from the Tang and Song (960-1279) dynasties, and found great comfort in them.

"Through poetry, I realized that many great poets, such as Su Shi and Xin Qiji, also underwent difficult times, when they were banished by the royal court, sent to jail or lost their loved ones, but they always held an optimistic attitude toward life."

During her participation in the show she made friends with people who love poetry, and she was impressed that so many people were influenced by it.

The poetry stays with her, the lines linger.

"Once I climbed a mist-covered mountain, and this poem suddenly jumped out of my mind, 'What do I look like, drifting on so free? A wild gull seeking shelter on the sea'," (from Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu's Mooring at Night, translated by renowned translator Xu Yuanchong).

The mother is happy to find that her love for poetry has resonated with her child.

"One spring, I told my son: 'You see, the flowers blossom!'"

Her son was 6 at the time.

"I was surprised to hear him reply with a sentence from an ancient poem, 'A myriad of reds and violets reveal only spring'."