Yao Houzhi (center) and her family members show off Yao's embroidery replica of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival, which took Yao three and a half years to complete. [Photo by Xie Daomei / for China Daily]

"My breasts were as hard as rocks, and they looked dark on the X-ray screens. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was very scared. My daughter was still a baby and she needed me," Yao recalls.

Yao was desperate and lying in bed all day. She saw a story on TV in 2009, about a woman whose embroidery fetched a high price in Guizhou province.

"It was a branch to clutch," Yao says, adding that she decided to try her hand at such embroidery, hoping to leave money for her children.

Once her mind was made up, Yao's typical day has followed a tight schedule. Getting up at 5 am to make breakfast and see her husband and children off to work and school, Yao then starts sewing and won't go to bed until 1 am.

"Our family was always the last to turn off the lights at night in the mining factory," Yao's husband Wang Yichao recalls.

Her illness tires Yao easily. She sometimes falls asleep while grasping the cloth. But Yao increasingly found that sewing soothes her, adding that working up to 17 hours a day frees her mind from the fear of death.

Yao's family faces challenges all the time. Her husband has hepatitis B and other liver problems. Their daughter was diagnosed with a congenital heart disease.

Money is always tight.

Yao and her husband have been working as migrant workers in Shandong province since 2000.

The monthly income of the family is about 5,000 yuan, mostly from the husband's work as a miner.

The money could offer a decent life for an ordinary rural family, but it's way too little to cover the medication costs of a cancer patient. And although doctors advise patients who suffer from liver problems to stay away from heavy work, her husband still works as a full-time miner.

As migrant workers, Wang and Yao have rural hukou, or household registration, which bans them from using the health insurance in a different city.

The family has to pay for the medication on their own.