Drolma, a 43-year-old women, was one of the first female workers to join the cooperative in 2015. She started to learn making carpets when she was 11.
 

She and her partner can finish knitting a carpet in 18 days, and each piece can sell at a minimum of 15,000 yuan ($2,300).
 

"I am the biggest bread winner in the family now," she says of her monthly salary, which is about 3,500 to 4,500 yuan on average for workers in the cooperative.
 

Yet the biggest change in the county is more than money.
 

In the cooperative, female workers sing Tibetan songs together as they work on a big tapestry. Drolma says she finds "great pleasure" in her work.
 

"We can talk about everything, our household trifles, cooking, taking care of children, everything," she says.
 

When the cooperative was founded in 2014, Tenzin Chenglai and four other founders invested a total of 430,000 yuan in initial capital.
 

A year later, Tenzin Chenglai started to apply 3-D technology to make the designs more vivid. One of the most popular pieces has the image of the Gyangze ancient castle. Another carpet in Tibetan thangka work won an international award for design in June.
 

In 2015, he received 900,000 yuan in subsidies from the local government that helped the cooperative expand its operation.
 

Tenzin Chenglai was familiar with making carpets since his childhood. His elder brother and sister used to earn money from cutting and trimming pieces.
 

But starting a business didn't occur to him until a few years ago when he graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture from Tibet University in Lhasa and became a civil servant in his county.
 

He understood the challenges the development of Tibetan tapestry faced through his visits to people's homes in Gyangze－the lack of well-skilled traditional tapestry makers, limited ideas about where to find quality wool and how to dye it in different colors.
 

"So, I used a basic way to approach the issues－asking for resources from locals by spreading the word in Gyangze," he says.
 

At first, there were only two elderly tapestry makers at the cooperative, and most of the patterns on pieces were natural scenery of the place. But now there are 65 workers, mostly female.
 

"When the business became stable in 2015, I tried to help poor families," he says.
 

Today, people from 26 poor families－most of them with disabilities－have been given jobs by the cooperative, he says.
 

Drolma, a 43-year-old women, was one of the first female workers to join the cooperative in 2015. She started to learn making carpets when she was 11.
 

She and her partner can finish knitting a carpet in 18 days, and each piece can sell at a minimum of 15,000 yuan ($2,300).
 

"I am the biggest bread winner in the family now," she says of her monthly salary, which is about 3,500 to 4,500 yuan on average for workers in the cooperative.
 

Yet the biggest change in the county is more than money.
 

In the cooperative, female workers sing Tibetan songs together as they work on a big tapestry. Drolma says she finds "great pleasure" in her work.
 

"We can talk about everything, our household trifles, cooking, taking care of children, everything," she says.
 

When the cooperative was founded in 2014, Tenzin Chenglai and four other founders invested a total of 430,000 yuan in initial capital.
 

A year later, Tenzin Chenglai started to apply 3-D technology to make the designs more vivid. One of the most popular pieces has the image of the Gyangze ancient castle. Another carpet in Tibetan thangka work won an international award for design in June.
 

In 2015, he received 900,000 yuan in subsidies from the local government that helped the cooperative expand its operation.