Weaving the tale of a textile pioneer
Print Edition
HUANG Daopo (1245-1330) was a somewhat unsung pioneer in China’s early textile industry.
Born into a poor family in Songjiang, Huang was sold in marriage to a landlord when she was 10. She worked day and night as the household servant, cooking, cleaning and herding cattle.
Maltreated by the landlord’s family, she fled to Hainan Province, the southern island where cotton was commonly grown. She was 18. In Hainan, she learned to spin and weave, making clothes according to traditions taught to her by the local ethnic Li people.
She learned to speak the Li dialect and made friends with the locals. She also studied how weaving machines worked and eventually succeeded in combining Han elements into Li weaving traditions.
At age 50, a homesick Huang returned to Songjiang. At that time, cotton was becoming a popular crop in the Yangtze River Delta, but techniques of weaving and spinning the fiber hadn’t caught hold yet.
Huang passed her three decades of weaving experience on to Songjiang women, enabling villagers to make suits and fine silk clothing.
She is also credited with inventing a fluffing machine, crushers and a three-spindle treadle to power the looms. Old spinning machines required three to four people to work them. Huang’s improved machinery needed only one operator.
With the technology and machines, Huang produced mixed cotton fabrics, colored fabrics and fabrics with mixed warp and weft fibers. The patterns on clothing and quilts were enriched with colorful designs that included flowers and flying phoenix.
From those humble beginning, Songjiang became a textile center in China for hundreds of years. In the early 16th century, Songjiang’s weavers were said to have produced more than 330,000 meters in a day. From the 18th to 19th centuries, Songjiang textiles were sold throughout China and exported to Europe and North America.
Feudalistic Chinese history doesn’t have much to say about Huang because she was considered a peasant and too insignificant to make any contribution toward science and technology.
However, her hometown never forgot her. Songjiang held a big funeral for Huang when she died and built a shrine to her in Wunijing Town where she was born.
In 1957, the local government rehabilitated Huang’s tomb and erected a new gravestone engraved with her achievements. Every April on Huang’s birthday, people visit the shrine to burn joss sticks and sweep her tomb in a sign of respect.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
