As the New Year approaches, the “Embroidery Girl Handicraft Workshop” in Gaoyinpu Village, Yangdianzi Street, Qian’an City becomes increasingly busy. In the newly put into use exhibition hall, the clicking sound of the loom can be heard endlessly. Between the warp and weft, colorful cotton threads are woven into homespun cloth, flowing happily like a rainbow. Exquisite bedding, bags, jewelry and other handmade homespun New Year goods are being produced at an intensifying pace and are being shipped by express delivery to all parts of the country. In the evening, the “Embroidery Lady Handicraft Workshop” started live broadcast online again. The embroiderers are very clever but a bit shy in front of the camera.
In recent years, Gaoyinpu Village has led villagers to increase their income and become rich, and promoted local women’s employment and entrepreneurship. The two committees of the village have taken advantage of the village’s textile culture and adopted a “company + cooperative” +Farmers” model, established the “Embroidery Girl Handicraft Workshop” that is collectively held and participated by all people, using traditional methods to weave homespun cloth and produce bedding, bags and other handmade fabrics, allowing villagers to enjoy the benefits brought by the collective economy, and also let the villagers enjoy the benefits of the collective economy. “Embroidery Lady Handicraft Workshop” has become a beautiful business card of Gaoyinpu Village.
The textile skills of Gaoyinpu Village have a long history. In the Qing Dynasty, local homespun textile technology reached its peak. At that time, every household’s spinning wheel was ringing, every household’s loom was humming, and there were more than a dozen households making cloth and tailors. It is said that in the early years of the Republic of China, Zhang Shen, a villager in Gaoyinpu, established a handicraft workshop. He led a donkey and shook a rattle to the village every day to pick up the work. Later, Zhang Shen accepted two apprentices. One was Fu Yun from Guantou Mountain in Dawuli Township. Feng, one is Zhang Guofan from this village. During the Anti-Japanese War, the Eighth Route Army of East Hebei Province sent Fu Yunfeng to organize dyers and women to establish a quilt factory in Guayunshan District, Dawuli, in order to provide military supplies and logistical support for the base area, making outstanding contributions to the Anti-Japanese War. During the people’s commune period, the first production team in the village arranged for Zhang Guofan to set up a team-run corporate handicraft workshop. At that time, there were more than 100 women weaving in the handicraft workshop.
The oldest embroiderer in the village, Zhang Yulan, is over 90 years old this year and is the third generation inheritor after Zhang Guofan. When Zhang Yulan was young, she weaved cloth in a handicraft workshop, weaving 20 large cloth rulers (a large cloth ruler, one foot is equivalent to 90 centimeters) every day. She could weave quilt tops, mattress tops, and bed sheets. In addition to weaving, she also made pig shoes and cat shoes. shoes and other various realistic children’s shoes.
“I have watched my grandma spinning and weaving since I was a child. Making homespun cloth is not only interesting to me, but also has a special emotion.” Zhang Yulan His grandson Zhang Zhifei is the contemporary inheritor of Xiu Niang’s homespun cloth. He was personally taught by Zhang Yulan and has already mastered traditional textile techniques. In the past, a loom could only weave four or five meters of cloth a day. After Zhang Zhifei’s innovative improvements, it can weave more than 10 meters a day.
“The embroiderers’ homespun textile skills in Gaoyinpu Village are among the fifth batch of representative projects of municipal intangible cultural heritage in Tangshan City. In the workshop exhibition hall, everyone can personally feel the beauty of homespun textile skills. Let adults retrieve their memories and let children understand the past.” said the commentator Wang Yang.
According to reports, the craftsmanship of embroiderers in weaving homespun cloth ranges from picking cotton threads to weaving cloth on machines, through tie-up, elastic stitching, spinning, thread-making, There are dozens of processes such as chaotic thread, falling thread, warp thread, brush thread, heddle making, breaking out seeds, pulling out heddle, hoisting machine, bolting cloth, weaving, weaving machine, etc. It is carefully designed with more than 20 basic colors. More than 2,000 kinds of colorful patterns are transformed.
The entire exhibition hall is divided into textile area, operation area, finished product area and study experience area, realizing the entire process flow from cotton to homespun cloth production. In the textile area, several embroiderers wearing floral headscarves and floral aprons were weaving attentively. According to reports, these looms were purchased by cadres of the two village committees from Lulong, Qinglong, Qianxi and other places. The embroiderers working here are all women from Gaoyinpu Village. The youngest is 40 years old and the oldest is 73 years old. The embroiderer has a fixed monthly income, and there is also a home-based handicraft workshop where she can work at home. At present, the Embroidery Girl Handicraft Workshop has solved the employment problem for more than 120 women in this village.
In the operating area, various tools such as spinning wheels are placed, which can be used for fabrication, heddling, weaving, sewing and other technological processes. Wang Yang told reporters that many products are processed here.
The “Embroidery Girl Handicraft Workshop” currently has more than 100 embroiderers. It uses colorful cotton and pure cotton yarn as raw materials and can weave more than 100 home textiles every day. It processes more than 100 handmade travel craft bags, 60 health care pillows, and 30 bed sheets and quilt tops. At the same time, scarves, bath towels, clothing, etc. can be customized according to customer needs, with average daily sales of 5,000 yuan. After reaching full capacity, it can attract 500 women to be employed, and can produce 400 pieces (sets) of handmade travel bags and various handmade leisure items every day, with an annual output value of 12 million yuan and a profit and tax of 2 million yuan. In 2017, in the “Tangshan Supply and Marketing Cup” tourism product competition, the products of “Embroidery Girl Handmade Workshop” won the second prize and were identified as “Tangshan Tourism Recommended Products” by the Tangshan Municipal Tourism Bureau; “Embroidered Girl Handmade Workshop” Won the title of “Top Ten Tourism Commodity Characteristics Enterprises in 2017”.
With the hot sales of products, merchants and consumers continue to come to Gaoyinpu Village to inspect and visit. The two committees of the village also focus on traditional textile culture , aiming to expand the industrial chain integrating culture and tourism, and develop the tourism industry relying on the two characteristics of “Embroiderer Handicraft Workshop” and Gaoyinpu Kitchen, where tourists can experience making noodle stalls, rolling cotton swabs, spinning threads, and weaving cloth More than 10 experiences including fabric painting making, tie-dyeing, batik, paper-making and stone-ground soy milk.In recent years, the number of visitors to the project has reached 160,000, and the “Embroidery Lady Handicraft Workshop” has also won honorary titles such as “Hebei Province Skillful Hands Poverty Alleviation Demonstration Base” and “National Women’s Advanced Collective for Contribution”. In 2020, Gaoyinpu Village achieved a collective economic income of 350,000 yuan.
The development of the collective economy has provided material guarantee for the rural revitalization of Gaoyinpu Village. In recent years, Gaoyinpu Village has continuously transformed the achievements of the collective economy into the well-being of villagers. It has paved and built nearly 20,000 square meters of roads, installed more than 100 street lights, planted more than 3,000 seedlings, and built a village square and a party building square. The village has a completely new look.
Right now, the village is making an overall plan for the village’s 2,200 acres of village area, and is striving to invest 300 million yuan in three to five years to build an integrated village. The “Leizu Garden” cultural tourism business card integrates leisure travel, sightseeing experience, shopping and dining, and production and picking, achieving leap-forward development of the collective economy.
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