After Chen Tian boldly said about the weaving workshop, he immediately got the support of many township officials, which made Chen Tian greatly relieved, and it seems that he is not the only one who has such a problem.

Speaking of the textile handicraft industry in Sufu Province, we have to mention the famous Jiangnan three weaving. The history of Jiangning, Suzhou and Hangzhou can be traced back to the Ming Dynasty.

The silk weaving and dyeing industry operated by the government in the Ming Dynasty was also called weaving by the officials who supervised the industry, and the Ming Dynasty directly supervised the weaving of the official bureau with internal officials, called the weaving eunuchs. The Ming set up three bureaus in Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou to weave silk fabrics used in the court.

At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, in the fifth year of Shunzhi, the Qing court changed to the household department to send personnel to manage Jiangnan weaving. For thirteen years, it was still sent by the Inner Thirteen Yamen (eunuch institutions) and replaced every year. In the second year of Kangxi, he was appointed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs for a long time. During the Kangxi period, weaving had the task of reporting the situation in various places with dense folding. Yongzheng continued to implement at the beginning, and Yongzheng was abolished in thirteen years.

In the Ming Dynasty, weaving according to the management system, can be divided into the imperial court bureau and the local bureau. The imperial court bureaus include: the Inner Weaving and Dyeing Bureau located in Nanjing, also known as the Southern Bureau, which is subordinate to the Ministry of Industry, and is made of various colors of silk cloth in the palace; The Outer Weaving and Dyeing Bureau located in Beijing, that is, the Weaving and Dyeing Institute of the Ministry of Industry, mainly dyes and practices silk cloth; In addition, there is a god silk hall (under the priest of ceremonies) and a supply room in Beijing, the former specializes in making silk, and the latter is ready to weave from time to time. The local bureaus were 22 weaving and dyeing bureaus in eight provinces and prefectures such as Zhejiang and Nanzhili, and about 19 in four provinces seven years after Jiajing. The raw materials of the local weaving and dyeing bureaus (including silk, luo, silk, etc.) are the tax silk paid by the people of the prefecture; Most of the funds come from the Lijia Ding Tian tax silver. Although the weaving of the Ming Dynasty official bureau spread throughout the provinces, the focus of its search was the Jiangnan region. Most of the official bureaus of the imperial court were only engaged in fabric dyeing, and the various sections of rewards used by the emperor were mainly solved by the local weaving and dyeing bureaus of Suzhou, Hangzhou and other prefectures. Although there is a quota for the annual section, it is often added in addition to the amount, and the additional sitting party is often much larger than the regular amount. In the Ming Dynasty, the ether supervised the weaving. At first, he supervised the construction of the upper section of the horse, and later developed into a year of manufacturing that also managed the local weaving bureau. These people rely on their authority, looting and looting, and their cheats are growing day by day.

Weaving is mainly based on the unpaid labor of dyeing and weaving handicraftsmen in various places, and generally adopts the form of local weaving and centralized production. These craftsmen were forcibly recruited through the craftsman registration system and incorporated into the weaving and dyeing bureaus in different forms of labor. The craftsmen used by the Liangjing Weaving and Dyeing Bureau are mainly resident craftsmen; The local weaving and dyeing bureaus of Suzhou, Hangzhou and other prefectures are mainly retained craftsmen, who belong to the category of shift craftsmen. The Ming generation of official weaving has evolved over and over again, and Suzhou and Hangzhou weaving have stopped intermittently because of the edict to stop weaving.

The production and operation methods of various weaving and dyeing bureaus have also changed many times. The content of the changes mainly revolves around the three forms of local weaving, market buying and collar weaving. Market buying and collar weaving are usually used by the bureaucracy to supplement the means of searching for years and years when the production of the bureau is insufficient or suspended.

to the late Ming Dynasty. Due to the decline of official weaving in the Jiangsu and Hangzhou areas of Jiangnan, the production of collar weaving contracted by private handicraft machine households has developed greatly, and collar weaving has become the main way for the government to control and plunder the folk silk weaving industry.

After the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the Qing court followed the Ming system and set up three weaving offices in Jiangning, Hangzhou and Suzhou. Because Jiangning weaving is mostly served by the emperor's cronies of the Eight Banners Minister of Internal Affairs, it is called "Jiangning Weaving Department". Its status is second only to that of the Governor of Liangjiang. It was more trusted by the emperor and could directly provide the Qing government with various information on the Jiangnan region, so it was powerful. In the Qing Dynasty, the silk weaving industry in Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou had a long and excellent tradition, and Jiangning alone had more than 30,000 looms and about 50,000 male and female workers. There are more than 200,000 residents who rely on the silk weaving industry for their livelihood, and the annual output value is 12 million taels of silver.

Jiangning weaving was destroyed in the war after the Taiping army conquered Nanjing, and a large number of textile people went into exile in Suzhou and Hangzhou, which was one of the four ancient silk capitals. It can be said that there are no less than 700,000 textile people trapped under the impact of foreign cloth, and the traditional handmade silk weaving industry has reached the point where it has to find another way out.

In later generations, handmade silk fabrics were very fashionable and expensive, but in this era, it was cost and quantity that broke the tradition of handicrafts. After the appearance of the steam engine and the Jenny spinning machine, Europe relied on industrial production of liliang, the textile industry into a new era, the machine replaced the manual greatly reduced the production cost, the quantity is geometrically turned up, and the quality is sometimes better than the handmade textile industry, so the impact of foreign yarn and foreign cloth on the traditional textile industry in Suzhou and Hangzhou is very huge.

Since the opening of Shanghai, the traditional textile industry in Suzhou and Hangzhou has declined, and even the wealthy businessmen are eager for imported goods, in a word, foreign goods are better than local goods. After the Taiping Army captured Suzhou and Hangzhou, after abolishing the Manchu Dynasty's inland harsh taxes such as Kali gold and customs duties, although it greatly encouraged the circulation of industry and commerce, it also became a straw that overwhelmed the traditional textile industry in Suzhou and Hangzhou, and the contradictions with the pains of change of the times naturally broke out.

Before the Opium War, because of the good quality of handmade homespun cloth, the amount of Chinese rural homespun cloth exported to Britain still exceeded that of foreign cloth imported from Britain to China. At the same time, due to the feudal hierarchy, it is forbidden for folk to wear and imitate textile products, and the monopoly of jishu is implemented, and there is a negative effect on hindering the popularization of jishu, so that some textile stunts are often lost. Coupled with the scattered distribution of textile handicrafts in Suzhou and Hangzhou, it is difficult to form a joint force against foreign cloth, and the folk textile industry has suffered a huge blow.

He only wishfully believed that it was the foreign cloth that caused them to not sell, and that it was the New Deal that reduced the price of the foreign cloth that caused the price of the foreign cloth to be further lower, leaving them with no return.

King Xi didn't seem to have any intention of explaining, he just said in a deep voice: "There are more than 270,000 weavers in Jiangning and Suzhou and Hangzhou, most of which are concentrated in Suzhou and Hangzhou, and Suzhou's Suzhou embroidery is the best in the world, Qian Hui and Cao Moqin in Wuxian County, Wujiang, Yang Maojun and Shen Guanguan in Wujiang, Ding Pei and Xue Wenhua in Wuxi, all of which are famous. Today, the weavers in Suzhou and Hangzhou should also think about how to adapt and innovate, just like the Yancao reform, there is no way out without change. ”

Chen Tian and the others were shocked when they heard this, how could the weaving workshop change? I only listened to the king of the West pacing a few steps and continued: "The people's food and clothing at that time to live, the cost of the consumption is only the four words of cheap and good, not that the homespun cloth produced by our weavers is not as good as foreign cloth, but the foreign cloth in the case of guaranteed goods, the price is only half of the price of the homespun cloth, of course the people choose foreign cloth." ”

Speaking of this, the king of the west waved his hand and said, "Everyone move with this king and go to see something." After saying that, King Xi walked down the treasure steps, and more than ten guards guarded behind, and Chen Tian and other township officials hurriedly followed.

Everyone followed the West King out of the West Palace, came to the east of the city to seal the gate with the city bridge under the pond, with the city bridge north on the east side of the pond bank, east from the new bridge north Yingfeng Bridge Lane to connect Wu Yachang, west with the city bridge north out of the Phoenix Street, and the rolling embroidery workshop across the street, here is the Manchu Qing Dynasty known as the Suzhou Weaving Department.

After the Taiping army captured Suzhou, the officials and craftsmen of the Suzhou Weaving Department fled, and then the dressing hall of the West Hall took over here, and the craftsmen were called to resume work and make clothes for the West Hall Office. There are more than 2,000 male and female weavers and craftsmen in it, and the officials and costumes of the West Hall are all from here.

Walk into the West Garden of the Weaving Department, which was originally the place where Kangxi went down to the south of the Yangtze River, but now a tall scaffolding has been erected in this garden. If that kid from Clifford had seen such a nondescript scaffolding in such a beautiful garden, he would have exclaimed that this was murdering a work of art!

The scaffolding is on the grass of the West Garden, covering a wide area, three feet high, covered with oilcloth straw cover to cover the rain, surrounded by coarse cloth to make a simple fence, many craftsmen in the country are following a few foreigners in and out of the busy.

Chen Tian and the others were very curious, and followed Xiwang into the scaffolding, only to see that there was a huge machine and more than ten spinning machines inside. Chen Tian didn't know the biggest machine, but he recognized the spinning machines at a glance, because he still recognized the spinning wheels and spindles on them.

Xiwang pointed to the machine and said: "This is a foreigner's steam engine, which is mainly composed of cylinders, bases, pistons, crank connecting rod mechanisms, slide valve steam distribution mechanisms, speed regulating mechanisms and flywheels. Speaking of this, King Xi noticed that Chen Tian and the others were stunned and didn't know what to do, King Xi smiled slightly embarrassed, coughed lightly and continued: "Okay, don't worry about what this machine is made of, you can see how it is spun." With that, the King of the West waved to the busy craftsmen and foreigners, and motioned for them to start the machine.

After the coal and water are added, the steam engine begins to move, accompanied by the noisy noise and the unique steam roar, more than ten spinning machines also start to move, the thread spindle follows the action of the loom and rotates rapidly, and the thread ends become rolls of cloth under the weaving of the loom, and slowly roll down from the other end.

Chen Tian and the others looked dumbfounded, these more than ten machines almost only need a few people to operate, and the cloth produced in a short time is almost the amount of cloth produced by dozens of people in a day.

King Xi raised his voice, overshadowed the noise of the steam engine, and said loudly: "This is how the foreigners' textile factories produce foreign cloth, and one of our skilled hand-weavers will have to spend years to teach, and they only need to spend three months to teach the workers how to operate the machine!" The length, style, and weaving method of the cloth can be changed as you like through the loom! This is what foreigners call industrial liliang! ”

Chen Tian's face was like ashes, he rushed forward unwillingly, grabbed the finished fabric that fell from the roller, and wanted to tear it like crazy to prove that the quality of the fabric was unreliable, but the toughness of the fabric was very strong. Finally, Chen Tian couldn't help crying loudly, he slowly knelt down in front of the machine, and the cloth in his hand slowly drooped down...... (To be continued......)