“I want to give it culture, not the culture of the brand, but more of the five thousand years of Chinese culture carried by the brand culture.”
For every two pieces of Hanfu sold nationwide, one comes from here.
There are 2,473 Hanfu companies, 14,416 online stores, and nearly 100,000 employees.
Last year, the sales of Hanfu here were 7.215 billion yuan.
The online sales of Hanfu here from January to April this year were 2.47 billion yuan, of which horse-faced skirts accounted for 1.073 billion yuan.
......
Here is Cao County, an "ordinary" county town located in Heze City, Shandong Province .
If you walk empty-handed on the fabric accessories street in Daji Town, Cao County, a complete Hanfu can be made within 5 kilometers. This Hanfu can get on the highway in 10 minutes and the airport in 40 minutes. Caoxian Hanfu has low production costs, large output, diverse styles, and cluster development. Therefore, some people say that Caoxian is the source of young people’s first Hanfu. Others say that Caoxian is the place where every Chinese can afford and wear Hanfu. .
Thousands of years of civilization, the rise of China, the craze for traditional culture, cultural self-confidence, the younger generation and other originally grand and vast words have fallen on this county since the end of last year. The sewing machines in many villages are literally dripping with stitches. Stitch by stitch, ups and downs, each piece of horse-faced skirt has flying dragons and dancing phoenixes, and beautiful rivers and mountains. It is said that during the Chinese New Year this year, 8 out of 10 horse-faced skirts across the country came from here, and the smoking sewing machines made the "Center of the Universe" appear again.
"Chun Qiu Zuo Zhuan Zhengyi" said: "China has great etiquette, so it is called Xia; it has the beauty of clothing and seals, so it is called Hua." Hanfu, also known as Huafu, After thousands of years of development and evolution, it not only condenses the crafts of dyeing, weaving and embroidery, but also carries the meaning of a state of etiquette, a country with clothes and a beautiful China. From the end of March to the beginning of April this year, Caoxian County "pursued the victory" and held the week-long second Caoxian Hanfu Culture Festival and 2024 spring and summer new product launch conference to showcase past results and release new spring and summer models that are more in line with the market and season. Revival, copy, and innovation, a piece of clothing, a piece of history, a legend. Thousands of years of evolution of Hanfu are condensed and folded in Caoxian County like the pleats on a horse-faced skirt. Caoxian County continues to explore and improve with this history and culture, writing Wearing Hanfu Spring and Autumn Festival in a county town.
What the people want to wear, Caoxian County will produce.
The scenery on the way to Daji Town is no different from many villages and towns in the north. Both, ordinary, silent, and even some roads and houses are a bit dilapidated. Only the occasional wind and roaring cars disturb the quiet road and make it full of smoke. However, once you get to the fabric accessories street in the town, electric cars, tricycles, trucks, etc.Walking in and out, you are overwhelmed with signboards such as pattern making, printing, fabrics, buttons, etc. The glass of the display window is covered with dust, but the various Hanfus in the store are dazzling. A seemingly unremarkable store, such as a fabric store, can generate hundreds of millions of yuan in sales a year.
When talking about Caoxian Hanfu, we have to start with the production of performance costumes. But if we talk about Caoxian's performance costumes, we have to start with the earlier photography costumes.
In the 1990s, relatively luxurious photo studios appeared in many counties, and it became popular for people to take photos inside. Caoxian County is the hometown of calligraphy and painting, so some people from Caoxian County moved calligraphy and painting to the background cloth of the photo studio. After the background cloth is painted, some people think, what should the person standing in front of it wear to match the cloth? It's all about craftsmanship, so smart and skillful farmers sewed some clothes for taking pictures, combined them with background cloth, and carried them to the city for sale.
The development of history is often accelerated by those who seize opportunities.
In 2009, something happened in Dinglou Village, Daji Town. From then on, Caoxian County was closely connected to a network cable, and the county was always riding the wave of the Internet. OK.
That year, Ren Qingsheng from Dinglou Village accidentally fell into a massage device business that was actually a pyramid scheme and lost thousands of dollars. At the same time, his wife Zhou Aihua was laid off from her job in the cotton spinning factory. The couple has three children and three and a half acres of land that cannot support their children's education and family expenses.
The turnaround occurred on a computer.
Zhou Aihua had a friend who came back from visiting relatives and told her that she could make money by selling things online at home. Zhou Aihua told her husband the news. Ren Qingsheng was stunned after hearing this: "What, what is the Internet?"
At that time, the couple wanted to do some business, but they had to be careful. Zhou Aihua has to take care of her children and wants to "do something at home." Ren Qingsheng is frightened by pyramid schemes. "I firmly disagree with tinkering with computers. I'm afraid it's another trick to deceive people. Typing on the computer and typing on the keyboard , which is played by educated people or city people. Do you think we farmers can still play with computers?"
But life was really difficult, so the couple gritted their teeth and spent 1,500 yuan. Yuanqian set up a dedicated line in a village that did not yet have broadband access, and spent 1,400 yuan to assemble a bulky computer on the second-hand market.
“I have never seen it before, so I asked the teacher (dialect, master) who came to assemble it to teach me how to turn it on.” From turning on the phone, registering, as shown in the picture above, the couple uses “One Finger Zen” "Put the Mao suit used for taking photos online.
A few months later, a “ding-dong” sound more than a thousand kilometers away exploded in the ears of Ren Qingsheng and his wife along the network cable. The buyer from Humen, Guangdong asked them if they had any performance clothes. The couple was very excited. But they have to convert the dialects in their minds into Mandarin, and then input Mandarin into the computer. In this long process, they not only have to use their daughter's first-grade Chinese textbooks, but also think about whether they can produce what buyers need.clothing. The other end of the computer was also anxious and asked directly: "Seeing as your store has never opened before, do you know how to type?" Then he sent another picture, "Can this be done?"
"Yes. !” The couple replied with difficulty but very firmly.
Then, the two of them looked at the pictures non-stop to find fabric, cut and sew. In those days, their sewing machine really started to smoke because Zhou Aihua was kicking it.
Ren Qingsheng and Zhou Aihua are busy in the factory.
Photographed by Gong Shuyun, reporter of Farmers Daily·China Rural Network
After the 36 costumes were carried to the county and mailed away, the two began to wait extremely anxiously. "Has the goods arrived? What should the buyer do if he wants to return the goods? Where did the money go? What is online banking?" With a lot of questions, Ren Qingsheng went to the bank every day to check. After more than a week, "More than 1,000 yuan has gone." 'As soon as it was put into my card, I knew it was done."
The money "freed" is equivalent to the family's income from farming for a year.
As a result, the experience of "it is better to go home and hunt for treasures than to run around outside" spread from Dinglou Village to Cao County. Soon, in a society of acquaintances, the villagers imitated and led each other. From plate making and printing, to cutting and sewing, to sales and logistics, a complete industrial chain was formed in the town.
With the industrial chain as the foundation and looking at the market as a vane, it can be said that Caoxian County can produce whatever the people want to wear and what the market needs.
Traveling through the Tang and Han DynastiesFuyuncang Exhibition Hall.
In the Hanfu Yuncang base called Crossing the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese costumes of various ethnic groups, various styles, and various eras are shining. There was an endless stream of people in the exhibition hall who came to watch, buy and negotiate. After they were welcomed and sent off, the person in charge, Liu Shenfeng, told the history of his clothing business. Judging from his experience, the emergence of Hanfu in Caoxian County is not because Caoxian people happened to encounter business opportunities, but the product of Caoxian people who have market acumen and adapt to the development of the times. The exhibition hall of about 2,300 square meters mainly displays Hanfu. "If the market demands it, it is possible that all the models wearing it will become Tang suits."
See also "Cosmic Center"
"In the evening, people in other places may have a drink and play mahjong. We are usually decorating online stores next to the computer, or designing products. Even if we are watching TV series, we are not only watching The plot also depends on the clothes worn by the actors, and we will imitate them to see how to use them on our clothes," said Ren Qingsheng.
In the production of performance costumes, farmers in Caoxian County have shown strong market acumen and entrepreneurial spirit of daring to think and act. In addition, it is also inseparable from the development of e-commerce and government support. Professor Qiu Zeqi from the Department of Sociology of Peking University once conducted special research and analysis on the development of rural e-commerce in Heze City, taking Dinglou Village as an example. He believes that society, the market, and the government are important forces that influence rural order. Focusing on the "development" goal, different cognitions and behaviors among the three will shape different rural orders. In Caoxian County, “the economic life, social life, and political life of the countryside all work together, support and collaborate with each other around the goal of rural development, forming a ‘three orders unified’ countryside with economic prosperity, social order, and political advancement. Order.”
In the “e-clothing town” of the digital economy industrial park created by Caoxian County, the reporter met Liu Xia, deputy director of the Caoxian County E-commerce Service Center. She said that the development of Caoxian County is based on the "one core and two wings" model, which focuses on the core of farmers' entrepreneurship and lets e-commerce platforms and government services serve as its two wings.
Whether it is "three ranks unified" or "one core and two wings", one household drives one village, and one village drives one town. By 2017, Daji Town has become the largest processing and sales of children's performance clothing in the country base.
Before 2019, Hanfu was only one category among the various performance costumes produced in Caoxian County. Due to the epidemic, offline performances have dropped sharply. At the same time, the national trend has risen, and some businesses have tried to mass-produce Hanfu. At the beginning of 2020, in order to fight the epidemic and resume work, many county heads across the country promoted live broadcasts of local specialties. Liang Huimin, then deputy secretary of the County Party Committee and County Magistrate of Caoxian County, put on Hanfu in the live broadcast room and told everyone about the styles of Hanfu in different periods. He also introduced the characteristics and production techniques of Caoxian Hanfu: "Caoxian Hanfu inherits the simplicity of the Han Dynasty and the style of the Tang Dynasty. Elegant, elegant and dignified, it is your best choice! ”
In the Internet tide, traffic is more like immeasurable waves, and its size and power are sometimes beyond imagination.
Not long after the county magistrate brought the goods, an Internet celebrity from Cao CountyThe short video called Mai "Shandong Heze Caoxian 666 Wo Di Baby", which had a strong brainwashing effect and triggered imitation and discussion. Topics related to Caoxian began to explode. Caoxian County has brought online carnivals due to the "Tuhai" Internet celebrities, and it has attracted everyone's admiration for its rich financial resources such as Hanfu and coffins exported to Japan. "I would rather sleep in a bed in Caoxian County than a house in Shanghai" and "Beijing, Shanghai and Guangcao". Caoxian County not only "redefines the ranking of China's first-tier cities" in the hot memes, the scope of its "redefinition" is getting wider and wider, and even It is nicknamed the "center of the universe".
It started last year when everyone recognized it and started wearing it. Last year, the cultural tourism market heated up rapidly, coupled with the revival of traditional culture, it was also the 20th anniversary of the "Hanfu Movement" initiated by young people. Tourists wearing Hanfu and flower hairpins can be seen everywhere in famous scenic spots, which has led to the explosive development of the Hanfu industry in Caoxian County. Especially during the Spring Festival this year, horse-faced skirts have become the "Year of the Dragon jersey" for countless young ladies.
Horse-faced skirts became popular, and orders were like whips urging Luo Ruyan’s Hanfu brand factories to step up production. General manager Yao Chixing recalled: “More than a hundred workers were far from enough. , with a daily turnover of more than 100,000 yuan. I planned to stock up before the Spring Festival, but the fabric was already finished before the 29th of the twelfth lunar month.”
Some Hanfu are on display in the "Youaiyuncang" Hanfu production and live broadcast base (the Luo Ruyan brand is live broadcasting in the exhibition hall). Photo by Zhou Zhixiao of Caoxian Media Center
If it was the hot meme of "Cosmic Center" three years ago that made everyone aware of Caoxian Hanfu, then this time, it was the emergence of Hanfu that made everyone see "Cosmic Center" again ".
"Revival, copy, and then what?"
When history moves forward slowly, it will inadvertently experience montage-like techniques, being edited, spliced and compressed, spanning Thousands of years, meet the present moment. When the pace of history goes on for a long enough time and we look back, this experience will also become the footprints it has left. Over time, over time, quickly and slowly, history has new content to tell.
Hanfu has a long history. In a narrow sense, it refers to the clothing system formed by the Han nation from "Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun hung down their clothes and ruled the world" to the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. . Born in Cao CountyThe Hanfu produced by Hanfu has already transcended the boundaries of national costumes, and is racing against time with thousands of years of Hanfu history.
While chatting with reporters, Zhou Aihua and the factory workers were busy in the warehouse. A large bag of clothes was sent away, and another large bag of clothes was carried to the warehouse. on the shelf.
However, the huge market demand has also exposed problems such as the inability to produce self-sufficient fabrics and the inability to keep up with the production capacity in the production process of Hanfu in Caoxian County.
On the second floor of the Rural E-commerce Party and Mass Service Building in Daji Town, manager Yang Wei is cutting with the workers. When he saw us arriving, he stopped what he was doing. "Fire also has troubles. The supply of fabrics in Zhejiang is also in short supply, and we have to queue up. We can only go directly to the factory and say that I will not queue up your fabrics, but I will directly contract as many of your machines as possible." In addition to grabbing fabrics, Yang Wei It is also necessary to reduce time in all aspects and shorten the construction period. "It's troublesome to revise drafts remotely with designers, and it takes time for the revised designs to be turned into ready-made clothes in my hands. Our local industry chain is relatively complete, but it can't be solved in just one place. And in such a big city Under the market demand, all links have to be lined up. Therefore, this year I want to complete the entire industrial chain and produce a complete garment without leaving the factory. ”
Luo Ruyan Hanfu brand factory is the leading enterprise in the production of Hanfu in Caoxian County. Currently, the factory has used the Kaos flexible intelligent manufacturing production line. This is the first digital production line in the country to specialize in the production of Hanfu, which can almost double the output of Hanfu.
However, in this pursuit of time, although Yao Chixing also values output, she values quality even more. "When the wealth and wealth of the world comes, I can pick up something casually with a basin, but I want to set a benchmark."
The Hanfu produced in Caoxian County has not yet entered the market in large quantities. Before the market, the price of Hanfu was very high. Together with Lolita dresses and JK uniforms, they were nicknamed the "Three Bankrupt Sisters" by the public. The production of Hanfu in Caoxian County was originally transferred from the production of performance clothes. Performance clothes are often of poor quality because they are rarely used, so the price is low and the output is large. Caoxian Hanfu originally took advantage of this advantage and followed the route of "rural areas surrounding cities", allowing people to wear Hanfu for one to two hundred yuan or even dozens of yuan, quickly occupying the mid- to low-end market. The slogan "Everyone should have a horse-face skirt in their wardrobe" is written on the exhibition hall of "Youaiyuncang" located in Caoxian County's largest Hanfu production and live broadcast base.
Youaiyuncang Hanfu production and live broadcast base.
However, with the speed, technology and cost of producing performance costumes to produce Hanfu, which is becoming more and more common and people are paying more and more attention to it, problems such as low quality, mutual duplication, and lack of originality have become The difficulties facing the production of Hanfu in Caoxian County.
Before 2021, Yao Chixing did not produce Hanfu, she only did live broadcasts. Her lover is the president of Cao County E-commerce Live Broadcasting Association, and together they help and motivate many people to participate in live broadcasting. During the interview, the anchors in the base were displaying all kinds of horse-faced skirts on countless people's mobile phone screens in a live broadcast room. When Yao Chixing was doing a live broadcast at that time, he felt a sense of responsibility that he had to devote himself to production. "Why are some clothes made so poorly? They didn't listen to the manufacturers' suggestions. They thought it would be good if they had the goods for me." Yao Chixing also heard all kinds of things at that time. There were comments about the low quality and plagiarism of Caoxian Hanfu, which made her and her lover decide to create the quality and brand of Caoxian Hanfu.
Designer Chen Long, who is familiar with the history of clothing, analyzed the development stage of Caoxian Hanfu at this time based on the development history of many clothing. "It is now a period of cultural renaissance. In the revival, everyone will continue to copy. Revival, copy, and then? After the climax of the revival, it is time to innovate. "In his opinion, the popularity of the horse-face skirt is because of the clothing itself. The laws of modernization of traditional clothing. If you follow these laws, you can make many innovations. Chen Long is a native of Tai'an, Shandong. He is currently cooperating with his hometown's cultural tourism bureau and universities to make Mount Tai, the most respected of the five mountains, into a horse-faced skirt. "The brocade is the belt, the mountains and rivers are the clothes, and the horse-faced skirt has 'Dai Xiu'. It is a Taishan business card that people who climb Mount Tai can take away. As people become more accepting of it, it is not impossible to embroider giant pandas on horse-faced skirts.”
Designer Chen Long is showing recent designs.
Yang Wei is currently organizing the entire industry chain, but he has been thinking about the improvement and development of horse-faced skirts.exhibition. "It's not as simple as adding a buckle or a waistcoat. I think it's more complicated. For example, the underskirt used to be tied with laces. Can it be made into one with elastic bands? It's summer, so we can make short styles and gauze. Quality. The tops are also more form-fitting. Nowadays, most of them are in the chest-wrap style, which can be made like a shirt and can be worn directly."
When traveling through the Tang Dynasty. In the exhibition hall, Liu Shenfeng said that there are more than 500 different styles of horse-faced skirts alone. At present, Cross Datang has achieved full-chain production. Liu Shenfeng seems calm and relaxed. What he needs to do next is to continue to improve and develop.
"Five thousand years of culture is enough to last for several lifetimes"
"The sleeves of Yueluo shirt welcome the spring breeze, and the jade-carved unicorn belt is red." He handed over his right lapel, The robe has wide sleeves and laces with concealed buttons. Whether it is a deep garment, a top or a skirt, or other styles, Hanfu has been inherited and developed in the course of historical evolution.
"The hem should be 4 centimeters away from the gold thread, which is not enough now!" Amidst the roar of sewing machines, pleating machines and other machines, Li Ling, a designer in Yang Wei's factory, was talking to the cutting workers with a measuring tape. After many measurements and communications, she was worried that the previous production methods would destroy the combination of gold lines and waves and other patterns in the overall design. Li Ling is from Hunan and married to Juye County, not far from Cao County. She had been working as a fashion designer in Hangzhou before. Now that her child is going to junior high school, she has arrived in Caoxian County, which can be considered as a job at home. "It's fate. I can continue to do fashion design, and my children no longer have to be left-behind children."
Designer Li Ling is communicating with workers about fabric cutting methods.
Relatively large factories will have specialized designers, but most family-run factories either buy designs online, use them directly, or go to stores to make designs. There are relatively few very professional design studios that focus on originality in Caoxian County, which is one of the reasons why Caoxian Hanfu has been criticized for plagiarism. Unlike designers hired by factories like Li Ling, Chen Long opened a large design studio in Daji Town.
After showing us the fabric swatches of pavilions, pavilions, plum blossoms, orchids, bamboos and chrysanthemums that have been produced, Chen Long also showed us what the designers were painting.picture. Auspicious animals such as koi carp and phoenix are combined with each other in traditional patterns such as sea water, river cliff pattern and copper coin pattern, and then collide with modern colors, each with rich meaning and unique meaning. Chen Long not only extracts traditional cultural elements in specific designs, but also has many ideas in the research and promotion of ancient Chinese clothing history. These ideas actually come from his worries: "The history of clothing taught in many schools now is the history of Western clothing. There are very few teachers who can teach the history of Chinese clothing, especially the history of Hanfu. This is a cultural fault issue, and it is also the subject of clothing history. Development issues. "What Chen Long needs to do now is not only to provide more original Hanfu designs for Caoxian County, but also to do research, postgraduate entrance examination training, school-enterprise cooperation, etc. to promote Hanfu culture from an educational level.
A horse-faced skirt may be just a fashionable skirt in the eyes of some people, but in the eyes of many people involved in the design and promotion of horse-faced skirts, it is cultural. An amazing vector.
"I want to give it culture, not the culture of the brand, but more of the five thousand years of Chinese culture carried by the brand culture." In Yao Chixing's view, clothes We can do something culturally, and traditional culture can also come alive. The horse-faced skirt is so popular right now, and it is a very good medium to promote traditional culture.
"Our main product is the Phoenix one, and I use many techniques. For example, it's a bit green, but I can't glue it on with kingfisher feathers. I can use knitting The method is used to weave the effect of Dian Cui, and through the skirt, everyone can know what this craft is. Our ancestors have so many good things. "Not only Dian Cui, she is also digging out bit by bit from Caoxian County to the whole country, from the present to the ancient times. Intangible cultural heritage, these things are used in the production of Hanfu.
"If the art is shelved, people cannot feel it. We have excavated five thousand years of culture into clothes, which can be worn on holidays, in scenic spots, and in daily life. It can be said that , it is Cao County that allows people to wear Hanfu. What I want to do is to increase the production volume and improve the quality so that so many people can wear exquisite Hanfu without spending a lot of money. It, in itself, is the inheritance and promotion of traditional culture.”
Because of its long history and culture, Yao Chixing never thinks of traditional Chinese clothing when talking about innovation. There will be bottlenecks in the development, "So much heritage, five thousand years of culture, enough to last for several lifetimes!"
Yao Chixing's family is engaged in the production of wood, another specialty of Caoxian County. "I know that foreign countries value our craftsmanship, and I will wear Chinese clothes when I go abroad. Because of my cultural confidence, I am also very confident, and I think I am the most beautiful." Recently, Yao Chixing wants to use horse-faced skirts as clothing. The business card allows the vivid traditional Chinese culture to go abroad. "Some foreigners are taller, so we make horse-faced skirts starting with 5 pleats. We also use Su embroidery, tapestry and other techniques to let them know what the art of Chinese clothing is." ”
"Clouds think of clothes, flowers think of appearance", pieces of Hanfu with rich cultural heritage and a variety of craftsmanship tell the history in the exhibition hall. Yao Chixing said: "In the next 50 years or more, Caoxian County will have a place in the history of Hanfu."
Author: Gong Shuyun and Lu Bing, reporter of Farmers Daily and China Agricultural Network Soldier
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