IT was once made as a tribute to ancient royalty but a decline in quality and the scourge of wars in China almost marked the end of a specialty silk. Xu Wenwen meets the man whose family have been keeping hang luo alive for more than three generations.

Dramatic" is the perfect word to describe the fate of hang luo, a silk which gets its name from the city of Hangzhou. In olden times, hang luo was produced as a tribute to the imperial family, but is now under threat of extinction; tens of years ago weaving and selling the specialty silk was the livelihood of thousands of citizens, but today only one factory remains; and though it was, and still is, one of the three most famous silks in southeastern China, hang luo's current production and marketing are in a poor state.

Some consolation came in 2009, when hang luo was approved as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. Since then, dresses made with the silk have been presented as gifts to first ladies in other countries.

And thanks to the Shaos, a local family running the last hang luo factory, the fabric and its culture are being preserved.

Shao Guanxing is the family's third-generation descendant producing hang luo.

His father and grandfather passed him the techniques for making the material.

Luo is a flimsy, smooth cloth that can breathe, and therefore it is usually made into underwear, skirts, trousers and curtains. It is welcomed among Chinese, in particular among children and elder people who are more subject to skin conditions.

Luo was invented in China in the Neolithic Age, and hang luo, which emerged more than 2,000 years ago, is a representative of the luo family due to its refined quality.

According to Shao, hang luo was listed as a tribute to the royal family in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which resulted in the fabric's prosperity, and lots of mills producing the silk were scattered across the city.

"The high quality of hang luo is the result of a unique weaving method - the cloth, part of the time, is weaved in water," reveals Shao.

"And our family boasts a secret recipe used in the water," he adds, "which keeps the silk semi-degummed so it is hard enough to be twisted and the cloth can be compacted. Plus there's no need to size the cloth so it won't be that stiff."

The 58-year-old Shao learned all the processes from his father Shao Jingquan, and his father learned from his father Shao Mingcai, who learned his trade as an apprentice at a local hang luo mill, before building his own mill.

As Shao reminisces, his grandfather did roaring trade, but when he passed away, his father Shao Jingquan was unable to sustain the family business because of the scourge of wars in China at the time.

"The history of my family is in line with the transformation of society," he explains.

"From 1937 when the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression took place to 1949 when the People's Republic of China was established, less then 10 hang luo looms remained in the city. Till 1954, our house had only two looms left."

And when the Great Leap Forward period started in 1958, the Shaos were asked to give up their secret recipe for the water in order to speed up production and increase output, which resulted in a degradation of the quality of its hang luo.

Things gradually went from bad to worse. When it came to the onset of the "cultural revolution" period (1966-1976) in 1966, the local silk industry stopped production. Fortunately, the then-owner Shao Jingquan preserved the secret recipe and all the hand-operated equipment.

The mill didn't resume its normal work until the mid-1970s as the cultural revolution came to an end. It was around this time that Shao Guanxing, the youngest child in the family and also the only child willing to succeed the venture, took the business from his father.

Starting from the most basic techniques, he didn't let his family down. In three years, he became an expert who not only grasped the whole process of producing the silk but could also repair and make looms.

In the 1980s, another golden age for hang luo arrived. "I established the Fuxing Silk Factory in 1984, which had eight looms and over 40 workers," Shao recalls.

However, the good times didn't last long.

Soon the country's traditional silk industry faced a crisis. Few farmers were dedicated to sericulture, the rearing of silkworms, due to too much hard work for little return, while the rise of chemical-blended fabrics meant silk was no longer the main cloth for Chinese people.

Because the quality of hang luo had become so deplorable, large-scale silk factories halted the production of hang luo, while small hang luo mills went bankrupt in batches.

Only Shao Guanxing persisted and only his Fuxing Silk Factory produced hang luo.

"It is my career, my life," he explains. With his wife Hong Guizhen's support, the family business moves toward an uncertain future.

The business rarely benefits the family financially, sometimes they have even lost money so Shao has to sustain the business by transferring money earned from other silk businesses.

"It's not a permanent solution, rather, higher production efficiency is," Shao says.

"For thousands of years, a sophisticated worker could merely weave 3 or 4 meters of hang luo in one day because it had to be weaved in the water and by hand," he adds.

In addition, fragile wooden weaving machines, silk that is too tender and other elements can also hinder the production rate.

From choosing original material to replacing wooden looms with metal ones, it took Shao five years to crack such a hard nut.

Today, a loom can produce 18 to 20 meters of hang luo, as much as six times more than it could in olden times.

Shao also remedied a drawback of hang luo - too few colors. Previously, the silk only had five colors - grey, beige, brown, blue and white, but through modern technology, the factory is capable of dyeing it another five colors, such as purple, plum and camel color.

Shao's efforts were finally repaid in 2005 when the local government started helping the factory promote the local specialty, and recommend the culture of the cloth be considered as an intangible cultural heritage.

Currently, the factory provides hang luo to well-known silk stores in Hangzhou, Beijing, Nantong, Wuxi and Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, and exports it to Western countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Russia.

As Shao and his wife are getting older, they are passing on the factory and techniques to their daughter and son-in-law.

"Whatever will occur in the future, my family and my descendents must continue to carry on the culture and business forever," Shao says firmly, while his eyes glisten with tears.