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黄道婆 Huang Daopo (circa 1245-1330) - Granny's great innovations
June 26, 2011, Sunday
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"Granny Huang, Granny Huang, teach me spinning, teach me weaving. Turning two spools of yarn into two bolts of cloth." This popular ballad had been sung by generations of people living in the suburban areas of Shanghai since the late 13th century.
Granny Huang was Huang Daopo, a local child bride-turned-pioneer and innovator of the cotton textile industry in ancient China.
Born into a very poor family in a village in today's Xuhui District in southwest Shanghai, Huang Daopo was sold to another family as a child bride when she was only 12. But the new family treated her badly. They forced her to work in the field during the day and spin yarn at night. In addition, she frequently suffered from hunger and family violence.
After nearly five years, Huang decided that she couldn't stand the maltreatment anymore, so one night, she fled to the nearby Huangpu River and secretly boarded a seafaring boat.
The boat eventually brought her to Yazhou (today's Haikou City) on Hainan Island, thousands of miles away from Shanghai. There, she settled down among the local ethnic Li people, who showed great sympathy for her and treated her like their family.
Li people were very good at producing excellent quality cotton fabrics and they had created the then-famous cotton-silk jacquard called "Li Brocade" or "Yazhou Quilt."
Huang was fascinated by those beautiful fabrics and she studied arduously from the local Li people their spinning and weaving skills.
She lived on the island for nearly 30 years before she became so homesick that she decided to return to her hometown in Shanghai.
By that time, the Yangtze River Delta, including her home village, which was known for its silkworm breeding and silk fabric production, had become a new cotton growing area in the country. But local people were still using backward cotton textile production tools and the production efficiency was dishearteningly low.
So, Huang began to help. First, she taught the local people the spinning and weaving skills that she had learned from the Li people in Hainan. Then she spent a lot of time on improving the cotton textile production tools.
After harvesting the cotton from the field, the first thing people had to do was to separate the cotton fibers from the seeds. Formerly, this job was done by hand. It was tedious and time-consuming. So, Huang created a two-roller cotton gin. With the two rollers rotating in opposite directions, it could quickly and easily separate the cotton fibers from the seeds.
After ginning, cotton must be fluffed before it can be made into wool or yarns. But people then used a 1.5-foot (46cm) long hand bow to fluff the cotton. It was very slow. So, Huang remodeled it into a 4-foot (1.22m) long bow equipped with a thicker string. To fluff the cotton, the worker would place the bow-string on the cotton and pluck it with a hammer. The speed of cotton fluffing was more than redoubled. The bigger cotton fluffing bow was later introduced not only to other parts of the country, but also to Japan and many other neighboring countries.
However, the most important innovation of Huang was her three-spool, pedal-driven cotton-spinning machine. Before, local people used the single-spool hand wheel to spin cotton roving into workable yarn or thread. Huang's multi-spool machine was the most advanced cotton-spinning frame in the world at that time. It was invented more than 400 years before the spinning jenny was created by James Hargreaves in England in 1764.
Granny Huang was Huang Daopo, a local child bride-turned-pioneer and innovator of the cotton textile industry in ancient China.
Born into a very poor family in a village in today's Xuhui District in southwest Shanghai, Huang Daopo was sold to another family as a child bride when she was only 12. But the new family treated her badly. They forced her to work in the field during the day and spin yarn at night. In addition, she frequently suffered from hunger and family violence.
After nearly five years, Huang decided that she couldn't stand the maltreatment anymore, so one night, she fled to the nearby Huangpu River and secretly boarded a seafaring boat.
The boat eventually brought her to Yazhou (today's Haikou City) on Hainan Island, thousands of miles away from Shanghai. There, she settled down among the local ethnic Li people, who showed great sympathy for her and treated her like their family.
Li people were very good at producing excellent quality cotton fabrics and they had created the then-famous cotton-silk jacquard called "Li Brocade" or "Yazhou Quilt."
Huang was fascinated by those beautiful fabrics and she studied arduously from the local Li people their spinning and weaving skills.
She lived on the island for nearly 30 years before she became so homesick that she decided to return to her hometown in Shanghai.
By that time, the Yangtze River Delta, including her home village, which was known for its silkworm breeding and silk fabric production, had become a new cotton growing area in the country. But local people were still using backward cotton textile production tools and the production efficiency was dishearteningly low.
So, Huang began to help. First, she taught the local people the spinning and weaving skills that she had learned from the Li people in Hainan. Then she spent a lot of time on improving the cotton textile production tools.
After harvesting the cotton from the field, the first thing people had to do was to separate the cotton fibers from the seeds. Formerly, this job was done by hand. It was tedious and time-consuming. So, Huang created a two-roller cotton gin. With the two rollers rotating in opposite directions, it could quickly and easily separate the cotton fibers from the seeds.
After ginning, cotton must be fluffed before it can be made into wool or yarns. But people then used a 1.5-foot (46cm) long hand bow to fluff the cotton. It was very slow. So, Huang remodeled it into a 4-foot (1.22m) long bow equipped with a thicker string. To fluff the cotton, the worker would place the bow-string on the cotton and pluck it with a hammer. The speed of cotton fluffing was more than redoubled. The bigger cotton fluffing bow was later introduced not only to other parts of the country, but also to Japan and many other neighboring countries.
However, the most important innovation of Huang was her three-spool, pedal-driven cotton-spinning machine. Before, local people used the single-spool hand wheel to spin cotton roving into workable yarn or thread. Huang's multi-spool machine was the most advanced cotton-spinning frame in the world at that time. It was invented more than 400 years before the spinning jenny was created by James Hargreaves in England in 1764.
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