How It Is Made
1. Preparing the ramie. The core of this part is bleaching, for which the archive records six methods. Clear-water bleaching: the stalks are laid out in rows before sunrise and tied so they can be turned, spread on grass to sun, sprinkled with water from about half past eight in the morning, turned and sprinkled again once dry, four to five rounds a day over five to six days, until the fibre is white. Sunlight and spring water: the dried ramie is soaked one to two hours, sun-dried, and the cycle repeated several times. Dew bleaching: the ramie is spread on grass through clear nights and moistened by the dew, repeated until white. Lime-water bleaching: soaked in lime water, rinsed in spring water, then sun-dried. Charcoal smoking: the ramie is set in a cellar or bamboo basket and warmed over a charcoal fire, sun-dried to half-dry, washed in spring water, dried, washed and dried again, two or three rounds. Manure soaking: soaked one to two hours in warm manure water stirred in a vat, rinsed clean, sun-dried, repeated three or four times. The bleached fibre is then graded by quality and length — from biaozhuang (fine, white, glossy, over about 1.5 m / 4 chi 5 cun, for the top grade of cloth) down through touzhuang (about 1.27 m / 3 chi 8 cun) and erzhuang / sanzhuang (about 1 m / 3 chi) to baisuo and shaiqing (under 1 m, for coarser cloth).
2. Twisting the thread (jisha). Five steps — bleaching the raw ramie, splitting it into strips, winding the strips into hanks, twisting the yarn, and winding the yarn into spools — all done by women. The bleached ramie is torn into pieces, rolled into strands, and set in a basin of clear water; the worker combs it with the fingers into single fine filaments, twists them together on the thigh into fine yarn, and winds the yarn into small cocoon-shaped balls.
3. Weaving. Four steps, of which brushing the warp and the weaving itself are the hard ones. Brushing the warp, mostly men's work, separates the spun yarn and stretches it straight and long. For mounting, one end of the warp is hung on the warp frame and the other wound onto a wooden pole five to six chi long, held down under a large stone. Sizing is brushed back and forth with a cooked rice-flour paste — rice and vegetable oil, at one kilogram of rice and 0.1 kilogram of oil per bolt of cloth. When the sized yarn is dry, the loom is set up and the weaving begins. Weaving wants weather neither too cold nor too hot, which would crack the yarn and break the thread; it is mostly women's work — hence the cloth's other name, "women's cloth" (niangzibu) — and a bolt takes about two days.
Related Houses
- Yinyixuan (隐逸轩) — Jiangxi Yinyi Industrial Co., Ltd., Wanzai, Jiangxi
Source: China Time-honored Brand Digital Museum, Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). Craft record from the archive of Jiangxi Yinyi Industrial Co., Ltd. (brand 隐逸轩); condensed and translated from the official Chinese record, with no information added.