"Of course, each family saves its own seeds. How can this important matter of life and death be left to others?" Chen Lin said, "If I hear about any good silkworm seeds that are profitable, I will try to find them. But..."
"But what?" Li Yao'er said, "Isn't it because no one has eaten the fruit before?"
"The chief is right. When my father introduced silkworms from Huzhou to be raised for free, no one cared about it, so he planned to raise them himself first as a demonstration. Unexpectedly, in the end, the silkworms were raised to death, and the credibility of the silkworms was lost.
Saved."
"Introducing silkworm seeds is not easy, there are so many tricks." Li Yaoer recalled his past experience of promoting silkworm seeds in Suzhou and Hangzhou, and sighed, "This kind of loss-making business is not something ordinary people can do."
"Yes, only the Senate can do this." Chen Lin flattered.
Li Yao'er was stunned for a moment, then laughed: "I didn't expect you to be quite good at flattering me."
Chen Lin was young after all, so his face turned red all of a sudden.
"But you're right. It's only appropriate for the government to do something like this where everyone loses money and benefits. By the way, you call it the imperial court. That's what it means anyway."
"The imperial government is too lazy to do these things. Being able to organize water conservancy projects is considered a meritorious deed." Chen Lin said, "I also experienced the New Life Movement in Guangzhou. The vision of the leaders is really amazing..."
Li Yao'er nodded thoughtfully. It seems that Liu Xiang's governance in Guangzhou is indeed deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Anyone who sees the Senate's governance will be touched. Compared with when he was in Jiangnan, the situation here is
Work will be much easier again.
At that moment, Li Yao'er took him to visit the newly renovated factory. If there were only slight changes when he first entered, the changes in the courtyard when he entered the second time were earth-shaking.
The second courtyard was originally the main body of the weaving workshop. Except for the main hall and the central hall, which are used for offices, the rest of the houses are used as machine rooms. The houses here are very different from ordinary residential buildings. They are all high-rise and open.
They are all extremely high, nearly two feet tall. Such houses are rare even in the prosperous Pearl River Delta.
Compared with the almost luxurious roof trusses of the house, the walls look shabby. Not to mention bricks, the exterior walls are not even made of mud bricks. They are made of bamboo strips as frames and reeds as walls. They look very simple. Because they were destroyed by the rebels in the previous stage.
Damage, most of this reed mat wall has been destroyed, and many places can be seen to be new.
"...When I first arrived at the factory, I was shocked when I saw your equipment factory. To be honest, this is the first time I have seen such a high-rise factory." Li Yaoer said.
There are four looms in the main room, which are all wooden structures. They are like huge machines. One of the two looms is weaving, and the other is sitting high on the flower tower doing jacquard. The two of them are working together in a tacit understanding and are weaving silk and satin.
"There is no way to build it so high. When the machine was brought in for installation, it was supposed to dig a two-foot hole to place the footings. The local area was humid, and water came out within less than a foot of digging. My father said that in this case, we should just dig the
The higher the roof of the house, the better ventilation and moisture dissipation. In summer, it will be cooler for the mechanics to work."
Li Yaoer nodded: "Your father is a kind-hearted person." She is someone who has personally seen the production environment of machine workers. Whether her own home weaving or the weaving bureaus in Suzhou and Hangzhou, they all use ordinary houses.
Workshop. Some houses are too small to accommodate flower machines and flower buildings, so they dig pits several feet deep in the ground, and the weavers can only sit in the pits and weave.
Because the air must maintain a certain humidity during silk weaving to reduce wire breakage, there is no special ventilation in the workshop. When the air is dry, water must be poured into the room to keep it moist. Therefore, it is hot and humid in summer and bitingly cold in winter. Machinists often have
Joint diseases.
The silk reeling workshop in the villa seemed to Li Yao'er to be "inhumane", but to be honest, after seeing the machine weaving workshops in Suzhou and Hangzhou, he realized that Zhao Yingong was still a "capitalist with a conscience".
"But if it is ventilated and dampened, wouldn't the threads here be easily broken?" Li Yao'er asked.
It is still winter, the ventilation problem is not so urgent, and the workshop is only experimental production. The scale is not large. When the spring cocoons appear this year and summer comes, it will be time to officially start work.
"Our place was originally a river beach, and you can see water when you dig into the ground. Even if it is ventilated, it is still very wet." Chen Lin has gradually lost his fear of Australians at this moment, just like when he was in the square with his father, third uncle and others.
There was normal business going on inside, and I felt much more relaxed. My words and deeds also became somewhat casual.
"It turns out that there are advantages to running a textile business in Guangdong!" Li Yaoer laughed. She walked to a vacant large flower machine. Although she had seen replicas in the old time and space, in this time and space, she was waiting in Suzhou and Hangzhou.
I have seen similar machines before. But every time I see this machine with a completely wooden structure, I am still very shocked.
A large flower floor machine can be said to be a giant among traditional textile equipment. The total length is nearly six meters, and the height of the flower floor is nearly three meters. There are nearly 2,000 large and small parts on it. When it starts to operate
, the entire machine is like being covered by a spider web, connected as a whole by ropes, warp threads, and weft threads. It moves back and forth with the ups and downs of the machinist's hands and feet. Silk is woven thread by thread. When Li Yaoer watched the performance of the recovery machine,
, I was completely impressed by it: In the era of pure manual work, there were no sophisticated processing equipment, so the simplest raw materials were used, and the structure was very rudimentary - not a single gear - but silk fabrics of various patterns and textures could be woven.
.This is simply a miracle of handicrafts.
The history of Jacquard looms is very long. Jacquard looms have been around since the Three Kingdoms period, and the large Jacquard looms that amazed Li Yaoer actually appeared in the Song Dynasty. Judging from historical documents and paintings, the large Jacquard looms in the Ming Dynasty were basically
It is similar to the Song Dynasty, except that the jacquard technology has been improved from bamboo weaving to thread weaving.
"This machine is really beautiful." Li Yao'er said, "But I still don't understand it very well. Can you introduce it to me?"
She had already asked about the details of this flower machine, but Chen Xuan didn't understand it, and the weaver could only give demonstrations, but couldn't explain the threshold clearly - the weaver only knew the local dialect, and Li Yaoer didn't even speak the vernacular.
Not to mention hearing the Xiangshan dialect.
"This flower machine is the most valuable thing in the weaving workshop." Chen Lin stroked the wood of the flower machine - after years of use, the surface of the wood has developed a layer of coating similar to patina, which feels smooth and delicate. This machine
The machine was purchased by his grandfather back then. It is the oldest of the four flower machines.
"This raised part is the flower building. When weaving jacquard satin, a person is responsible for controlling the rise and fall of the warp threads, called the flower puller. The one dragged in the middle is called the Qu Pan, which is used to adjust the opening position of the warp threads.
The rows of bamboo sticks hanging down below are called Qujiao. There are 1,800 bamboo sticks in total."
"so much?"
"That's all." Chen Lin said, "Although you may not necessarily use them all when weaving, you will use them when weaving satin with complex patterns."
"How exactly is it woven?"
Li Yao'er once stood next to the machinist and carefully watched the operation of the jacquard machine for a long time, but he still didn't understand how the two machinists chanted words like singing while kicking and throwing their hands, turning countless silk threads into rich textures.
Various damasks of colors and ornate patterns.
Chen Lin grew up in a weaving workshop. Not only did he hear about it, but he also directly operated the machine himself. If not familiar with the entire process, he at least understood it.
"Commander, please look." He pointed to a white tassel-style circulation device on the top of the weaving machine. This device continuously moves forward and rotates as the weaving machine operates, similar to a conveyor belt.
"This thing is called flower book. What kind of silk and satin you want to weave depends entirely on this flower book."
Flower books were first made of bamboo, but in the Song Dynasty they were changed to thread flower books.
The pattern book is equivalent to the template of the jacquard machine, and the pattern of the produced satin is completely controlled by the pattern book. After a new pattern is designed, the machinist first weaves it with threads according to the pattern drawing, and at the same time adds relevant formulas.
The flower book is made up of leg lines representing the longitude and ear lines representing the weft. You cannot see the specific pattern just by looking at the flower book.
When starting to weave, the machinist first connects the leg threads on the pattern book with the fiber threads that lift the warp. The flower puller sitting on the raised flower floor in the middle of the loom lifts the warp up and down according to the "rhymes" compiled in the pattern book.
Pulling the foot line - that is, the straight line, thereby controlling the lifting of the corresponding warp. The positioning of the pulling foot line is determined by the position of the ear line on the flower book.
The weaver sitting under the loom, after the jacquard weaver has completed, first steps on the bamboo or wooden foot lever to control the lifting and lowering of the heald frame connected to it, so that the "warp surface" formed by the warp threads moves up and down.
Separate to form a shed. Next, the weaver holds a shuttle equipped with weft threads to perform "picking and weft insertion". After the warp threads and weft threads are intertwined, they can then use a "reed" to solidify the weft threads just woven in.
After such a process, the weaving of one weft thread is completed. The weaver can realize the weaving of the entire pattern by constantly changing the foot pedal to alternately change the warp thread up and down.
Naturally, the more complex the pattern and the more frequent the pattern cycle, the more frequent and complicated the flower weaver's operations will be. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, weavers could only weave a few meters of Kesi silk dragon robe material, the most complex material in a day.
"It's really amazing." Li Yaoer praised sincerely.
"When I saw machine weaving for the first time, I thought it was very magical. The person who came up with the idea of flowering is really amazing!" Chen Lin said, "With this big loom, we can weave large patterns. It is said that Suzhou and Hangzhou are able to weave large patterns.
This is how the material for the dragon robes woven by the manufacturing bureau for the emperor was made."
Li Yaoer thought that the concept of this flower book was very advanced. The flower book not only simplified the weaving process, but also reduced the technical requirements for machinists. As long as there is a flower book, the machinist can stably and repeatedly produce patterns with almost the same texture.
The product.
Unfortunately, there was almost no improvement in this equipment from the Song Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty. There was not much difference between the Hualou loom in 1880 and the Hualou loom in 1000.