"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 raise for free, no one cared about it, so he planned to raise them himself first as a demonstration. Unexpectedly, the silkworms were raised to death in the end, 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 is a loss-making business that not ordinary people can do."
"Yes, only the Senate can do it." Chen Lin flattered.
Li Yao'er was stunned for a moment, then smiled: "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 seemed that Liu Xiang's governance in Guangzhou was indeed deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Anyone who sees the administration of the Senate will be touched. Compared with when I was in Jiangnan, the work here is much easier.
At the 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 were used for offices, the rest of the houses were all used as machine rooms. The houses here are very different from ordinary houses. They are all high-rise and open. Whether the main house or the side room, the ceilings are extremely high, nearly two feet high. Houses like this are rare even in the affluent Pearl River Delta.
Compared with the almost luxurious roof trusses of his house, the walls look shabby. The exterior walls are not made of bricks, not even mud bricks. They are made of bamboo strips as frames and reeds as walls, which looks very crude. Because it was destroyed by rebels in the previous stage, most of the reed mat walls were 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 flower machines arranged in the main room, all made of wood. It's like a giant. One of the two machinists was weaving, and the other was perched high on the flower tower doing jacquard work. The two of them were working together in a tacit understanding, 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 pit 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 might as well The higher the roof, the better ventilation and moisture dissipation. In summer, it will be cooler for the mechanics to work."
Li Yao'er nodded: "Your father is a kind-hearted person." She is someone who has personally seen the production environment of machine workers. Whether it is 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 towers, 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 broken threads, there is no special ventilation in the workshop. When the air is dry, water must be poured into the room to keep it moist. As a result, the summers are hot and humid, and the winters are bitterly cold and humid. Machinists often have joint problems.
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, I realized that Zhao Yingong was still a "capitalist with conscience".
"But if it is ventilated and dampened, wouldn't the threads here be easy to break?" Li Yao'er asked.
It is still winter, the ventilation problem is not so urgent, and the workshop is only in experimental production. The scale is not large. When this year's spring cocoons appear, it's time to officially start construction in the summer.
"Our place was originally a river beach, and you can see water when you dig 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. His words and deeds also became somewhat casual.
"It turns out that there are advantages to doing textile business in Guangdong!" Li Yaoer laughed. She walked over to a large, vacant machine. Although she had seen replicas in the old time and space, she had seen similar machines in Suzhou and Hangzhou and other places in this time and space. But every time I see this machine with a completely wooden structure, I still feel very shocked.
A large flower 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 tower is also 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, and 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 restoration machine, he 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 crude - not a single gear - but Can weave silk fabrics of various patterns and textures. This is simply a miracle of craftsmanship.
Hualouji has a very long history. Jacquard looms have already appeared in the Three Kingdoms era, and the large flower tower loom that amazed Li Yaoer actually appeared in the Song Dynasty. Judging from historical documents and paintings, the large flower towers of the Ming Dynasty are basically similar to those of the Song Dynasty. It's just 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 listening to 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 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 is it woven exactly?”
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, turning countless silk threads into rich textures. Various brocades 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 you are not familiar with the entire process, at least you understand it.
"Commander, please look at this." 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 a 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 entirely controlled by the pattern book. After a new pattern is designed, the machinist first weaves it with threads based on the pattern drawings and 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 weaving begins, the machinist first connects the leg threads on the pattern book to the fiber threads that lift the warp. The flower puller sitting on the raised flower tower in the middle of the loom pulls the leg threads up and down according to the "rhymes" compiled in the flower book, thereby controlling the lifting of the corresponding warp threads. The positioning of the lifting leg 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 loaded with weft threads and performs "picking and weft insertion". After the warp threads and weft threads are intertwined, he then uses a "reed" to solidify the newly woven weft threads. After such a process, it is completed. The weaving of a weft thread. The weaver can realize the weaving of the entire pattern by constantly changing the pedal lever to alternately change the warp up and down.
Naturally, the more complex the pattern and the more frequent the pattern cycle, the more frequent and complicated the flower-rolling work will be. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, weavers could weave only a few meters of tapestry 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. This person who came up with the original idea of flowering is really good at it!" 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 already very advanced. Huaben not only simplifies the weaving process, but also reduces the technical requirements for machinists. As long as there are flower copies, machinists can stably and repeatedly produce products with almost the same pattern and texture.
Unfortunately, there was almost no improvement in this equipment from the Song Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty. There is not much difference between the Hualou loom of 1880 and the Hualou loom of 1000.
(End of chapter)
