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ReturnTime Asia:A Soft Spot For Silk(1)
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admin
PublishDate：
2006-08-15 13:43:00
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China makes the most—but no longer the best—silk. Here's one man's quest to recover his nation's past glory
By Susan Jakes | Hangzhou
In his office at a silk-dyeing factory outside the Chinese city of Hangzhou, Fei Jianming sits face-to-face with Napoleon Bonaparte. Fei is the director of the factory. Bonaparte, astride his charging horse with the wind in his red cape and his finger pointed skyward, is preparing to cross the Alps into Italy. The portrait is a reproduction—a rendering on silk of Jacques-Louis David's iconic painting of the French conqueror. Fei doesn't say if Bonaparte is there to inspire him. He had the piece made, he says by way of explanation, simply to demonstrate his factory's printing skill.
Yet when Fei talks about his work, the subjects of triumph and defeat, of conquest and even of Italy loom large. In the past two years, the High Fashion China Company, which owns the factory and of which Fei is president, has exported more silk clothes than any other company in China. This makes Fei a leader in an industry that has both practical and symbolic importance to his country. Silk is the original Chinese export, an invention more tightly tied to the country's identity and to its commerce with the outside world than any other. "Silk," says Fei, "is what sets us apart."
Or used to. As is the case with so many other goods, China leads the world in the quantity of its silk production, but not in quality. Its millennia-long dominance of the art ended during the decades after the communists came to power, when Mao Zedong made austerity mandatory and elegance a crime. Silk's inventors lost not only their financial resources and technological edge but also—in less than a single generation—their knack, their feel for luxury. Today, China makes the most silk. But it is Italy that makes the best silk.
For Fei, this downfall represents more than just a professional challenge. Now 55, he has worked in the factory for 29 years, as its director for 17, and has steered it out of bankruptcy and state ownership and into the global economy. "Today we can buy the machines, we have the weaving and printing technology," he says. But something is missing. "We lack the craft. We don't get the right softness, the finish, the feel." He moves his hands though the air fingering an invisible piece of cloth. "Silk is a Chinese product but its status is not as high as Italian silk," Fei says, as if he feels personally responsible and personally ashamed. Yet, as economic ties between Europe and Asia pull in new directions, Fei has begun to believe that somewhere in the future, the glory China lost, the displaced legacy, can come back home. "In our generation we have a responsibility to restore Chinese silk to its historical place," he says. "If we can complete this circle, if we can bring back the beauty, then I'll feel satisfied."
Picking Up the Threads
In the building next to Fei's office, enormous rolls of white cloth spool through a phalanx of automated silk screens. Designs on the blank expanses accumulate in layers: first the black dots, then the red lines, then dabs of color. Over and over. Each new mark glistens on the surface of the silk for an instant, then sinks in. These deposits scuttle along incoherently until, all at once, one of the machine's squeegees sweeps on the coat that gathers the spots and blotches into focus. A pattern bursts forth—of flowers or of birds or a vainglorious Frenchman.
The invention of silk owes much to mankind's fascination with such moments of cumulative but abrupt-seeming change. Ancient Chinese may have stumbled upon the secrets of silk while trying to fathom how worms that crawled on the ground became moths that flew through the air. Unraveling the cocoons was an attempt to unravel a mystery of nature.
......
Continued
By Susan Jakes | Hangzhou
In his office at a silk-dyeing factory outside the Chinese city of Hangzhou, Fei Jianming sits face-to-face with Napoleon Bonaparte. Fei is the director of the factory. Bonaparte, astride his charging horse with the wind in his red cape and his finger pointed skyward, is preparing to cross the Alps into Italy. The portrait is a reproduction—a rendering on silk of Jacques-Louis David's iconic painting of the French conqueror. Fei doesn't say if Bonaparte is there to inspire him. He had the piece made, he says by way of explanation, simply to demonstrate his factory's printing skill.
Yet when Fei talks about his work, the subjects of triumph and defeat, of conquest and even of Italy loom large. In the past two years, the High Fashion China Company, which owns the factory and of which Fei is president, has exported more silk clothes than any other company in China. This makes Fei a leader in an industry that has both practical and symbolic importance to his country. Silk is the original Chinese export, an invention more tightly tied to the country's identity and to its commerce with the outside world than any other. "Silk," says Fei, "is what sets us apart."
Or used to. As is the case with so many other goods, China leads the world in the quantity of its silk production, but not in quality. Its millennia-long dominance of the art ended during the decades after the communists came to power, when Mao Zedong made austerity mandatory and elegance a crime. Silk's inventors lost not only their financial resources and technological edge but also—in less than a single generation—their knack, their feel for luxury. Today, China makes the most silk. But it is Italy that makes the best silk.
For Fei, this downfall represents more than just a professional challenge. Now 55, he has worked in the factory for 29 years, as its director for 17, and has steered it out of bankruptcy and state ownership and into the global economy. "Today we can buy the machines, we have the weaving and printing technology," he says. But something is missing. "We lack the craft. We don't get the right softness, the finish, the feel." He moves his hands though the air fingering an invisible piece of cloth. "Silk is a Chinese product but its status is not as high as Italian silk," Fei says, as if he feels personally responsible and personally ashamed. Yet, as economic ties between Europe and Asia pull in new directions, Fei has begun to believe that somewhere in the future, the glory China lost, the displaced legacy, can come back home. "In our generation we have a responsibility to restore Chinese silk to its historical place," he says. "If we can complete this circle, if we can bring back the beauty, then I'll feel satisfied."
Picking Up the Threads
In the building next to Fei's office, enormous rolls of white cloth spool through a phalanx of automated silk screens. Designs on the blank expanses accumulate in layers: first the black dots, then the red lines, then dabs of color. Over and over. Each new mark glistens on the surface of the silk for an instant, then sinks in. These deposits scuttle along incoherently until, all at once, one of the machine's squeegees sweeps on the coat that gathers the spots and blotches into focus. A pattern bursts forth—of flowers or of birds or a vainglorious Frenchman.
The invention of silk owes much to mankind's fascination with such moments of cumulative but abrupt-seeming change. Ancient Chinese may have stumbled upon the secrets of silk while trying to fathom how worms that crawled on the ground became moths that flew through the air. Unraveling the cocoons was an attempt to unravel a mystery of nature.
......
Continued
