Industrial Tourism: Why can your bamboo weaving only be used as a vegetable basket and a fish basket, while others' weaving is exported abroad?

The real first industrial trip was in Germany. Visit Autostadt Volkswagen City in Wolfsburg, and the ticket cost is 120 yuan. For tourists who like natural scenery and world cultural heritage, they are a little dismissive at first. Why spend money to see your products? If you travel in China, are you also unwilling to spend money to visit the product exhibition of the factory?

After visiting the classic Beetle, Bugatti Veyron Pursang 16.4 and SEDRIC (self-driving car) in Wolfsburg, I felt the pleasure of industrial tourism and changed my view on industrial tourism. Later, I went to Morocco and visited the local ceramics, carpets and leather factories. I made a sheepskin drum in kompleks kraf Johor Handicraft Center in Malaysia and a batik square towel in Qianhu Miao Village in Guizhou.

If foreign industrial tourism is 3.0, domestic industrial tourism is generally 1.0, but after visiting the factory in Shang Xian, Guigang, Guangxi, I have a new view on domestic industrial tourism. This is a handicraft factory. Traveling in mountainous areas, I have seen many people weave bamboo handicrafts by themselves. In some shops in small towns and counties, I can still see all kinds of bamboo products. However, why do you only weave vegetable baskets and fish baskets, and at most there is a stall of handicrafts, but what you weave can be exported abroad?

Guangxi Dongfang Shangxian produces palace lanterns, oil-paper umbrellas and round fans. The craft of Shixian oil-paper umbrella is still an intangible project, which has been in Milan International Fashion Week, and this industrial tourism is quite attractive. Walking into the factory in Liutai Village, Zhongli Township, Guigang, Guangxi, the first attraction is the semi-finished products such as lotus lanterns and palace lanterns on the factory shelves. The bamboo strips are beautifully woven, so that everyone can't wait to pick up the camera and shoot along the shelves.

Read the news reports before coming to travel. In 20 17, Dongfang Shang County in Guangxi produced 3 million palace lanterns and 2 million oil-paper umbrellas. What we imagine is a production workshop in full swing. The benches are full of workers, but in the factory workshop, we only see the products, but we don't see any workers.

Only three workers are weaving palace lanterns by hand, which is more like showing them to us. With questions, they quickly photographed their handicrafts first. A bamboo stick is instantly woven into the outer petals of a lotus lamp, which shows us how a bunch of bamboo sticks become works of art and we have to admire their ingenuity.

Where have all the workers gone? A person in charge of the factory said that the employees are mainly local villagers. Knitting is done by villagers at home, giving priority to poor households, and flexible time is convenient for housework and farm work. In order to ensure the quality of products, the factory will train the villagers, also for salary training. First, folk craftsmen trained dozens of employees, and then asked them to train more people, so as to ensure the quality of bamboo handicrafts.

Handicrafts are not easy. If we start with chopping bamboo, a skilled villager can only weave two or three palace lanterns a day, which is only the first process. There are also dyeing, pasting, and drawing patterns and patterns. The farther back, the harder the process. The final process is completed by a professional painter.

I saw an employee checking with a bamboo lampshade. Some tiny burrs and protruding bamboo pieces should be pulled out. Although it is not a high-tech product, the complexity of manual technology is much higher than that of other manual workshops seen before.

Different from modern industrial products, handicrafts with traditional characteristics of China are becoming more and more popular. This kind of antique oil-paper umbrella and palace lantern is called "Qin Yue" and is also very popular abroad. At the Canton Fair in 20 19, their turnover was millions of yuan.

The secret of factory success is manual process. The production technology of the poetry fairy oil-paper umbrella is still an intangible cultural heritage. Seemingly simple oil-paper umbrellas and palace lanterns are all done by hand. Weaving, dyeing and painting all rely on manual craftsmanship and need to be passed down by a generation of folk artists. There are not many inheritors, but a handicraft skill, which cannot be an intangible cultural heritage.

Wei Fu, the ancestor of the founder Wei Junmin, made a living by making paper umbrellas made of immortals. When he was a child, he and his mother used green persimmons as glue to make up the oiled paper umbrella. After graduating from Minzu University of China, he went to all parts of the country to learn the manufacturing technology of oil-paper umbrellas. Now Wei Junmin is the 16th generation inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of Shixian Oil Paper Umbrella. Many patterns of oil-paper umbrellas are printed, and the patterns of their oil-paper umbrellas and palace lanterns are hand-painted by professional painters.

The modeling, wrapping, threading and other manufacturing processes of paper umbrellas are also very particular. The number of ribs is 28, which are divided into "half-through" and "full-through". The former is simple and beautiful, while the latter is complex but durable. Oriental Shang Xian used "all-on" process to manufacture oil-paper umbrella, and registered the patent. I don't know if it's because of secrecy, but unfortunately I can't see the master making an oil-paper umbrella at the scene.

Oil-paper umbrellas, lanterns and lampshades are not only antique, but also have unique national characteristics. In the dyeing process of umbrella, the color matching adopts Guangxi's "Zhuangjin" tone. Moreover, the materials are all natural. The shelf materials are dyes and pigments on bamboo, umbrella paper and lamp paper, and are also made of green persimmons, banana leaves and other plants. Just like the colorful glutinous rice of Zhuang nationality, all five colors are dyed by plants such as vegetables.

On the edge of the Shang Xian Pavilion in Shang Xian, I also saw a row of guest houses, specifically asking people in the factory that they were for tourists visiting the factory, but no one lived at the scene. It seems that industrial tourism in China is in the ascendant. Oriental Shang Xian has built the "Han Ancient Umbrella Village" in Shixiantun, Tanyang Village, Zhongli Township, which will be a key tourism project in Guangxi in the future.

Nowadays, many places attach great importance to intangible culture, but some of them are just a commercial gimmick. There is still a long way to go to cultivate more non-genetic inheritors and non-legacy cultures to carry forward in modern society and develop industrial tourism of non-legacy cultures.

During Milan Fashion Week of 20 17, the manufacturer of Gucci, a famous luxury brand, ordered hundreds of oil-paper umbrellas for the runway show in China, and finally chose the oil-paper umbrella from Oriental Shang Xian. Although we missed the Gucci show of oil-paper umbrella in Milan Fashion Week, the industrial tourism in Umbrella Village made us appreciate the "intangible" manufacturing of Shixian oil-paper umbrella.