Dianzi Village: The "road to sea" of the carpet industry between warp and weft

Searching for the keyword"carpet" on TikTok, more than 38% of the hot-sellingproducts are shipped to this town at 39 degrees north latitude. What is little known is that Cuihuangkou in China, Gaziantep in Turkey and Dalton in the United States are known as the three major gathering areas of the world's carpet industry, with a history of carpet production for more than a hundred years. At present, there are more than 1,200 carpet enterprises in Cuihuangkou Town, with an annual output of hundreds of millions of carpets and 25,000 local employees, accounting for about 50% of the town's population. It can be said that Cuihuangkou Town has embraced the happiness of customers who place orders in various carpet live broadcast rooms. From here, carpets carry expectations to be sent to all over the country.

Dianzi Village, Cuihuangkou Town, Wuqing District, Tianjin City, is a name closely related to the carpet industry and carries a heavy accumulation of history and culture. As an important part of the carpet industry in Cuihuangkou Town, Dianzi Village has a long history of carpet manufacturing and its skills have been passed down to this day. With the rise of e-commerce live broadcast, Dianzi Village has also kept pace with the times and pushed carpet products to a wider market.

"At present, more and more young people are keen to spend money on small household items to improve the happiness of daily life. A carpet immediately makes the room without temperature have a different feeling, and many young people who pay attention to cost-effectiveness are fans of our live broadcast room. Bai Yanmei, the person in charge of Sichao Carpet, said that there is a place that is frequently mentioned in her mouth: Cuihuangkou Town, Wuqing District, Tianjin City.

In Bai Yanmei's childhood memory, nearly half of the people in Dianzi Village and even Cuihuangkou Town can make carpets. Now the century-old industrial gene is changing: the AI design system replaces the hand-painted pattern, the digital ink jet printing technology compresses the customization cycle from 30 days to 72 hours, and the daily throughput of the cross-border e-commerce logistics line reaches 20 tons. In the local area of Dianzi Village, from 3D modeling to overseas warehouse stocking, there is everything around carpet. Research and development, design, printing and dyeing,weaving, sales, logistics and other links are closely connected. Large enterprises and small workshops cooperate with each other to form a vibrant and vibrant industrial ecology, which can be completed without leaving the village. The operation of the whole industrial chain.

Bai Yanmei's father focused on carpet production and ran a small factory. At the end of 2019, Bai Yanmei and her husband Ma Dong led the family business to transform into online e-commerce, and opened up a vast overseas market (Amazon, eBay). It took only 5 years to successfully achieve a gorgeous turnaround, transforming from an offline small carpet factory to an influential brand in the industry, and walking out of a newgrowth curve.

In the intelligent production workshop of Tianjin Zehao Carpet Co., Ltd., the industrial robot arm drew a beautiful arc, the digital jacquard loom swallowed the colorful yarn, and thepersian patterned carpets unfolded slowly like scrolls. General Manager Xue Kai gently stroked the craft carpet on the production line just now, with the pride of a craftsman in his eyes:"Products of the same quality, our price can be 15% lower than that of other production areas, which is the confidence of Cuihuangkou Carpet to gallop in the international market." Xue Kai experienced the transformation from a family workshop to an intelligent factory. Today, the annual production capacity of his enterprise reaches 1.5 million square meters, and its products are exported to more than 20 countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The transformation and upgrading of the carpet industry has not only improved the economic strength of Dianzi Village, but also made carpet culture a bright business card of Dianzi Village.

Cuihuangkou Town, the world-famous oriental carpet capital, finally has a temple to tell its own legend in the autumn of 2022, with the completion of the"Weaving Palace:Cuihuangkou International Carpet Culture Exhibition Hall", filling the gap in the special exhibition hall of China's carpet industry. Stepping into this modern building inspired by looms, it seems to unfold a scroll of civilization intertwined with thousands of years of longitude and latitude. From the hand workshop at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic of China to the pinnacle of contemporary art carpet, the 800-year-old inheritance vein is flowing between the flow of light and shadow.

Visitors step into the first floor of the exhibition hall, and their eyes will always focus on the magnificent"Great Wall" tapestry: this is the miniature version of the original national rite that witnessed the historical moment of China's return to the United Nations in 1974. This masterpiece, which was undertaken by Tianjin Carpet Factory No. 2 and condenses the collective wisdom of Cuihuangkou craftsmen, weaves the majestic spirit of thousands of miles of rivers and mountains with 2.2 million Persian knots. The three-dimensional scrolls woven by silk threads are still witnessing the highlight of China's diplomatic history at the United Nations Headquarters. Today, this cultural complex, which integrates non-heritage workshops, digital exhibition halls and master studios, is making the Millennium Skills revitalized in the contemporary context through immersive weaving experience, international art residence plans and other innovative forms, and quietly weaving a bright future for the transformation of traditional handicrafts into cultural and creative industries.

(TIANJIN AGRICULTURE AND RURAL COMMITTEE, Writer: Du Min, Translator: Ma Jiangpeng)