Economic Meaning of Weaving

The classic gender division of labor in China was encapsulated in the saying “men till women weave” (nangeng nuzhi). The growing of food grain and the production of textiles were considered equally fundamental in, providing for the welfare of the common people and the strength of the state: this belief remained central to Chinese statecraft for more than two millennia. (Bray, p183)

Qing statesmen argued that women’s labor was the fulcrum of Jiangnan’s agrarian economy. (Mann, p143)

The Lower Yangzi economy was marginalizing women’s handicraft production during the eighteenth century creating a dual economy in which women’s work supplied subsistence needs while skilled artisans in the towns catered to the tastes of wealthier consumers. (Mann, p144)

Meanwhile, increased commercial production drew prices down, bringing silk and cotton textiles within the means of ordinary commoners. In the process, the peasant household emerged as a primary production and consumption unit for the commercial spinning and weaving of cotton and silk in the Lower Yangzi region. (Mann, p150)

Silk was if anything more deeply enmeshed in the market. Farming house-holds that produced silk as a sideline could buy the equipment they needed to raise silkworms as well as the mulberry leaves; and they could sell cocoons, reeled silk, or finished cloth. Producing a little more silk than they needed for taxes and consumption was thus a means for a peasant family to raise a little cash. (Ebrey, p146)

Textiles were fundamental to the functioning of the Chinese state. From the Zhou dynasty until the late Ming, a period of over two millennia (roughly 700 B.c. to A.D. 1580), every household was liable for taxes on cloth and yarn as well as grain. Silk cloth too was required in huge quantities by the state: for the court to clothe itself in fitting majesty, for the government to pay bureaucrats and soldiers, alleviate hardship, reward loyal service, purchase horses from the Tibetans, buy off the current nomadic enemies in the north, or impress tributary monarchs in Southeast Asia. Silk yarn was levied from peasant producers to be woven into satins, damasks and brocades in imperial manufactures. (Brey, p187)

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Cultural Ideal of Women Weave

In the Sung period, as in ages past, the preferred way for a widow to support herself and her family, should the need arise, was to splice, spin, or weave. The social approval given to these activities undoubtedly relates to their femininity (they were women’s work) and their domestic location (women did not need to come into much contact with men to perform them). (Ebrey, p148)

But all women, regardless of class, were expected to work with their hands. Mindful of the last of Ban Zhao’s “four attributes,” “women’s work” (nu gong), elite women sewed and embroidered and also learned how to rear silkworms, reel thread, spin yarn, and weave cloth— if not for their own use, then to instruct and supervise servants. (Mann, p144)

By spinning and weaving, women produced not only objects of value but also persons of virtue. Learning textile skills inculcated the fundamental female values of diligence, frugality, order and self-discipline. (Bray, p189)

Women’s own celebration of the Double Seven Festival conflated women’s work with sensual desire and skilled handwork with marital success. (Mann, p143) The twisted branch design has a meaning of continuous melons and gourds, and the proliferation of children and grandchildren “瓜瓞连绵、子孙繁衍”. (Zhao, 204)

The cloth that women wove also tied the family into the community. The walls around the house separated “us” from “others,” but the cloth made in the inner quarters bound the family to neighbors, kin and marriage partners. Textiles were an essential element in the forging and reinforcing of social bonds. (Bray, p187)