Qilu Evening News Qilu one-point reporter Qiu Ming
A velvet embroidery craft introduced to China from Europe in 1840 was brought to Lizhuang with the married Mo's daughter-in-law, where it integrated local handicraft techniques and took root into a famous overseas specialty industry.
A stone stele standing in the Ming Dynasty "Confucius Xianglu Hui Qihou Place" made Li Zhuang people believe that the East Valley Mountain of the village was the "Qilu Huimeng" place in 500 BC, the highlight of Confucius. Immersed in thousands of years of Confucianism, they wrote "benevolence" and "etiquette" into the village rules and regulations.
When the Confucian culture and craftsmanship that have been passed down for thousands of years meet in Lizhuang, a mountain village with less than a thousand households, it becomes an inexhaustible driving force for the development of the village.
In the new year, I did not forget to embroider work, and stringed together a rich life in the countryside with one stitch and one thread
A sumptuous Chinese New Year's Eve meal, the family watching TV to keep an end to the year. Like most northern rural areas, the Spring Festival in Lizhuang Village is as calm and thick as a mountain. From the ancestor worship in the new year of the Waxing Moon to the door-to-door visits to the parents on the first day of the New Year, to the pressed money and snacks prepared for children, the ancestors, the elders, and the young children, these layers of life are all comprehensive.
The time to usher in the delivery is reserved for yourself, to treat the busyness of the year. But such a time, the industrious Li Zhuang people are not easy to spend. The women pulled on and embroidered a few stitches of velvet embroidery. Time converges into beautiful patterns in a stitch and a line, and it won't be long before these velvet embroideries are sold across the ocean to families on the other side of the globe.
Who would have thought that the small Lizhuang has an "inextricable" connection with more than 20 countries and regions around the world. Here, as the intangible cultural heritage of Shandong Province, Mo's velvet embroidery inheritance and development place, can produce about 500,000 pieces of velvet embroidery products every year.
The valley mountain is more than 300 meters above sea level, and the peak is one of the borders between Shandong and Jiangsu. The convenience of one mountain overlooking the two provinces allows the people here to blend and communicate. On the west side, Lizhuang Village, Linshu County, Linyi City, was originally a traditional agricultural village. In 1997, with the marriage of Mo Zongrong, whose ancestral home was in Jiangsu, into Lizhuang, an industrial revolution involving thousands of families followed.
Mo Zongrong is the fifth generation of Mo's velvet embroidery. Before getting married, his husband Li Chuntu set up a handicraft factory in the village to prepare for Mo's velvet embroidery to settle down here.
Mo's velvet embroidery originated in 1840, with the opening of Shanghai port from Europe to The Suhu area. "Velvet embroidery is embroidered on linen cloth with wool velvet thread, and the materials and techniques are different and common to our embroidery." Mo Zongrong's predecessors combined embroidery and velvet embroidery skills to localize and innovate, achieving the effect that blue is better than blue, which is welcomed by the European market.
"Traditional velvet embroidery generally uses only 4 stitches, but we have now innovated dozens of stitches to make the product expression more perfect, especially in portrait works, which is more three-dimensional and evocative than other embroidery products." After Mo Zongrong married into Li Zhuang, he combined the technique of Lu Embroidery, one of the "Eight Famous Embroideries", to further improve and innovate, forming a unique artistic style.
As a common household item in Europe, Mo's velvet embroidery is mainly exported. When they first arrived in Li Village, their products were sold by the county's foreign trade company. After obtaining the right to export by itself, the market and production scale of Mo's velvet embroidery were further expanded, and finally formed the current Yushan Town with Lizhuang Village as the center, driving more than 3,000 people from surrounding villages to engage in velvet embroidery processing, especially for a group of difficult families without physical labor ability to increase their income without leaving home.
Slow work out of fine work, velvet embroidery production technology determines that this product can not achieve factory assembly line production, mostly by women to bring the material home in accordance with the prescribed style. Such a flexible mode of production is more suitable for rural life, and the agricultural work in the field and the care of the elderly and children in the family are not delayed for housewives.
In recent years, affected by the rise in labor costs, the price of Mo's velvet embroidery has increased, resulting in the loss of some foreign customers. The other party tried to transfer the source of procurement to Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and India, but after several contacts, most of the customers eventually found it back. "Doing business is about efficiency and effectiveness, and our quality and credibility are incomparable." Mo Zongrong learned the root cause from foreign businessmen, and after the other party transferred the source of procurement, he found that the product quality there was not only poor, but more importantly, it was difficult to guarantee the punctuality and trustworthiness that should be done in business, for example, when the contract was agreed, the other party could only deliver 20% or 30% of the products, and could not buy enough goods with money. The buyer turned back, to Mo's velvet embroidery to bring back a large order, Mo Zongrong roughly calculated, now the order in hand has been scheduled to June, and then there are new orders she does not dare to pick up, if you want to pick up, you have to train more new people after the Spring Festival.
There is benevolence and filial piety, and Confucian culture is integrated into the village like velvet embroidery
As the saying goes, "if you have money and no money to go home for the New Year", the significance of returning home during the Spring Festival to the wanderer need not be said. On the day of the Chinese New Year's Eve, Li Chuntu walked street by street and counted, and there were about 200 cars parked in the village, counting the people who could not come back because of work and epidemic prevention and control, nearly half of the families in Lizhuang Village had private cars. Before 2015, due to inconvenient transportation and poor industry, it was once a provincial poverty village, and now it has developed into a happy village where many people have land in the family, have a house in the city, and have a car under their feet.
Chinese New Year's Eve "patrol the streets" because in 2021, Li Chuntu took the position of secretary of the party branch of Lizhuang Village. The Spring Festival is a rare opportunity to communicate with villagers abroad, and he should take this opportunity to learn more about the situation of each family, especially to mobilize these able people who have developed outside to return to help the village develop better.
Lizhuang Village is composed of 3 natural villages including Lizhuang, as early as 4 years ago, as the deputy secretary of the village party branch, Li Chuntu has been appointed by the town party committee and government as the head of Lizhuang Natural Village. This is a stage for Li Chuntu, who has long been concentrating on the development of Li Zhuang's ideas, a stage to realize his dreams.
During the period of running Mo's velvet embroidery with his wife, Li Chuntu, who traveled south and north, saw that many villages outside the mountains had developed into benchmarks, and he very much wanted such a change to be reflected in Li Zhuang. He even prompted him to invite a development planning and design institute in Linyi City at his own expense to inspect Lizhuang and formulate a set of development paths.
Cohesion comes first. Starting from the proud origin of the "Qilu Huimeng" that the villagers are proud of, Li Chuntu started with the filial piety and love of the elderly that everyone is easy to accept and has practical needs, and organized the annual Old People's Day and zongzi Festival. The former is held on the eve of Chongyang, and the latter is combined with the Dragon Boat Festival. The two festivals aroused the filial piety of the villagers, and the villagers outside also responded positively, spontaneously supporting the two "village festivals" in the form of one yuan per person donating one yuan per day. The Linshu County CPPCC Committee also reached out to help, and in conjunction with their activity of "THE CPPCC Consulting at the Grassroots Level and Traditional Culture Entering Ten Thousand Homes", it dispatched outstanding traditional culture propaganda groups to regularly go to villages to teach traditional culture and carry out psychological counseling and volunteer service activities.
From 2018 to 2020, the provincial rural revitalization service team was stationed, which ushered in new opportunities for Lizhuang Village. "The foundation of this village is relatively good, and after we came here, we have done a number of support and basic supporting upgrading projects around the construction of the Jiagu Mountain Scenic Area and the Lily Garden and the beautiful countryside in the industrial revitalization." Zhang Xueyong, then deputy head of the discipline inspection team appointed by Shandong Province to the General Office of the Provincial Government and a member of the Rural Revitalization Service Team of Yushan Town, Linshu County, shandong Province, introduced that after entering Lizhuang Village, after investigation, they found that the village team was united, the villagers were simple, and the tourism resources were also rich.
"Carrying forward the village rules and regulations of benevolence, love and filial piety has brought people together, and the party committees and governments at all levels have continued to give us attention and support, so that Lizhuang Village is becoming an envied village for outsiders." Li Chuntu said that Lizhuang Village has been selected as a provincial forest village, a beautiful rural demonstration village, and a one-product demonstration village, and its development momentum has gradually caught up with the advanced villages. After the Spring Festival in the Year of the Tiger, the village plans to use the cooperatives led by the branch to develop efficient agriculture and give the villagers a better life.