From fertilizer bags to clothes to the world's largest producer of chemical fiber

In the late 1970s, a strange kind of black trousers appeared in the Chinese countryside - they were strong, wear-resistant and could not be worn out for a long time. Is vaguely can see the above printed words, some pants after long-term washing, the handwriting is more clear, what "25kg" "made in Japan" see clearly.

Where on earth did these strange pants come from?

It turned out that at that time, China was struggling to survive. In order to solve the food difficulties, China imported a large amount of urea from Japan as fertilizer.

It's hard to eat, not much better to dress. At that time, urban Chinese people only had a small number of cloth tickets a year, not enough to make a pair of pants; The peasants in the countryside were so ragged that they had no trousers to wear.

Therefore, after the urea is used up, the nylon bag is dyed to make a pair of pants, which can be described as "turning waste into treasure". However, the printing and dyeing technology at that time was not up to standard, and after several washing, the words above would be revealed in their true shape. News across the sea, Japan is also very shocked, did not expect even nylon bags are used to make clothes...

At that time, the color of domestic clothes was basically only gray, blue, and black, and they wore the same clothes, and foreign media called them "blue ants" or "gray ants".

In just a few decades, Chinese clothing has changed from single to diverse, what is the story behind it?

The evolution of Chinese dress

Before the Song Dynasty

In China, there is only the word "cotton" next to silk, and no word "cotton" next to wood. The so-called silk wool is the material woven from silk.

However, silk wool is extremely expensive, by no means ordinary people can afford to consume, it can only be enjoyed by dignitaries. The vast majority of the working people can only use hemp, ramie and kudu to make clothes. In the cold winter, there is often no warmth.

Like many agricultural products, cotton is not native to China, but is also "imported", originating in what is now India, Arabia.

When cotton first entered China, people only regarded it as an ornamental plant and did not realize its economic value.

Early Yuan Dynasty to Ming Dynasty

The cultivation of cotton in China has further expanded. By the late Ming Dynasty, weaving entered a new era of workshops, when cotton planting and cotton weaving had spread throughout the country. The Yangtze River Delta region is the most popular. The sound of weaving machines in every household is incessant day and night.

Since the Opium War

As China's market is increasingly open, cloth sales into China, a great impact on China's handmade cotton industry.

After the Sino-Japanese War

The growth of cloth gradually accelerated. Among them are mainly American and Japanese cloth, which is not inferior to Chinese local cloth in terms of price or durability, and thus has a great impact on the domestic market.

The old collection of the palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties royal imperial robes

From these words, it can be seen that during this period, the source of clothing in China was still based on natural materials - cotton woven cloth, and chemical fiber clothes had not yet come out. In other words, whoever controls the cotton controls the clothes on the Chinese.

Dilemma: Enough to eat? Wear warm clothes?

As the main source of cloth, cotton is one of the cash crops with the lowest yield per acre. But one mu of high-yield cotton field in the scientific management of modern agriculture, the highest is only 600 jin.

Second, in the early days of the founding of New China, the Chinese government spent a lot of foreign exchange to import grain and cotton. Even so, the problem of food and clothing for the Chinese people has not been fundamentally solved.

In the country's most difficult economic times, even in the capital Beijing, each person is issued 2.5 feet of cloth tickets per year, basically a family of three cloth tickets together, enough to cut a pair of pants. Because of the extremely tight supply, many families have not added new clothes for years, and even give clothes worn by older children to young children. As the saying goes, "New three years, old three years, sewing and fixing for another three years."

Land is limited, is it growing food? Or grow cotton? If you want to satisfy the clothing problem of the whole Chinese people, then many people will be hungry.

At the beginning of the founding of new China, the contradiction of grain and cotton competing for land was also one of the most challenging national economy and people's livelihood issues faced by the new regime. At that time, cotton was not only a scarce livelihood material, but also an important bargaining chip to stabilize the market. In the days without chemical fiber, cotton is indeed difficult to bear the weight of hundreds of millions of people's clothing alone.

How to get out of the dilemma?

Extracting aromatics from crude oil

There is only one way - to make something out of nothing! In the final analysis, the ultimate solution to the contradiction between grain and cotton and land is to rely on chemical fibers. Therefore, this wisp of rayon can not only "enrich clothes", but also make a great contribution to our "sufficient food" today.