A long march for a man born to sew

AN item of clothing is now made in 10 minutes in Ge Jiuchang’s mechanized garment factory — 85 years ago, it would take his grandfather half a day with a hand sewing machine.

“I inherited the exquisite traditional clothes-making skills from my grandpa,” said Ge, the 43-year-old production team leader of a garment factory in Yudu County in east China’s Jiangxi Province, and who is in charge of 15 tailors.

Yudu, with a tradition of fluffing cotton and sewing clothes, was a place from which around 86,000 Red Army officers and soldiers left for the Long March in October 1934. Ge Jiediao, Ge Jiuchang’s grandfather, joined the Red Army to sew uniforms in 1929 when he was an apprentice to a tailor.

“Due to his exquisite sewing skills, my grandfather was assigned to sew collars and sleeves onto military uniforms,” Ge Jiuchang said.

Carrying a hand sewing machine, Ge Jiediao spent his rest time mending clothes for his comrades during the Long March.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Ge Jiediao dreamed of running a tailor store and making clothes for his fellow-villagers. Now, Ge Jiuchang follows in his grandfather’s footsteps.

With one-quarter of the county’s population engaging in the garment industry, Yudu sees the emerging trends as a fresh impetus for the transformation of traditional manufacturing in the sector.

Local authorities provided 20 million yuan (US$2.8 million) of subsidies to help enterprises purchase the intelligent garment-producing devices as of this month. The local government granted 3 billion yuan to develop and upgrade the traditional garment industry by building design schools, talent apartments and institutes of textile and garment testing. With this support and skill-oriented industrial workers, new enterprises are emerging.

Yudu is now home to more than 2,200 textile and garment firms, including five listed enterprises.

Over 80,000 people work in the sector in China, worth 40 billion yuan last year.

(Xinhua)