Cash in cane, Hebei villagers crafting money-making chairs
From construction worker to factory manager, Qian Xiaosheng has found success in the cane chair industry.
Five years ago, the 37-year-old from Qianbeikou village — part of Dongzhangpu town in Handan, Hebei province — decided to leave Beijing, where he was working on construction sites as a bar setter. “I earned about 40,000 yuan ($6,164) a year,” he said.
“That wasn’t bad, but Beijing is far from home, and I missed my wife and baby.”
In 2017, when he went home for the New Year holiday, Qian learned that an increasing number of villagers had started to weave cane chairs or were running cane factories, which paid well.
He decided to join them.
At first, Qian worked as a salesperson in a cane chair factory in a neighboring village. Through work, he discovered that customers needed other kinds of cane chairs that the factories weren’t making. An idea began to crystallize.
In 2018, he decided to start his own business.
“The first thing I did was find experienced weavers to help design a dozen new chairs, including rocking chairs, dining chairs and recliners.”
He set up a factory and sold more than 80,000 chairs in the first year thanks to his new designs.
Last year, his factory, which has 50 employees, generated a net income of 300,000 yuan. “That was beyond expectations,” Qian said. “I will scale up and design more cane chairs to suit market needs.”
Residents like him now live better, easier lives thanks to the development of the industry, which employs more than 20,000 people in the area. “An experienced worker can weave six or seven cane chairs a day and make between 10 and 20 yuan on each, depending on size,” said Bai Xiao, Dongzhangpu Party chief.
He said it all started in 2011, when two villagers from Dongzhangpu came back home and began to make cane chairs.
They had picked up the skill working at furniture factories elsewhere, and after coming back, they began to teach their neighbors.
They brought in cane from neighboring Shandong province and gave it to neighbors to help them weave. Once the chairs were ready, middlemen sold them to local furniture factories.
In 2013, the villagers started selling their chairs directly to the market, making good profits.
Because it was easy to learn and not very labor intensive, more and more villagers began to use their spare time to weave chairs. As incomes increased, the local government started to offer help in setting up factories. Now, there are more than 20 factories producing chair supports and 30 weaving chairs. All 34 villages in the town are involved and produced 240 million yuan in goods last year.
About 5,000 sets of chairs are made a day. Most are sold on the Chinese mainland, but about 300,000 sets are exported to the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and other nations.
“They are very popular,” Bai said. “Since they’re handmade with cane, they’re warm in winter and cool in summer.”