Historic Xinzhuang is home to crochet art and plum blossoms

As a roll of traditional Chinese paintings spread, a mural depicting Old Xinzhuang Street was recently painted on a historic home on Xinjian Road in Xinzhuang Town.

Portraits of residents wearing cheongsam or qipao appeared on pebbled lanes near the riverfront, thriving with azurite-colored trees and ancient houses in the painting; one of the houses was the Wu Xie He crocheted lace trading store.

In a more contemporary scene, families pass the entrance of Xinzhuang Park, noted for its blossoms of plum tree flowers. This is Xinzhuang, where the Hangzhou-Shanghai railway opened its Xinzhuang Station as early as 1909, and the convenient traffic hereafter nurtured its bustling trade.

Lacemaking skills

Historically, Xinzhuang was a fledged town with a population of thousands as early as the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). It had a developed ancient water transportation system thanks to its Xin Creek, in the area of what is now Xinbang Road. Along the sides of its creek, there was its signature plant: the Chinese wild ginger.

The Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo rail route opened its Shanghai-Hangzhou section for traffic in 1909 and set up the Xinzhuang Railway Station along the route. The transportation facilities helped Xinzhuang to evolve and develop.

After an arson in 1898, the town rebuilt the Roman-style Nanzhang Cathedral, which became a local landmark for its grandiose pose. Handmade lace was among the favorite decorations for European aristocrats since the 18th century.

In 1813, John Levers from Nottingham, England, invented the lacemaking Leavers machine, and lace looms became almost functionally perfect after 1840. Handmade lace production in Europe started to shift toward China, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Paraguay and Brazil.

In Shanghai drawn works, a craft of lacemaking through reducing thread, creating hollows and making embroidery, was first introduced to the city through missionaries and was popular among believers of churches. The lace skill was introduced to Nanzhang Cathedral from downtown Xujiahui and learned by nimble-fingered women in nearby villages, who combined it with the local crochet skill, a craft that uses a crochet hook made of bamboo, bones or stainless steel to add patterns with cotton, linen, silk or woolen yarns.

The flourishing commerce thanks to the railway helped boost the hand crochet lace industry in Xinzhuang.

Hand crochet

"Crocheting is a village culture in Xinzhuang and used to be a source of income for village women," said Jin Longhua, an inheritor of the now intangible cultural heritage.

"In its peak time, crocheting had engaged a labor force of about 130,000 people. Village women of the trade relied on it to cover daily expenditures such as cooking ingredients, costume making and even dowries for their daughters," Jin recalled.

Though a means of supporting life, Xinzhuang crochet is highly original and visually appealing.

"We have Afghan stitches from Afghanistan, jujube stitches, a maple pattern, an Irish weaving style and one-thread weaving," said Jin.

"When I was doing the one-thread weaving to connect little patterns into bigger patterns, I was like guiding my thread through a maze where I might be easily getting lost."

As the regional economy developed, fewer local people engaged themselves in crocheting, and the number of overseas orders declined.

"I started crocheting when I was 5 or 6 years old. I was a professional crochet craftsperson when I was 17 and kept the practice nonstop. After crocheting turned into an intangible cultural heritage of Shanghai in 2007, I became one of its inheritors," said Jin.

During the inaugural China International Import Expo in 2018, a group of Xinzhuang crochet inheritors and artists created a "patchwork" map that shaped the geography of Minhang District. They achieved this by crocheting each of the district's 14 towns, subdistricts and industrial zones with a unique color and pattern, and then networking them.

The district's Powerlong Art Museum has displayed the work permanently.

Some artists also try to apply Xinzhuang crochet to couture costumes.

On March 10, the town opened its new cultural landmark, The Crochet Studio, at 398 Likang Road. The venue has exhibition, teaching and experiencing areas and promotes crocheting both online and offline.

Among the highlights of the exhibited items are 100 crochet flower patterns, three tapestries illustrating the history of crocheting, tropical flower works, and the crochet hooks from ancient times and those used by Jin since her childhood.

'Plum flower hunters'

In 2011, Minhang listed Xinzhuang's plum culture as a district-level intangible cultural heritage. The region's scenic plum blossoms take place in Xinzhuang Park and Xinzhuang Plum Garden.

The history of Xinzhuang Park dates from the 20th century. It was the private Xinye Plum Garden, constructed in 1930, and belonged to a local well-off Yang family. The classic Chinese park has been noted for its plum tree cultivation and planting. As the number of trees expanded, it opened the Xinzhuang Plum Garden in 2016.

This year's plum flower season at Xinzhuang Park and Xinzhuang Plum Garden took place from February 18 to March 12. A total of more than 80 plum flowers were exhibited.

Thanks to a plum flower innovation studio in Xinzhuang Plum Garden, the district's variety of plum flowers has developed from the initial 30 to the current 120 types.

Li Huiqun, Sun Dong, Xu Changxin and Shu Tao are the four generations of horticulture professionals of the plum flower studio. To create a visual feast of plum blossoms for the public, they have been acting like "plum flower hunters" in the past two decades to collect better plum varieties and practice transplanting.

"The studio was founded to tackle some tech issues," said Li. "It takes more than 10 years for a plum seedling to grow into a big tree. However, if we implement bud grafting or branch grafting, we can efficiently reduce the time required for growth and design to five or eight years."

The studio has also been efficient in achieving homogenization of different plum varieties. "Homogenization is like doing cosmetic surgery upon the different plum varieties so that their aesthetic values are well balanced and the entire ecology of the introduced flowers and the original flowers turns harmonious," said Xu.

"Tourists usually misunderstand that a flower's life span ends when it withers, yet we have to trim them off long before they wither to save enough nutrients for the following flowers," said Xu. "Too many flower blossoms on a branch will reduce its blooming quality in the next year."

"We also invited experts from other cities to our plum garden or visited them to gain more experience back," said Li. "Now our plum garden has become a place for plum research, cultivation and culture broadcast."

A single plum flower's life span is usually about one week. In recent years, the plum studio has introduced the earlier blooming types, such as Hanjiang and Longyou, and the later blooming types, such as the Blireana and Fenghou.

The garden's plum season now spans three months, an extension from its previous duration of one month and a half. The district-level intangible cultural heritage list includes the plum flower admiration custom, which includes searching, appreciating, remembering and creating art on plum flowers.

"Plum flowers are the earliest envoy of spring to arrive in Minhang," said Sun. "They help its people get rid of a sense of wintry fatigue and cheer up."

About Xinzhuang Town 莘庄镇

Xinzhuang Town serves as Shanghai's geographical center. The Xinzhuang Railway Station has existed since the 1900s. For a long time, the station had a low-profile presence, with few trains stopping here. The "Shanghai 2035 Urban Development General Plan" changed all of that. Its railway station is now linked to the Shanghai-Hangzhou High-Speed Rail, the Jinshan Rail and the Lijiatang-Xinzhuang Rail lines.