Far From "Fashion Capital" -- Xintang, A Famous Cowboy Town, Is Facing Environmental Pollution And Health Worries.

set foot

A hair and a small high squatting on the ground, next to squatting a new version of the division and sample holders, in front of the ground put 8 cortical signs, that is, stitched on the back of the jeans LOGO cortex.

Everyone is waiting for his opinion.

"What do you think?" asked Xiao Gao. "For a moment," he pointed to a few stiff letters in "JMT MHZY". "Here is the letter, and the letters must be linked up and they will live a little bit."

The person who took the sample nodded and collected things and left quickly.

Ah FA dragged a pair of large, bright red CROCS sandals, returned to his seat, and continued to change the design of the jeans on his computer.

Soon, on the screen, the wings of the goose flying line slipped several degrees.

In addition to the wall facing ah FA, the whole room was filled with jeans. The men's jeans with dark blue, light blue, dark black, dark grey and other colors, lines, and fabrics hung three walls, and the two meter wide version was also full of jeans.

Several fashion designers, or self styled designers, are buried in the cowboy heap.

Ah FA is the most experienced printer in the morning Peng garment factory in Datun village, Xintang town. This factory has been working for three years in this factory specializing in jeans men's wear.

From Guangzhou to the east 30 kilometers, 40 minutes bus ride, you will arrive in Zengcheng Xintang town - the first national jeans town.

One of the three jeans sold in the world comes from Xintang.

There is a huge international cowboy town on the town of Xintang. There are nearly 1000 sales stalls for jeans.

Tens of thousands of jeans, black, dark blue, light blue, and ground into various kinds of white and broken holes, have spread all over the market.

Those known as little devil, little monster, Peter Pan and other unknown brands of small jeans filled the entire market.

The cheapest jeans sell only 30 dollars on the stall on "blood sale". If they cut down the price with the younger sisters, they can deal with the bargain at a lower price.

The latest jeans, usually only sixty or seventy yuan a piece.

The most expensive jeans in the whole market are not more than 100 dollars.

Dozens of companies selling cowboy cloth and processing excipients were surrounded by the most outskirts of the cowboy city.

China is known as the world's largest factory, especially fashion and textile industries. Since 1994, production and export rank first in the world, and the proportion has increased year by year.

The industry has been proud of the fact that it has solved a large number of population employment and made the region rich.

In the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, there are all kinds of special towns with textile and garment processing.

Especially in Guangdong, there are 15 Characteristic Towns in a province.

Some people call such a town "fashion capital".

Behind this glossy title, it is Paris, Milan and Florence that are vaguely remembered.

As a professional town of jeans, Xintang is breathtaking, with nearly more than 3000 cowboy costumes and related enterprises, more than 1000 registered Jeans Brands, and more than 100 thousand foreign workers in the denim industry.

But when we set foot in the "jeans town" in Xintang, we will find that it is far away from the real "fashion capital" and is in danger: rising raw materials, lack of funds, rising labor costs, lack of brand awareness and low level of design. What is more serious is the heavy environmental costs that the local people have to pay.

All this makes the town hobble.

These are exactly the epitome of China's textile manufacturing industry.

Cowboy world

The most common public pportation tool, motorcycle backseat, will cost you 10 yuan. The master will give you a magic trip.

Holding the back of a stranger, listening to the familiar voice of Teresa Teng, "beside you, beside me, though the road is far away, it is not weary, and you are walking along for a while."

The factory signs on both sides of the road began to become denser and more frequent.

The cloth shop is not placed in the shop, but stands in the street, or even full of sidewalks.

In the ocean of denim, motorcycles move past.

In a few minutes, he entered the factory ocean again.

All the factories are alike.

It is neither a small workshop for a few people, nor a large scale clean and streamlined production line.

On the first floor is a large open workroom with an open garage. Each pair of jeans is cluttered up like a mountain. At the entrance of the shop, the ladies sitting in the street are all women over forty years old. They are ironed and cowboy buttons. The real dressing rooms are on the two and third floors.

The bosses and the print masters concentrate on the sandwiched between the first floor and the two floor.

Everything is real.

28 years ago, a businessman in Hongkong invested in the first "raw material processing" denim factory in Da Dun village. Today, 2 million 500 thousand denim clothes are sent out from thousands of factories such as Chen Peng and run out of Xintang.

Printer

A push door, a northeast boss entered the playing room.

Familiar with the old customers in Xintang, they will get used to climbing up the stairs directly to the interlayer between the one or two floors.

"7503, how much can you do?" asked the Northeast boss.

"60."

Ah FA replied.

Northeast boss touches the dark grey jeans of "7503", saying, "washing water is really good, but your family is really more expensive than others."

Ah FA did not rush to explain. First, take out a couple of trousers with the same style, fabric and color.

These will be 5 yuan or 10 yuan cheaper.

"You're looking at the best fabric, the best color and water."

The Northeast boss nodded and said "look again" and left.

Communicating with customers directly and understanding the preferences of customers is an important part of the work.

Every customer inquires about the goods, and several print players will accompany them. Especially when the customer has ordered his own version, he will secretly expect the arrival of the "burst version".

In Xintang, the morning Peng garment factory is of medium size.

Dozens of workers, as well as the same as 5 hair typing division.

How many workers work in the factory is not an important factor in measuring the size of the enterprise. It is one of the signs of factory strength that a few of them are like a hair typing teacher like ah FA.

For a printer, if a pair of jeans has more than 5000 orders, each can sell a pair of trousers, and they can deduct 1 cents.

The "burst version" they expect is the pants that they designed to sell.

In 2009, he sold 50 thousand pants in a month.

There are 80 versions of the cowboy fashion every year.

This is far from what people know about international big denim fashion.

LEVI, S, CALVINKLEIN and DKNY are not popular in the past three months.

But the classic "LEVI" S 501 has never been seen in Xintang for decades.

In the morning Peng, the best selling styles will disappear after half a year.

The sales volume of a single unit is negligible compared with that of 501.

There are no famous brands of jeans in Xintang. The so-called national brand names are unheard of for the metropolis.

Once there is a small name brand called "little devil fish", there will be countless similar brands on the streets, small devil, devil spirit, tip fish...

The so-called "hit" version of the new version, the new model, are all the same.

All products are wholesale markets of two or three tier cities.

Earn some hard money by sales volume.

More and more people open factories, and profits are gradually diluted.

This low-level and repeated design has always been a constraint on the development of Xintang cowboys.

Ah FA entered the industry five years ago. This is also a veteran in thousands of print masters in Xintang.

At the age of 21, he left his hometown in Jiangxi, where he finished a technical secondary school and studied electronics. But he did not like it. He went to Xintang with a friend in costume and worked as a lathe worker in a small garment factory.

In the first three months, he could only get hundreds of dollars, and began to get 1500 yuan in fourth months. At the same time, he almost learned all the work procedures and liked the industry.

So he went to Guangzhou Baiyun clothing training school for two and a half years, and turned from a lathe worker to a printer.

After graduation, he worked in a factory for two years and then switched to Chen Peng. His salary rose from 3000 yuan to 7000 yuan.

At least two weekends a month, ABA will take a bus to Guangzhou, to the West clothing market to see the edition, "white horse" and "red cotton" are his frequent wandering place.

Every year he will go to Hongkong two times at his own expense.

In 2010, he also went to South Korea, and had the opportunity to go shopping in South Korea's shopping malls to see their popular colors and styles.

Visiting the clothing market and watching jeans designed by others are his only learning opportunities.

Paris, Milan, New York and so on the real fashion capital, do not say to train, is to travel, ah FA Lian did not even think about it.

crisis

In the case of a chess maker who is waiting for surprises, the thousands of bosses in Xintang are worried.

The crisis in the whole industry began in 2008 and fell into deep ravine in late 2010.

In Xintang, denim clothing enterprises are divided into two main types: export and domestic sales.

30% of the country's exported jeans are from Xintang.

Six months ago, he left for the morning Peng. Before that, Yilin garment factory had no money to pay him.

Yilin garment factory is self produced and sold.

Xintang jeans are mainly exported to Russia, Ukraine, France, Indonesia and the United States, and the largest export countries are Russia and Ukraine.

In the export business, OEM accounts for 1/3, which accounts for a small proportion of direct sales to Ukraine and wholesale markets.

In 2008, the reasons for the economic crisis, the large-scale shrinkage of the European market, in addition, the international market was settled in US dollars, the price difference brought about by the appreciation of the RMB has almost smoothed the profits of the enterprises, and even led some enterprises to close.

In 2010, the crisis extended to domestic enterprises.

The rise in cotton prices has led to a massive rise in cloth prices.

The cost of a pair of jeans rose by 15 to 20 yuan, just 50 yuan of jeans for the factory price, which was a huge increase.

The Shenlong clothing factory is facing the dilemma of the Shenlong arrow garment factory across the road.

The number of orders is reduced by 60% compared with the previous year, and the number of people running the list is increasing.

The rise in fabric prices has led to rising costs, and inflation has caused employees to demand more wages, and at last there is hardly any profit.

The boss was sitting in the office with a heavy face. Her husband read the magazine while his son was playing games in front of the computer all day, because it was rare for customers to come to the house and do nothing all day.

"If we return home on the last day, 20 tens of thousands of investments can be guaranteed."

The landlady said bluntly.

Between September 2010 and November, the garment factory produced 3000 jeans, which eased slightly in December and returned to 5000. In previous years, at least 10 thousand products were produced each month.

When orders were the most in 2006, more than 40 thousand had been produced in the month.

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Shen Long arrow clothing boss Luo family began in the early 1990s to do clothing business in Guiyang, Xintang, to purchase goods, found business opportunities, in 2004, the family moved to Xintang, opened a factory.

When the factory was first built, it was also the most noisy and prosperous part of Xintang.

Thousands of factories have been working day and night, and there are many orders.

Every night at 11 o'clock, the streets are still brightly lit. Tens of thousands of women sit in the street and cut the thread.

The landlady recalled her old prosperity and her eyes were shining.

"Now, at 8 o'clock in the evening, you walk on dun dun street, almost all factories have been shut down."

"At the beginning, there were more local bosses, and no one wanted to continue making clothes and make more profitable bleaching and dyeing plants.

Instead of making clothes, there are more and more bosses in the field.

Later, there were more than ten people in Guiyang who were familiar with Luo boss.

A large number of owners of foreign garment enterprises stayed in Xintang, not because they earned money but were tied here.

In the industry chain of jeans industry, clothing is at the middle end.

We pay the full amount when we buy materials from cloth enterprises and accessories enterprises.

When pants are handed to the water treatment plant for washing and polishing, they must be paid at once. The cost of each pair of trousers is 10 yuan.

But when clothing sales, wholesalers have been using credit sales.

"When the order is in good condition, the remittance can only reach 40% in the year, and only 60% in the first half of second years."

The landlady said.

The sharp drop in orders makes people headache, and even more bosses are on pins and needles. There is little hope for the money back, and the wholesalers will not be able to sell them at the end of the sale.

Trousers produced will not become money.

The factory rent has been handed over, dozens of machines have been bought, even if the money is lost, the vast majority of people must continue to maintain.

In 2010, the biggest hope of small business owners is capital preservation.

Some people began to think about losing money and leaving.

There are more and more jeans producing clusters in the whole country, Guangxi Yulin, Hebei Shijiazhuang, Anhui Hefei......

These are cheaper places.

cost

In Xintang, what is more worrying is the environmental pollution brought by the industry and the health worries of some employees.

Washing water is a crucial link in the jeans industry.

A pair of jeans is high-grade, medium or low. Besides fabric and design, the most important thing is to wash the water.

The popularity of Xintang Cowboys has been increasingly dominated by another cowboy town, Shunde, over the past two years.

But no matter how the process is, as a link in the industrial chain, printing and dyeing and washing water are essential for textile specialized towns, but they are also the most vulnerable to environmental pollution.

In November 2010, in a survey released by a NGO organization, there were 3 sampling sites in Xintang. The contents of heavy metals such as lead, copper and cadmium in the sediment samples were exceeded the national soil environmental quality standard. One of the sediment samples contained cadmium exceeding 128 times, while the pH value of one water sample was as high as 11.95.

The original washing and dyeing plant was built in Dalong village, which polluted the river and the villagers had great opinions.

Since 2006, the town of Xintang has started large-scale management and gradually moved the washing plant and printing and dyeing plant to the environmental protection industrial park in Xizhou village, west of Xintang town.

According to the planning of the Guangzhou municipal government, after the relocation of the bleaching and dyeing enterprises, the central heating, water supply and centralized sewage treatment will be carried out.

But in the Xizhou Village Environmental Protection Park, the roadside trees are covered with blue silk tapetries, and the dust on the street is also light blue.

The dust produced by polished jeans is everywhere.

The health of workers who work in these enterprises is also worrying.

Almost one hundred percent of the young people who work in the park come from other provinces. The local people prefer to do 2000 yuan more tired work than to do a "dangerous" job.

Yang Ming, who worked in the ocean washing plant, worked in a lock factory in Lishui, Zhejiang, half a year ago. His salary was only 2000 yuan a month. He received a call from a fellow townsman in Xintang, saying that the wages here were high, 5000 yuan per month.

"It was only two months before we went to wash water plant to know that printing and dyeing, washing and dyeing...

The chemical process in the factory requires a lot of chemicals. Local people tell me that they can't live in this industry for a long time. "

Yang Ming said.

Although Yang Ming is doing this process in the factory, people in every process actually work in the same space. In another process, the local people call it "spray horse", which is to spray Potassium Permanganate solution on clothes and make the cowboy old.

Sometimes it needs to be sprayed first and then crushed, sometimes it is first pressed and then sprayed.

The two process is next to work.

Workers have no protection against such harmful substances.

"In summer, when the weather is hot, the spray is dispersed in the air, and our skin is covered with red rashes."

Yang Ming said.

No matter how many harmful substances are harmful to your body, no one told Yang Ming that this increased his fear.

The factory recruited workers, mostly temporary workers, do not sign contracts, there is no guarantee.

The salary was cleared after three months.

Even if it was found to be harmful to the health, Xiao Yang had to wait for another two months.

Before the Spring Festival, when Yang Ming got the money, he decided to leave.

Route

The epitome of Xintang cowboy development actually reflects the difficulties and barriers in the development of traditional textile and clothing industries in China. Although it has been developing for 28 years, the scale of operation is still scattered, and the main source of profits is meager processing fees.

Moreover, the profit margins are becoming smaller and smaller, and the pressure of environmental pollution is bigger and bigger.

Jiang Jianye, a researcher with the center for urban development and environmental studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the global division of labor and the top of the industry will basically have more than 92% of the profits of the industry.

In order to really solve the dilemma of textile specialized towns such as Xintang, in the process of the global industrial chain, it can only pfer the existing industry and realize the high quality of the industry.

From raw materials to product design and personnel training, the whole industry chain should be highly qualified.

From the perspective of industry chain and industrial cluster, Xintang's industrial chain is very perfect and its scale is large. But the high quality industrial chain is basically blank.

When, like ah FA, can the print designers go to the real fashion capital of Paris and Milan to learn, and the design level really rises to the world level. Xintang will become the real fashion capital.