Shengliver’s Note: A trip back to my home village in the summer made me keenly aware that the village now is not the village then. Most folk I met about the ancestral grounds were either kids whose grandparents I know, or aunts and uncles and great aunts and great uncles, who were in their sixties, seventies or eighties. Ways of life there are far removed from what I remember of the early 1970s, my salad days. In this blog series, Extinct Trade, the blogger will share with his readers about nine trades which have died out where his roots are.

In my earliest memory, folks around me were clothed in homemade garments. Cotton was spun into thread, thread was woven into cloth, and cloth was handsewn into what the folks wore.

No sooner had the sewing machine debuted in the rural communities in the late 1970s, than it quickly became the in thing. Better off families started to include a sewing machine in their marrying daughter’s dowry. It was still a luxury in the eyes of the peasants. After our second bungalow was built in 1981, Father finally shelled out for a sewing machine whose brand name was Dunhuang. The logo was a flying fairy from the Dunhuang murals. The manufacturer was a Shanghai based producer.

Mother often tried her hand at the machine but her skills were limited. Some neighbours occasionally came over and asked to use the machine for a purpose. The sewing machine was more of a status symbol than of much practical use, very much the way some girls parade a fashionable accessory these days.

Eventually a Wang family started a tailor’s shop at the village. The great aunt, a seamstress, learned some basic sewing machine skills as an apprentice. The shop was a one-person enterprise, for there was not much business most of the time. However, when the Spring Festival was approaching, customers thronged the place so that she had her two younger sons and her daughter come and help. In those years new wear was a must-have for each and every one member of a household. On Day 1 of the New Year, everyone, young and old, men and women, without exception, shed their old clothes and donned the brand-new garments. In most cases, a farmer provided the material and the tailoress turned it into garments, for which a fee was charged. I bet the tailoress great aunt made a big fortune in the business season, which peaked normally in lunar December. During the run-up to the last day of the old year, the family had to work around the clock to meet deadlines. Some customers from nearby villages even waited at the shop and took away their badly needed new jackets and pants, the moment they came hot off the sewing machine.

Several sewing machines were installed in the shop, together with lacers and irons. Sewing machines and lacing machines were operated manually, by a foot pedal. Irons were already heated by electricity.

The tailor’s skills were not first class, but the peasants did not need classy stuff. As long as the new garments fit, they were satisfied customers. Style was a secondary consideration. The truth was that there was only one style for a year normally. Most clothes looked from the same mould.

Ready-made suits were unheard of in the village in the 1970s. But cloth mass-produced at factories was available at the Supply and Sales Operative Store all year round. Then toward the end of the twentieth century, off-the-rack factory-made suits flooded the rural market as well as the urban shops. By and by, folks flocked to the new material and wear, and locally produced cotton cloth and custom-made clothes were eventually phased out.