Whistling looms on both sides of the narrow streets make more of a noise than the occasional car horns in the town of Tianba in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Men and women work from dawn to dusk at spinning wheels in front of their houses as they gossip about local goings-on in this prosperous town, which is the regional hub of communications of the province's Ganluo County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture.

Ancient business

Spinning and weaving in this millennium-old way have remained the town's cornerstone industry, more than two centuries after the Spinning Jenny invented by British carpenter and weaver James Hargreaves in 1764 spearheaded the Industrial Revolution, leading to lifestyle changes that people now take for granted.

Residents of the town have embraced an industrial, or post-industrial lifestyle, as more than 20 buses shuttle between the town and the county seat and teenagers get hooked on computer games at the town's five Internet cafes.

But to pay the bills of a modern life, both men and women, spin and weave cha'erwa (woolen cloaks) at looms that are museum pieces in most other parts of the world, and sell them to the Yi people who live in the mountains surrounding the town.

"Almost all the families here made cha'erwa decades ago. There are still more than 500 families in the business," said Zhang Chaozhen, 55, who spins and weaves with her husband everyday in their house.

"Half of the cloaks at the Liangshan Prefecture were dyed in my house," Mou Shunjun, who inherited one of the largest dye houses in the town from his father, said proudly.

Like northern England in the early 18th century, textile handicrafts dominate life in this town.

On balconies, the tops of walls and on ropes fastened between trees, woolen cloaks, which have been dyed black or deep blue, can be seen drying in the sun. The mild smell of herbal dye permeates every corner of the town.

Inside houses, looms take up living rooms and family members, often of two or three generations, pull and push on wooden sticks as they drive the looms.

In the suburbs of the town the wool is spread on bamboo sheets on the ground, and men and women can be seen on their knees, rolling the wool into thread.

The hand-made cloaks are put on sale at a flea market in Yangmao (Wool) Street. The Yi, wearing cloaks and with their hair wrapped up in cloth, arrive in groups on "market day" -- the beginning of each month of the lunar calendar.

Han and Yi business people are major buyers at the market. They travel to Yi villages deep in the mountains and sell cloaks, salt and other necessities for a modest profit.

Symbiosis challenged

According to documents, the symbiosis of Han weavers and Yi farmers started in the area two centuries ago.

Unlike most other towns in the mountainous province, Tianba, where Hans live in compact communities, lies not in a basin but on a hillside at a height between 1,100 to 2,702 meters above sea level.

The Hans moved to the site in the Jiaqing reign (1796-1820) of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) because the town was relatively near to the more than 10 Yi villages that existed at the time.

They came as businessmen, and when they settled down with families, they discovered the lucrative trade of making and selling woolen cloaks to the surrounding Yi, who lived on corn, wheat and rice grown on mountainous slopes.

The cloak market boomed in the 1930s and 40s, when opium poppies were planted instead of citrus trees in many of the terraced fields in the vast expanses circling the town.

Just before autumn, when the pure white or reddish-purple flowers withered in the fields and poppy heads changed from a pale green to a yellowish brown, the town embraced a morbid prosperity.

Business people arrived from around China to purchase dried poppy heads, which made Tianba the regional hub of communications as it is today.

The cloak business, which reached its peak at the time, survived and continued to flourish in New China while dealing in opium was outlawed.

The traditional business fought off modern technologies as it is a complicated process to make a cloak from wool, and the cost of a cloak would increase many fold if machines were used in the many-stepped procedure, said Mou, who dyes woven cloaks in 1.5-meter-tall wooden barrels.

"The dyeing process alone takes four steps: to make minerals into the dye, to soak the cloak in the dye in barrels, to wash the dyed cloak in water and have it dried in the sun," he said.

Like Mou, those in the cloak business are all skilled professionals as they have spent their lives at spinning wheels, looms and in dye houses.

"I learned making cha'erwa as a child. I have been weaving them all my life. I stopped only for the few years during the 'cultural revolution' (1966-76)," said Yang Yuzhi, 70, as she weaves in front of her family's one-story house.

"My father wove cloaks for more than 50 years before he died, and I have been doing the same for the past 30 years," said Mou Shunchun, a weaver in his 40s.

"I wouldn't do it anymore if there was another way to make money. It's such hard work," he added.

The weaver left his hometown in his 20s. After several years as an unsuccessful vendor he found cloak weaving his only retreat.

The business offers a low income and requires hard work, said Mou.

"I work with my wife from early morning to late at night every day, and the two of us earn about 20 yuan (US$2.4) a day," he added. The couple has an annual income of roughly 4,000 yuan (US$482).

It takes a weaver more than 10 days to finish a cloak, and Yang Ersao is widely respected in the town because she can finish the job within a week.

The woman in her 30s is also known as a fine saleswoman at the local flea market.

"Only women and the old are left in the business. Few young men do it. Many of them have left the town for cities," she said.

Yang said the town's cloak business is shrinking as demand decreases.

"Now the Yi only wear the cloaks at celebrations. At most times they wear the same clothes as people everywhere else do," she said.

She said the number of families in the business, which is currently more than 500, will only shrink in the future.

Mou Shunjun said he is thinking about shifting the focus of his dye house.

"It is said wax prints from neighboring Guizhou Province sell well. I may go there this year and study the craft, so that I can make wax prints in my dye house," he said.

"I cannot wait here and see people wear fewer and fewer cloaks. A change is needed to have a way out," he added.

Mou Shunchun, the weaver, echoed Mou Shunjun, the dyer: "Most weavers here will change their jobs if someone builds a factory or opens a mine in the area. The whistling of the looms and the smell of the dye may all disappear at once."

(China Daily February 1, 2005)