The Historical Origin of Indigo

Indigo, also known as bluegrass and indigo. These three names mean: blue grass, which means blue grass growing in the ground; Indigo is the finished product of bluegrass processing; Indigo, because indigo is dark blue. Yueqing people are used to being called "indigo".

Before the 1960s, indigo, a special product in Zhongyan Dangshan, was very prosperous, which not only met the printing and dyeing needs of counties such as Ibn and Wenzhou in Yueqing, but also exported to Wenling, Huangyan, Haimen, Fujian and other provinces in Taizhou. In addition to making dyes, it also makes commonly used drugs, which has written a shining page in the history of Yueqing's economic development.

Indigo is a vat dye plant with a long history in China. As early as more than 2,000 years ago, in Xun Zi's article "Encouraging Learning", there was an allusion that students surpassed teachers or descendants surpassed predecessors: "Green is green, green is green ..." The blue here refers to blue grass. The official record of indigo in Yueqing first appeared in Volume 3 "Goods" of Yueqing County Records in Yongle period of Ming Dynasty, so it is not difficult to infer that it must have been made before this time.

In history, indigo was planted in Zhongyan Mountain and radiated to the periphery of Chishui Yang Yang Village in Baishi Town: Shangni, Shimen, Shimen, Shijing, Xiani and Ban Ling Mountain in Baishi Town; Yang Ni, Zhang Li, Toutou, Shanfengyang and Huangtan Cave in Chengbei Township; Yongjia county, Qinglong, Qingtang, Pingkeng, Dong Zhang and other 18 villages. According to rough statistics, there are more than 2,000 gardens with an area of 10,000 mu, with an annual output of about 5,000 tons of indigo products.

Chishuiyang village has been an indigo old man since childhood, and now it is 8 1 year old. He said that the most vigorous period of indigo production in Zhongyanshan area was from 1940 to 1956, after which indigo gradually declined. At that time, "indigo" (chemical synthetic dye) imported from overseas flooded the market, and the traditional indigo was fatally impacted. Moreover, cotton cloth was purchased and sold in the past, and cotton yarn was scarce, and little cloth was distributed to others. How can there be extra white cloth for dyeing? Indigo production naturally tends to decline.

According to the memories of the old people in Zhongyan Mountain area, when indigo was popular in the 1940s, almost all the fields of 250 families in Chishui Ocean were planted with indigo, and the highest price of indigo was 100, and it sold 25 silver dollars or 700 kilograms of grain. Due to the remarkable benefits of planting indigo, a number of large indigo households came into being, and hundreds of households produced more than 2,000 kilograms of finished products. At the invitation of 1993 Yueqing Local Records Compilation Office, the author went to Huangtandong Village to compile the Records of Famous Villages in Zhejiang Province, and found that 38 households in the village 175 were classified as "landlords and rich peasants" during the land reform, accounting for 22% of the total population. According to the villagers, they are likely to make a fortune in indigo!