New year's left-behind safety property

This article Source: Time Weekly Author: Li Hang Chen Xionghai

Looking for customers, knitting, knitting, bottoming shirts, all kinds of small tops,

New year's left-behind safety property

This article Source: Time Weekly Author: Li Hang Chen Xionghai

Looking for customers, knitting, knitting, bottoming shirts, all kinds of small tops, not going home for the New Year, 12 skilled workers, long-term cooperation.

Sun Tao, the owner of the clothing factory, put up a sign on the roadside.

Due to the epidemic, Sun Tao returned to his hometown in Hubei in June 5438 and early February last year. Near New Year's Day, Sun Tao returned to Guangzhou, hoping to "get" some new orders before the Lunar New Year.

Lekang Village, where he lives, is the most concentrated place for small garment factories in Guangzhou. Further south, Le Kang Village is the most influential textile business circle in Zhong Da's clothing and fabric industry in China.

In the whole textile industry, cloth and clothing are the last two links in the industrial chain.

The road in Le Kang Village is like an expanding cloth, deep and narrow. The sky was squeezed into a thin line by low buildings. In these buildings, there are all kinds of folding, embroidery and garment factories, and the machines hum rhythmically. Workers tied bundles of cloth to electric cars, crossed these lanes and disappeared into the buzz.

The sky in Le Kang village. Times Weekly Li Hang/photo

In the textile business circle of CUHK, with the approach of the Spring Festival, the excitement and crowding in the past are gradually replaced by coldness and emptiness. Most shops in the textile city are closed and there are few customers. Those who haven't closed the door are also busy sorting out the color cards of the fabrics to prepare for the upcoming closing. Some stall owners introduce their fabrics to customers and try to close another order before closing the store.

Today, Zhong Da Textile Business Circle has more than 10 cloth trading parks, 63 professional markets and 23,000 shops, with more than 654.38 million direct employees and more than 2 million related industries. Countless cloth vendors, purchasers and migrant workers wander, gather and disperse here, looking for opportunities to make a living and get rich.

This also makes the logic of getting rich in Le Kang village obviously different from other villages in the city.

From the appearance, Le Kang Village is no different from other villages in Guangzhou, but it is a veritable "golden village" with functions of trade and production in addition to life.

In the late 1980s, the vendors selling wool under the bridge in Hai Yin spontaneously moved to the open space opposite the south gate of Sun Yat-sen University, and gradually formed a "climate".

In the 1990s, under the background of Guangzhou's foreign trade prosperity and the rapid development of garment industry, CUHK's cloth market expanded to become the world's first textile professional market, and gradually derived downstream industries such as garment processing and warehousing, and the scope also extended to Le Kang Village and Lujiang Village, gradually forming a complete garment industry chain.

In a small workshop in Le Kang Village, workers are operating the textile machine times weekly newspaper Deng Yingheng/photo.

Just as there is a legend in Guangdong's second-hand car market that Ferrari can be made of parts, the "myth" in Le Kang Village is that garment manufacturers can order fabrics in the Textile City in the morning, and when they arrive in Le Kang Village, they can find someone to process them, and at night they can get ready-made clothes and send them to the clothing trading market to start their own business trips.

The question now is how long this model can last.

Revive vitality

On June 5438+February 65438+February, 2022, under the guidance of the government, Zhong Da Textile Business Circle began to resume trading.

As the basic needs of life, clothing ranks first. As the largest wholesale and retail distribution center in South China, the textile industry has even made Guangzhou a "famous textile fashion city in China".

The recovery of the market means that after the epidemic, it is necessary to speed up the resumption of work and industrial upgrading of CUHK textile circle. The news is like a stone falling into a pond and spreading in all directions. The excitement of practitioners spreads on social media, and they hope to earn a "lucky money".

Deng Yingheng, Times Weekly of Textile City after the opening of the market/photo

Despite the difficult business, Li Chen didn't let negative emotions occupy all his thoughts. One month after the market recovered, she came to the stall every day to sort goods for disinfection, then made a pot of good tea, while processing online orders, waiting for new customers to come to the door. "During this time, there is very little traffic in the Textile City. Sometimes three or four people can enter the store one day, and sometimes there may be no one."

This is early June of 5438+0. In the textile business circle of CUHK-Guangzhou International Textile City, the doors of many merchants are closed, which makes Li Chen's shops brightly lit.

Li Chen said that Guangzhou International Textile City has always been the most popular professional market in CUHK's textile business circle, but within one month after the resumption of business, the shopping mall's passenger flow was less than half of usual, which may be the inevitable result of the resumption of business at the end of the year.

Li Chen is a fabric shop, mainly engaged in fast fashion woven fashion fabrics and knitted air layers. In a good year, the running water can be more than10 million.

This means that she has a relatively high position in the market, but in the past two or three years, she has failed to maintain the performance of the store.

"In 2020, I didn't feel much impact. By 202 1, the gap has widened. Although many guests came into the store, in the end, many customers from other places couldn't pick the goods. At that time, they could only rely on old customers to maintain their business. "

In the pre-holiday textile city, many shops have closed down. Times Weekly Li Hang/photo

Although engaged in the textile industry, no matter how thick the cloth is, it can't wrap the "chill" of bad business. Li Chen predicts that the sales in 2022 will be about 40% lower than that in 202 1 year. "202 1 is the best year in the past three years, about 78 million, and last year it was estimated to be only 34 million." She said that the accounts have not been counted yet, but they are very close.

Just as she was worried about the future, Shine Wong, who had not been to the CUHK textile business circle for three years, pushed open the door of the Li Chen store.

For clothing enterprises, buying fabrics is the first step to make finished products. Shine Wong is the purchasing director of a garment enterprise in Chengdu, Sichuan, and has been engaged in the garment industry for nearly 20 years. Her company specializes in clothing customization, and most of its customers are domestic top 500 enterprises and high-end private customers.

A few years ago, in order to find fabrics, she came to Zhong Da Textile Business Circle twice a year, but because of the inconvenience of traveling, she never came here again in the past three years. "There is no way to select products on the spot, which brings inconvenience to fabric procurement. So in recent years, the company has not developed new products, all of which are old models. The clothing industry is an industry that updates and iterates very quickly, so this is very fatal. "

Le Kang Village's Tailor Shop Times Weekly Deng Yingheng/photo

In this regard, Wang Hui has a layout. In 20 19, Shine Wong opened its own fabric production factory, which expanded from garment processing to fabric production. The fabrics produced are not only for their own clothing, but also two-thirds will be sold to other customers, but in their eyes, Guangzhou's technology and quality are still the most sought-after in this industry.

In order to make a good start in 2023, Shine Wong still spent a day from Chengdu to Guangzhou to buy new year's goods at the fabric market. "Seeing the resumption of work in the textile business circle of Zhong Da University, many garment people are particularly excited, which means that the upstream of the entire garment industry is gradually recovering, and this benefit will gradually be transmitted to the downstream, driving the entire garment industry to accelerate its recovery."

Stay for the New Year.

One is a seller and the other is a buyer. But from the perspective of industrial chain, both Li Chen and Wang Hui are in the same link of industrial chain-textile raw material trading.

Li Chen said that Zhong Da Textile Business Circle is the most influential clothing raw material trading market in China, and fabric traders and buyers come from all over the country.

Small trucks loading and unloading cloth in Le Kang Village Times Weekly Li Hang/photo

In addition to buying and selling fabrics, CUHK textile circle has another industry, namely garment processing and production.

According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 5,200 garment factories and storage enterprises in the leisure area near the Textile City, and more than 300,000 garment industry practitioners have gathered.

Because most of them are from Hubei, people will habitually call this area "Hubei Village". This sample is very similar to the survey made by Xiang Biao, a professor of anthropology at Oxford University, many years ago: "Cross-border community-the life history of Zhejiang village in Beijing".

If the sample is the "drifting north" history of textile industry practitioners, then Le Kang Village is the "drifting wide" narrative of this group.

The most lively place in Hubei Village is Lekang Bridge.

Lekang Bridge is a stone bridge less than 10 meter within the jurisdiction of Hubei Village. There is a group of clothing factory owners sitting on a small bench near Shiqiao. In front of them, there is a sign that says their demands, such as looking for customers, such as recruiters. This is the most primitive advertising model.

The Le Kang Bridge is actually not big. Times Weekly Li Hang/photo

Sun Tao is here, pushing a bicycle, and there is a sign in front that says he is looking for a customer.

He is from Jingzhou, Hubei. 20 18 introduced by his fellow villagers, he started his entrepreneurial career in Le Kang village.

Before coming to Guangzhou, Sun Tao was a senior mechanic in a mold factory in Jiangsu with a monthly salary of more than 10,000 yuan.

In those years when he was a mechanic, Sun Tao was not satisfied with the monotonous life that could be seen at a glance, and had been saving money to try to start a business. Under the recommendation of fellow villagers, he and his wife raised more than 500,000 yuan to open a 300-square-meter garment factory in Le Kang Village. "At that time, I wanted to start a small business by myself, because my wife knew a little about the clothing industry, so I did it."

I regret my decision to leave the factory and start my own business. Now I want to go to Sun Tao. "When 20 18 started, the business of the garment factory was not bad. After deducting costs, workers' wages and daily expenses, its net profit is more than 300 thousand yuan. "

Little brothers who transport cloth in Le Kang Village, they may be the boss's weekly newspaper Li Hang/photo.

However, in recent years, due to external reasons, orders have been greatly reduced, and the business of garment factories has become increasingly difficult, and Sun Tao is no exception. "In 2022, factory profits will drop by at least half. I am still lucky. Many people around me have been busy for a year, not only did they not make money, but they also lost a lot. " Sun Tao guessed that in the past two years, many people's desire to wear New Pants to buy new clothes has decreased.

However, he still maintained a loss. According to him, the secret is to be good at management and promotion.

He said that other small garment manufacturers rely on traditional methods to find customers. He left a message or a private letter to the bloggers who sold clothes live in Tik Tok, asking whether they needed clothing processing business and whether they needed to expand customers through online channels. This makes Sun Tao have many customers from other provinces such as Zhejiang.

Especially at the end of 2022, when Sun Tao returned to China in concentrated isolation, because there was nothing else to do, "public relations" was particularly diligent. When he heard the news of resuming the textile business circle, he returned to Le Kang Village at the end of last year, hoping that the public relations efforts would bear fruit and received some orders before the year.

At the end of 2022, on both sides of the street in Le Kang Village, there were many small factory owners standing on the roadside to attract customers. Times Weekly Deng Yingheng/photo

"If there are more orders recently, I won't go home for the New Year, and I can have a spring in advance." Sun Tao is very optimistic about this year's expectations.

Like Sun Tao, many people in the leisure village believe that this year will be even better. There is a blackboard hanging in front of a local hardware store, which is densely written with various rental houses and prices. The shopkeeper said that most of the workers and bosses of the garment factory live in or near the village.

"The Spring Festival is coming, and renting a house is very cheap. There will be more people after the Spring Festival, and the rent will definitely go up, "said the boss.

Rental notice/picture in Li Hang Lekang Village Times Weekly

The Future of "Hubei Village"

After the closure of Zhong Da Textile Business Circle in the second half of 2022, the discussion about the future of Le Kang Village has quietly warmed up. It is said that the commercial format will be retained, while the clothing, processing and storage links will be relocated.

In June 5438+February last year, "Guangzhou Haizhu District-Qingyuan Investment Promotion Conference" was held in Guangzhou. More than 150 enterprises, more than 30 business association leaders and government representatives from Haizhu District and Qingyuan City of Guangzhou attended the investment promotion meeting. The two cities hope to rely on the counterpart assistance mechanism to accelerate the transfer of garment manufacturing to Qingyuan.

The signal released by Qingyuan is that due to industrial adjustment, resource constraints, factor costs and other factors, traditional industries such as textiles in Guangzhou are spilling over. Therefore, we hope to promote the in-depth practice of the cooperation modes of "Guangzhou Headquarters+Qingyuan Base", "Guangzhou R&D+ Qingyuan Manufacturing" and "Guangzhou Incubation+Qingyuan Industrialization" and build a "modern textile industry cluster".

To this end, Qingyuan is still promoting the construction of Guangzhou North Zhong Da Fashion Science and Technology City, which is expected to undertake nearly 5,000 enterprises after completion. According to reports, most of the enterprises willing to settle in Zhong Da Fashion Science and Technology City in Suibei are Hubei business owners who are engaged in textile processing and manufacturing under the overall planning of Hubei Chamber of Commerce.

Hubei Element Times Weekly, which can be seen everywhere in the village, Li Hang/photo

According to Yuan Qifeng, a professor of South China University of Technology who has long been concerned about the ecology of Le Kang Village, "Hubei Village" is a typical "rural community". Under the compound effect of residential space and industrial space, facing the unsuitable environment, social relations and cultural identity such as rural fringe and blood relationship buffer the anxiety and isolation brought by strange environment to newcomers. "Rural community" has the oneness of industry, and the space is easy to be locked and solidified. "Foreign employees generally have a strong sense of self-identity, are more responsible for their villages in the city, and are more likely to integrate into local life."

Another consideration for transferring some industries is the old reform of Le Kang Village, which has been discussed for more than ten years.

In 202 1 year, Lekang and Lujiang Village reappeared in the renovation project in Guangzhou.

It is reported that the project cooperates with Hesheng Chuangzhan with a total investment of about 34.667 billion yuan.

On March 30th of that year, the first phase project of Le Kang Village resettlement land was officially started. This is also the old renovation project with the largest total investment since Guangzhou's urban renewal and listing, with a reconstruction and resettlement fund of 25.077 billion yuan.

The superposition of industry and living space also makes the old look of Le Kang Village more complicated.

Small workshop-style industries can provide employment opportunities for all kinds of people. Times Weekly Li Hang/photo

Yuan Qifeng once wrote that in the field of "village in city", the strength of each role is disparity, and the primitive villagers hold the property rights of land, property and their own houses, and have absolute right to speak. When foreign employees face the subject of property rights, the distribution right of space and facilities is often easily decomposed.

Once driven by greater interests, or there is an obvious policy shift, the original villagers will definitely reappear in the village and recover the right to allocate space.

However, in the thinking logic of the bosses, cost is the key. From the perspective of cost, the farther the distance between business and processing, the higher the cost, and it is difficult to completely separate.

This group is actually as close as lips and teeth to the original villagers. It is reported that in 20 18, the per capita dividend of the indigenous villagers in Le Kang Village exceeded 240,000 yuan, once exceeding Liede Village in Tuhao Village.

The origin of Le Kang Village is actually due to a "wide ticket". At the end of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Xie Lingyun, a gifted scholar born in Xia County, Henan Province, was banished to Guangzhou and lived in Haizhu District. Because he was awarded the title of "Duke of Recreation", the area where he lived was called Recreation Village.

Bosses who want to write their wishes on the blackboard can realize their leisure dreams.

Since then, 1600 years have passed, and the recreation village of Henan people has now become a "Hubei village", and its future is full of various possibilities.

(The names in the text are all pseudonyms)