About every three pairs of jeans in the world, one comes from Xintang, which is known as the “denim capital”. However, there is a washing process in the manufacturing of denim clothing, which not only produces a large amount of wastewater, but also produces high pollution. This also caused the “denim capital” to be accused of “toxic fashion”.
Times have changed. In the overall layout of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Xintang will be built into the next Central Business District (CBD). CBD is synonymous with zero tolerance for highly polluting industries.
In the past 10 years, Xintang has continued to transform from a “denim city” to a CBD. On this road of transformation, the most difficult monster to deal with is detoxifying the “cowboy”.
01 Old Cowboy Injury
Jiuyu The village is one of the 32 administrative villages in Xintang Town, located in the center of Xintang City. If Xintang is the crown jewel of the denim industry, Jiuyu is the jewel in the crown.
The notice board next to Jiuyu Village Committee shows that the village’s registered population is 1,163, but the migrant population is about 6,000 (in 2020). About 10 years ago, the migrant population in the village was close to 20,000.
These foreigners have supported more than 200 denim and garment enterprises in Jiuyu. However, the people of Jiuyu village who rely on leasing land and properties had a per capita income collectively distributed as early as 10 years ago. It is more than 10,000 yuan, belonging to the wealthy village in Xintang Town.
△In Xintang, such cowboy streets can be seen almost everywhere, and Jiuyu is even more densely populated. Photo by reporter Li Guang/
Denim becomes jeans here. For every additional foot sold, Chaoxue’s wealth increases a little. The 18-year-old boy from Chaoshan said that almost all the bosses who make denim clothing in Xintang are Chaoshan people, and most of the workers who cut threads are from Hunan and Sichuan.
The tasks of low-end workers are simple and tedious. Cutting off the messy threads of a pair of trousers is paid 0.2 yuan; jujubing (repairing threads to reinforce easily damaged parts of clothing) is 2 cents a piece. As for the pattern-making (designing) masters, the commission for each pair of pants sold is more than 20 yuan, and the commission for clothes ranges from 35 to 55 yuan.
This market division of labor allows a small workshop to produce piles of denim clothing every day, and has also made Xintang the largest denim clothing production and export center in China. Assembly point.
As early as 2012, there were 4,766 denim clothing manufacturers and related enterprises in Xintang, accounting for nearly 80% of the number of industrial and commercial enterprises in Xintang, and producing more than 60% of China’s denim clothing Denim clothing.
△Photographed by reporter Li Guang from a denim clothing workshop in Jiuyu Village
But at that time, in the halo Behind the honor are the workers’ survival difficulties and shocking environmental pollution.
Ten years ago, Xintang native Dong Yaoming (pseudonym) took reporters to the bank of the Dongjiang River in Xintang. At that time, the water near the river bank had turned blue-black, and This unusual water color is accompanied by a strange smell. Dong Yaoming said that what flows out here is the wastewater from the washing (bleaching and dyeing) factory.
Washing is a well-known heavy-polluting process in the denim clothing industry. “The two steps of producing and selling fabrics are okay, but in order to show the layer and age of the denim clothing produced, I feel that washing is the only way. Although the pollution is large, there is such a demand in the market and no one can do anything about it.”
Chaoxue said that he only buys fabrics, and the washing water is provided by the garment factory. will do. In this way, he tried to emphasize that he had not polluted the environment.
But as part of the entire denim industry, no one is immune here.
02 The origin of water control and town control
The Dongjiang River in Xunwu County, Jiangxi Province branches into Guanhu River and Yayao River in Xintang, with a basin area of more than 100 square kilometers. Xintang has more than 20,000 cubic meters of river water per capita, ranking among the top in Guangdong Province.
On one side, it is adjacent to Guangzhou City, which is densely populated with merchants, and on the other side, it is close to Dongguan, the manufacturing capital. Coupled with abundant water resources, Xintang has become an inherent geographical location for the development of the denim industry. Advantage. However, the water quality of the Dongjiang River has an important impact on the Pearl River, and was once responsible for drinking water for millions of people in Tianhe District, Guangzhou.
Retaining local industries while improving water quality, promoting process upgrades and optimizing emission standards seems to be the only path to modernization for Xintang.
The road is taken step by step.
△Workers are using machines to clean the threads of jeans. Photo by reporter Li Guang/o:p>
Xintang denim production Over the past few decades, as the river flows quietly, the city of Guangzhou has begun to expand eastward step by step, and various policies to build the Greater Bay Area have been introduced one after another.
More and more people are taking root in Xintang. On the one hand, they are experiencing the clear and distinct four seasons of this land. On the other hand, they are also wondering why the river water in Xintang is black and blue. Why is there an unspeakable smell in the air?
△For Xintang, denim is an industry, and for a familyGenerally speaking, denim is the family’s source of income. Photo by reporter Li Guang
This is the familiar smell of Xintang’s denim industry.
The fashion of the past was “toxic” and it’s time to reinvent it. Since 2013, Zengcheng Environmental Protection Bureau and Xintang have taken various measures to control sewage discharge, and finally realized that enterprises in various industrial parks stopped discharging sewage before the Spring Festival in 2018.
Chao Xue said that this kind of rectification does not mean shutting down directly, but eliminating backward enterprises and allowing powerful enterprises to improve purification and sewage systems. “This will of course increase production costs.” Rise, but if the entire industry rises, then for individual companies, the pros and cons of competition will be the same as before.”
△The sound of infrastructure construction also began to sound in Jiuyu Village. Not surprisingly, workers were wearing jeans. Photo by reporter Li Guang/
Seeing this situation change, North Korea Learn a lot and feel emotional. “It’s different. It’s definitely not possible to be like in the past, but that kind of production method was also inevitable in that era. But it’s impossible for Xintang to completely give up the denim industry. After all, this is the town with the highest industrial output value in Zengcheng .”
03 Next CBD
The effect of water control has unexpectedly enhanced Xintang’s popularity in urban construction.
The smart drainage management system built in Xintang in recent years has been shortlisted for the successful cases of the 2021 China Smart City Conference. The conference will be held on November 9th and 10th this year. Xintang’s samples will achieve full coverage, full collection, and full treatment of the sewage pipe network.
Behind the sample is to build a complex and tight underground urban pipe network. Based on the geographical information system, the detection points are monitored and dispatched. In addition to monitoring In addition to being effective in pollution control, it can also prevent urban flooding.
Such urban management measures are generally beyond the reach of towns and villages in the mainland. Even if they have sufficient capital investment, they will inevitably fall into the dilemma of intelligent management, which is This is the advantage of Xintang being adjacent to Guangzhou and Dongguan and located in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
In 2017, Guangzhou made it clear that it will build an important national central city, build a hub network city, and gather high-end resources from around the world. Among them, Xintang, located on the “eastward” axis of Guangzhou’s urban spatial development strategy, will become the transportation hub in eastern Guangzhou, including national railways, intercity rails, subways, long-distance passenger transport, general city buses and taxi services.
These alone no longer meet people’s definition of a hub. For denim clothing merchants traveling from north to south, Xintang is their gathering place, but it is not just a distribution center for denim clothing or a simple transportation hub. In the future, Xintang will be built with international plazas, shopping malls, office buildings, Urban complex including hotels. When these elements are fully formed, Xintang will become the city center and urban gateway in eastern Guangzhou.
Zhao Honghong, professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Architecture, South China University of Technology, once mentioned that this development strategy can change the urban function and image of Xintang, and the radiation and attraction effects will It will far exceed the impact of Xintang in the past.
In other words, the Xintang denim industry will not disappear, but will continue to evolve. For Chaoxue, the transportation network extending in all directions allows his purchasing tentacles to radiate to the Pearl River Delta. As for the sales network, it will cover the entire world.
△The other side of this bridge is Zhongtang Town, Dongguan. A villager is looking at everything in front of him in a daze. Photo by reporter Li Guang/
Perhaps not everyone who owns jeans knows about Xintang, but for those young people who are fashionable with jeans, there must be a pair of jeans from Xintang in their wardrobe.
For the future CBD, Xintang may not be very attractive to old Guangzhou people, but for those who are trying to move from second- and third-tier cities in the mainland to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area For hard-working young people, a brand-new city is not a friendly and tolerant destination. </p
