In the late Southern Song Dynasty, a young girl named Huang Axiu was sold into a farmer's household in Songjiang Prefecture as a child bride because of her poverty. Unable to endure the abuse, she escaped at night, hid on a barge in the Huangpu River, and drifted with the boat to Yazhou, Hainan. On the way, she met Song Jiayuan, a scholar who went south to avoid trouble.
In Yazhou, she lived in a dilapidated Taoist temple and became a Taoist nun. When he went out to beg for alms, he met Song Jiayuan again, who was running a local school, and they fell in love with each other. After Axiu returned to secular life, the two ended up as a couple. In order to survive, she started working as a tailor, learned about the unique textile technology of the local Li people, and integrated it with Jiangnan weaving techniques, becoming an outstanding textile expert.
In the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, when the world was peaceful, the couple returned to their hometown of Wunijing, Songjiang by sea ship. Axiu selflessly taught the local villagers the textile techniques he had accumulated over the years, and boldly improved the textile tools, thereby creating a complete set of mature cotton textile techniques.
This set of techniques quickly spread in Songjiang, promoting the development of the handmade cotton textile industry in Jiangnan and even China, and changing the industrial structure of southern China in the Yuan and Ming dynasties. Songjiang Prefecture has become China's cotton textile center and enjoys the reputation of "clothing and quilts all over the world".
After Axiu passed away, the local people set up a temple to worship her and affectionately called her "Grandma Huang". Later generations honored her as Huang Daopo and regarded her as the originator of the cotton textile industry.
Purpose: From child bride to cotton textile industry reformer, a poor girl's nirvana and rebirth