Mumianpu 木棉譜

Mumianpu 木棉譜 "About cotton cultivation" is a brief agricultural treatise written during the Qing period 清 (1644-1911) by Chu Hua 褚華 (c. 1810), courtesy name Wenzhou 文洲 or Qiu'e 秋萼. His life dates are unclear, but it is known that he lived during the Qianlong reign 乾隆 (1736-1795) and hailed from Shanghai. The Mumianpu was written in the early 19th century.

The Mumianpu summarises information on cotton cultivation and processing in China. The book details the complete range of cultivation techniques from seeding and sowing to fertilisation, weeding, intercropping, and cotton picking (zhuohua 捉花).

The cotton farmers of the Shanghai region used a dense-planting method, which was possible by unique fertilising methods. In winter, farmers sew wheat and cotton side by side. The wheat sprouts would thus protect the roots of the cotton bushes against the cold.

The book describes the operation by one person of a pedal-moved cotton gin (jiaota zhache 腳踏軋車) to remove cottonseeds (mianzi 棉籽). For "beating the cotton" (tan mian 彈棉), a 5-foot-long wooden bow was used to make the cotton "disperse like snow and light as smoke" (san ruo xue, qing ru yan 散若雪，輕如煙). By using a pedal-moved spinning wheel (jiaota fangche 腳踏紡車), more than one pound of cotton yarn can be spun per day. Skilled female workers can operate three to four spindles (muding 木錠) at a time. Iron spindles (tieding 鐵錠) result in cotton yarn of much higher fineness and quality.

For weaving, flatbed looms (ping zhiji 平織機) with two healds (zong 綜) are used. The finest cloth was produced in Sanlintang 三林塘 (today part of Pudong 浦東). The text also mentions several types of weave like twill weave (xiewen bu 斜紋布) or various patterns made in the case of jacquard fabric (tihua bu 提花布) like the "overlapping-rhomb pattern" (fangsheng wen 方勝紋), elephant-eye patterns or clouds. Even flower-damask fabric (hualing bu 花綾布) can be made with a combination of cotton (weft, wei 緯) and silk (warp, jing 經) yarn. Before dyeing, cloth can be scraped to obtain flannel cloth (garong bu 刮絨布). Apart from dyeing and bleaching (piaobai 漂白), the Mumianpu also highlights two techniques of printing, namely "multi-colour scratch printing" (duose gua yinhua 多色刮印花) and matrix printing (loukongban taose yinhua 縷空版套色刷印花).

From the social perspective, the author reports the background of the shrine of Huang Daopo 黃道婆, a Shanghai weaving expert from the late 13th century. Another interesting information is that sugarcane planters from Fujian and Guangdong used to weave cotton cloth during the off-season. Some southern merchants specialised in selling sugarcane on the Shanghai markets while buying cotton or cotton cloth to return it southwards.

Although the Mumianpu records in detail many aspects of the cotton textile production in Shanghai, it is mainly based on hearsay or superficial knowledge or rather general books like Nongzheng quanshu 農政全書, and therefore includes quite a few unreliable information.

The book is an essential source for the cotton industry in the region of Shanghai in the mid-Qing period. It is included in the series Yihai zhuchen 藝海珠塵, Zhaodai congshu 昭代叢書, Nongxue congshu 農學叢書 and Congshu jicheng chubian 叢書集成初編 and Shanghai zhanggu congshu 上海掌故叢書.