History of Chinese handmade rug
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As
a Chinese traditional hand-made craftwork,
carpet weaving is of the long histories.
Xin
Jiang Province is one of the major places where
the Chinesecarpets originated.
Theclimate there is rigidly cold and
people live in nomadic life. This created
a huge demand of the wool fabric products to
keep them warm or even make their life more
beautiful. The carpet was firstly structured as
plain back knitted, later on the
coarse weft tufted fabric texture and much
thicker tufted carpet appeared.
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Chinese carpet industry was already at quite
high andmature level 2000 years ago.
In the "Record of
Western Countriesby Xuan Zang of
theTang Dynasty", Xuan Zang had a vivid
description of the carpet prosperity when it was
even more than 1000 years ago. With the conquest
of the Hun Nation by the Great Han Emperor, the
"Silk Road" was established and a lot of the
silk carpets, teas, pigments and china products
were exported to Europe and Western Asia areas
and vice versa. People there then had a chance
to understand the Persian carpets as well. Even
in today's Persian carpets, there are still
quite a lot of designs which are similar to
Chinese designs but with Middle East color and
styles. Since then, there has been a lot of
communications and exchanges between those 2
ancient nations and eventually the art of the
carpet weaving has reached its climax.
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17
th and 18 th centuries was a period
when the art of the carpet weaving finally
reached its climax. The finest carpets were
produced and consumed in the palaces and
temples. Excellent examples of traditional
Chinese carpets are represented in
the permanent
collections of major Western
museums and galleries including the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, the Textile Museum in
Washington D.C., and the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London where they are the object of
dedicated research by scholars.
In the 20 th
century, however, modern machine spun cotton and
wool gradually came to replace hand-spun yarns,
and traditional natural dyes were superseded by
artificial chemical dyes.
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With
the opening up and reform policy, China's
economy has been developingrapidly
andpeople are becoming more and more rich.
In this circumstance, there are a lot of
people in large cities or Southern part of China
who are interested in ancient style decorations
and this gives a rise to the further development
of carpet. Most places therefore become the
center of hand-made carpets, among which Nan
Yang, Xing Jiang and Tibet are the typical
examples.
Even
until the middle 80's of the 20 th century, most
of the carpets are for export only and the
Chinese people would think it was too far away
for them to enjoy. But since then, people start
to live a rich and stable life and are getting
more and more familiar with this ancient
artwork.Nowadays, many families start to regard
this luxurious carpet as the symbol of high
cultural
taste. | |
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The
Silk Road includes three routes. The main route
starts from Chang'an (now Xi'an) in the east,
through Zhangye, Dunhuang, Loulan, Taklimakan
Desert, Mali, Teheran, Baghdad, to Cairo or
Istanbul. The second route, through Anxi,
Xinjiang, Alamutu, Jumbul, to Caspian Sea. The
third route: along the Hexi Corridor, through
Islamabad, to New Delhi of India.
The
major tourist area along the Silk Road include
Xi'an, Lanzhou, Dunhuang, Turpan (Tulufan) or
Hami, Urumqi, Etc. The important tourist spots
include Loulan Ruins, Mogao Grottoes, Majishan
Grottoes, and culture and custom of the
minorities in the Western Regions.
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