How-to China: Villagers weave better lives

Q: What advantages does Dongzhangpu town have to develop the chair-weaving industry?

Bai Xiao: The chair-weaving industry started in 2011 when two villagers of the town went back from outside cities and started to process cane chairs.

They used to work at furniture factories and became skilled at weaving the chairs. After they came back, they taught some neighbors.

In the beginning, they introduced materials from neighboring Shandong province and distributed them to their neighbors for weaving.

After the chairs were completed, the neighbors would hand them over to the two villagers, who sold them to local furniture factories.

In 2013, they started to sell cane chairs directly to customers. Since then, more and more villagers have used their spare time to weave the chairs, a skill that is easy to learn and has low labor intensity.

Seeing villagers increase their income by weaving chairs, the local government started to support them as they established factories.