What is indigo?
1. Soak the liquid made of bluegrass.
Wu Yingming's "Cinnabar Dan" is the first fold: "Then your mellow glutinous wine is as muddy as indigo. I'll have a drink to distract myself."
2. Dark blue.
Reading Spring and Autumn in a Small Town for the second time: "He took off a set of indigo shorts and trousers, together with sandals, and put them on Jianping."
3. Name of the pigment.
Indigo. See "indigo".
Indigo is extracted from indigo plants, but it is bluer than the plants from which it comes.
Before the 1960s, indigo, a special product in Zhongyan Dangshan, was very prosperous, which not only met the printing and dyeing needs of counties such as Ibn and Wenzhou in Yueqing, but also exported to Wenling, Huangyan, Haimen, Fujian and other provinces in Taizhou. In addition to making dyes, it also makes commonly used drugs, which has written a shining page in the history of Yueqing's economic development.
Indigo, also known as bluegrass and indigo. These three names mean: blue grass, which means blue grass growing in the ground; Indigo is the finished product of bluegrass processing; Indigo, because indigo is dark blue. Yueqing people are used to being called "indigo".
Indigo is a vat dye plant with a long history in China. As early as more than 2,000 years ago, in Xun Zi's article "Encouraging Learning", there was an allusion that students surpassed teachers or descendants surpassed predecessors: "Green is green, green is green ..." The blue here refers to blue grass. The official records of indigo in Yueqing first appeared in Volume 3 "Goods" of Yueqing County Records during Yongle period of Ming Dynasty. It is not difficult to infer that its production must be ahead of this time.
In history, indigo was planted in Zhongyan Mountain and radiated to the periphery of Chishui Yang Yang Village in Baishi Town: Shangni, Shimen, Shimen, Shijing, Xiani and Ban Ling Mountain in Baishi Town; Yang Ni, Zhang Li, Toutou, Shanfengyang and Huangtan Cave in Chengbei Township; Yongjia county, Qinglong, Qingtang, Pingkeng, Dong Zhang and other 18 villages. According to rough statistics, there are more than 2,000 gardens with an area of 10,000 mu, with an annual output of about 5,000 tons of indigo products.
The author visited Chishuiyang Village, an old man who was an indigo Langlang since he was a child, and now he is 8 1 year old. He said that during the period from 1940 to 1956, the production of indigo in Zhongyanshan was the most prosperous, and then indigo gradually declined. At that time, "indigo" (chemical synthetic dye) imported from overseas flooded the market, and the traditional indigo was fatally impacted. Moreover, cotton cloth was purchased and sold in the past, and cotton yarn was scarce, and little cloth was distributed to others. How can there be extra white cloth for dyeing? Indigo production naturally tends to decline.
According to the memories of the old people in Zhongyan Mountain area, when indigo was popular in the 1940s, almost all the fields of 250 families in Chishui Ocean were planted with indigo, and the highest price of indigo was 100, and it sold 25 silver dollars or 700 kilograms of grain. Due to the remarkable benefits of planting indigo, a number of large indigo households came into being, and hundreds of households produced more than 2,000 kilograms of finished products. At the invitation of 1993 Yueqing Local Records Compilation Office, the author went to Huangtandong Village to compile the Records of Famous Villages in Zhejiang Province, and found that 38 households in the village 175 were classified as "landlords and rich peasants" during the land reform, accounting for 22% of the total population. According to the villagers, they are likely to make a fortune in indigo!
The planting and processing of indigo is quite complicated: before winter, the harvested indigo stems are chopped into more than 20 centimeters for planting, bundled into small pieces and buried in the soil, and covered with straw cakes for heat preservation; By the second year of Qingming germination, the transplanted land was dug up and 3000 plants were planted in an acre. Through fertilization, weeding and careful management, leaves can't be picked until the end of September in the lunar calendar. It takes a long time to pick leaves. Pick it the first time, and then pick it in January. At this time, all the leaves and stems are cut off, and the stems are also cut off for seeds. Leaves and tender stems are poured into brick pots for brewing. About three days and three nights, after fermentation and decomposition, remove the residue, add oyster ash and stir to neutralize. When the water on it is precipitated and decanted, the rest is indigo.
Lunar calendar 10 every year is the season of indigo ripening and processing. I saw that the Zhongyan mountain area was lush and blue, showing a beautiful pastoral scenery. At this time, merchants from all over the world flocked to ask for goods. Old customers who are famous for their honesty can also deliver the goods as long as they send a message to Yalang or the main family. According to the memory of Qian Qutao, Wang Jinhua in Jinxiang, Cai Chunfa in Lingxi, Qian Changyuan in Xizhao, their store numbers and several dye houses in Ryan are all big customers. There are three businesses specializing in indigo in Huangyan Road and Bridge, and the source of goods is also from Zhongyan Mountain Area. They resell the goods to Shanghai and Jiangsu, and the throughput is quite large. At that time, Alian Laosi in Xiaonanmen, Wenzhou, Hongzhang Dyeing Workshop in Hualiutang, a dyeing shop in xinqiao town and Yin Yan Laosi in front of Ouhai Temple were all supplied by Zhongyan Mountain.
Indigo printing and dyeing is a traditional folk craft in China. Before the popularization of modern printing and dyeing technology, people used it to make clothes, quilts and threads. All cloth or yarn should be dyed in vats. Today, it can be seen from the brewery that it is also a giant drying soy sauce. When dyeing, first dissolve indigo into the gap, six or seven kilograms at a time, and then put the cloth down. Pay attention to the cloth, first fold it into pages, like the hand folding in earlier years, and then pull it down from the cylinder page by page; This way, the cloth can be eaten as soon as it enters the cylinder. If the whole horse is thrown in, the cloth under it will be difficult to penetrate for a while and the dyed color will be uneven.
The color of dyeing is blue, but it can be divided into three categories: old blue, wool blue and water blue, as well as "sky blue" and "brocade blue". Deep dyeing and light dyeing are not counted by time, but by number theory: old blue dyed seventeen or eighteen times; Blue hair eleven or twelve times; Water blue seven or eight times. With the change of weather, the number of times of dyeing may not necessarily die. Dye once 10 minutes or so, pull it, wring it out, smooth it out, and dye it again. Dyeing houses generally have four cylinders to work in turn, and the cycle is repeated until the dyeing is good. The dyed cloth should be rinsed clean, dried, and then polished under a "rolling stone" shaped like an ingot. It takes a lot of effort to operate a rolling stone, because people have to stand on the two wings of the stone ingot and roll around on this 500-600 kg "rolling stone" with their own body weight, so that the cloth can be flat and bright.
There is an article called "flower clip" in the dyeing process, and its scientific name is "clip". The pattern dyed by the clip is very unique. The secret is to carve two wooden boards into the same pattern or island beast, clamp the white cloth and fasten it with iron rings to keep the primary color of the clamp watertight, thus leaving a blue-and-white pattern after dyeing. The pattern with flowers is carved with pear wood and will never go out of shape. It takes 16 patterns to dye a bed. This kind of interlining cloth is mostly used to make sheets. In the old society, girls needed to be "caught" when they got married. At the same time, it is also used to decorate tables and chairs or cut clothes and trousers.
Indigo is a treasure all over the body, leaves are used for printing and dyeing, stems are used as seeds, and roots can be used as medicine. According to the Dictionary of Traditional Chinese Medicine, indigo has the efficacy of clearing away heat and toxic materials, and can also treat sores and erysipelas. The best selling Radix Isatidis and Radix Isatidis granules in the market during the SARS period last year were the roots of Indigo Naturalis and the finished medicine processed with the roots of Indigo Naturalis!
Half a century later, indigo, a special product in Zhongyanshan area, has lost its former glory, but it has not disappeared. Last year, 10 mu of indigo was planted in Chishuiyang village, Baishi, but now indigo is mostly used for medicine. I often see women in mountain villages selling Banlangen on the plains at a price of four or five yuan a catty. At the same time, there are also many businesses looking for you. For example, a few years ago, Pingyang bought indigo from people as "indigo" Chinese medicine.
Indigo, as a traditional dye, is the product of farming society. The mission entrusted by history has been completed, and it is imperative to quit the stage of modern civilization with highly developed science and technology. However, indigo printing and dyeing is a profound craft culture with its own folk vitality and national personality, which is the wisdom of our ancestors. Therefore, in recent years, it has been put forward by people in the field of literature and history that the wearing and decoration of blue calico is still regarded as fashion in some occasions. Not long ago, the author visited the famous painter Mr. Yuan Gangping. The chairs in his living room are lined with indigo printed cloth mats, which shows that future generations are still full of infinite attachment to these ancient and elegant folk crafts.