Chinese Spinning

手纺 is the hanzi for spinning, and the search parameters usually have to say “-baoding.”

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China is known for spinning silk, but did you know that there was an “industrial style wheel” as early as 400 CE. However, that source isn’t exactly an original, so the treadle thing could be from as early as 400 CE to as late as 1000 CE. It was popularized in pre-13th century by Haung Tao-Pho, who brought the cotton industry and the treadle spinning wheel to many parts of China around the years 1295-1296. The treadle wheel allows a skilled spinner to spin 2,3, 4, or even 5 threads at one time! Okay, that’s… not entirely true. It is unclear if the primary purpose of the wheel was to spin or ply. It does both, but the intended and original purpose is unclear. These wheels are used with silk, cotton, and a bast fiber common in Asia called “ramie” (ramie is often mistranslated as linen, but was and is hugely popular in places like Japan and India, as well as China). This is done by having all the movement of the wheel be focused in the feet (unlike other Asian wheels, which are hand cranked). The foot motion is that of an oar or a bicycle, rather than the European treadle of pressing a pedal up and down. The dominant hand (for this wheel IS ambidextrous) would draft the prepared fibers, held in multiple bundles, which the non-dominant guided the threads to the wheel using a stick as a tensioning agent. While I am interested in this stick, I think it was just a simple dowel rod, no notches or anything carved, but I am still unsure. So much of this wheel comes down to how the fibers are prepped. If you have a big bar thing helping with fiber preparation (it’s in some of the drawings), it’s part of the silk processing process. This was NOT COMMON in the early years. Well, why not? The quality wasn’t as consistent and the preferred method was the single thread doubling done on the hand cranked wheel. The other fiber this wheel is really good at is the ramie, the bast fiber. Those fibers and long and needed twisting more than spinning, and would have come pre-spliced and often on little balls that sat in front of the wheel. Cotton had to first be made into roving, and is a much shorter draw, making continuous spinning more difficult (though not impossible).

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A replica of a Chinese wheel, as used by its creator.

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​Diagram showing a period Chinese woman plying 2 threads at once (so 4 threads go down to 2), with notations to guide the reader in the article On the mathematics of spinning, which I did not understand. Also shown more modern Chinese woman spinning 2 threads at once using the same type of wheel. It shows how the wheel is perpendicular to the user. 

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Chinese woman spining on small table wheel. This style of wheel was more the "domestic style" wheel that was used in non industrial settings. We have evidence of this wheel being found as early as 200 BCE in "certain regions" of China (I'm afraid that I do not know what regions those are).