Huang Daopo


Huang Daopo rose from poverty to become one of the most famous women in the early Chinese textile industry.

Biography

Huang was likely born around 1240 or 1245. Her family name was Huang, and Daopo was an honorific that she was given later in life. Coming from a poverty stricken family, Huang ran away from home when she was ten years old after being sold into marriage by her family. Unable to bear the constant ill-treatment she received, Huang followed the Huangpu River from her home in Songjiang, near Shanghai then boarded a ship bound for the port of Yazhou in Hainan. In Yazhou she learnt spinning and weaving from the local Li people.
Around 1295, Huang returned to Songjiang and began to teach the local women about cotton spinning and weaving technology whilst at the same time manufacturing suits, fine silk fabrics and weaving machinery that greatly increased efficiency. From the weaving aspect, Huang produced mixed cotton fabrics, colored fabrics and fabrics with mixed warp and weft fibers. Her weaving technology made her hometown famous and began its textile manufacturing industry.
Shanghai Botanical Garden hosts the Huang Daopo Memorial Hall in her honor. The TV series A Weaver on the Horizon is a fictionalized version of her life. A crater on Venus is named for her. In 1980, she was featured on a Scientists of Ancient China stamp.