In 1872, Chen Qiyuan returned to China to set up a machine reeling factory. Because at that time the village to Jiangpu a division of the area did not make the machine workshop and technicians. Later on, the reeling factory was transformed and installed by Chen Liantai who was responsible for the reeling machines, and Chen Qiyuan was personally responsible for the technical guidance, and the project was completed in 1873. At the same time, Chen Qiyuan recruited dozens of male and female workers (with female workers in the majority) in the area of Jiancun and the nearby Jishui Village, and personally taught these new workers "the method of reeling silk in imitation of the Westerners", and then chose a good day to start reeling, and named the factory "Jichanglong", which became the first national capital-operated machine-reeling factory in modern China. China's first national capital-operated machine reeling factory. After the founding of Jichanglong reeling factory, Nanhai County, the earliest batch of modern industrial workers were born.
Chen Qiyuan (1834-1903), Zixin, a native of Jiancun, Xiqiao Town, Nanhai District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, was born into an ordinary peasant family, and in his adolescence, he had twice applied for the examination for children. Chen Qiyuan was very studious and had a rich knowledge of all the schools of thought, astronomy and geography. According to legend, he had a 50,000 to 60,000 words of the "Kangxi Dictionary" completely copied in an ordinary paper fan, the general public want to see the handwriting strokes, have to use a magnifying glass. He is China's first modern national industrial industrialists, patriotic overseas Chinese, Nanhai Jichanglong machine reeling factory founder, in addition to develop the industry, he also diligently writing to benefit future generations, authored a volume of "sericulture spectrum", "Chen Qiyuan arithmetic" thirteen volumes and so on. Chen Qiyuan died in 1903, buried in the South China Sea, Xiaotang partridge hill.
Chen Qiyuan was a minor when his father died and his family became poor, so he gave up his studies and taught with his second brother Chen Qishu in the village, while farming and mulberrying. After three years, Chen Qishu went abroad to make a living in Vietnam, and when he had some savings, he returned to Vietnam in 1854 and took Chen Qiyuan with him, where he was engaged in the trading of sash and silk groceries. Chen Qiyuan was extremely perceptive. After arriving in Vietnam, he traveled to Siam (Thailand) and Burma to study machinery and equipment. In Siam, he was very interested in the local use of steam engines for reeling, after a long period of observation, research, familiar with the mechanical operation. In particular, he saw the French-style "mechanical silk production, fine products", sprouted the idea of starting a reeling factory. At that time, Guangdong Nanhai Shunde area is rich in cocoons, but because of the backwardness of the manufacturing method, in the international market, China's raw silk competition is not foreign silk. 1860s, in the Qing government and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom war, China's important raw silk production area of Jiangsu and Zhejiang were severely damaged, the production of raw silk once sharply reduced. At this time, France, Italy and other major raw silk production areas in Western Europe was called "micro-particle disease" chronic sericulture disease, raw silk production almost to the point of paralysis. As a result, raw silk consumers in Europe and the United States turned to Guangdong, which had not been damaged by the war, to buy large quantities of raw silk. By the 1970s, the development and export of Guangdong's native silk had reached its peak. However, European and American silk weavers thought that Chinese silk was "impure in quality, inconsistent with the goods, uneven in thickness and high in price", and they were in urgent need of good-quality raw silk, and made it clear that they were willing to pay a higher price to buy the factory silk that was produced by machines like those in Europe. This situation aroused Chen Qiyuan's strong desire to return to China to set up factories and revitalize the national silk industry.
In 1872, Chen Qiyuan sold his property in Guangdong Street, Causeway Bay, Vietnam, and returned to his hometown of Jiancun, Nanhai, Guangdong Province, to set up the Jichanglong Silk Reeling Factory, which, without the support of the government or the capital of foreigners, was a truly national capital enterprise and the first mechanical silk reeling factory in China.
Chen Qiyuan's hometown is rich in raw material cocoons, local farmers have a tradition of silk reeling, and thus a large number of people can be recruited. So he designed and drew two sets of machine drawings, modeled after the French reeling machines in Annam. All the equipment, including steam boilers, reeling cars and kettles are made locally, which was changed to wooden silk car, silk kettle changed to ceramic, imitation of the "French-style (**** Finger style)" reeling machine, personally presided over the design and manufacture of plants and equipment, including boilers, steam furnaces, water storage, reeling machines, baking cocoon room. At that time, the investment of more than 7,000 taels of silver, of which 4,000 taels for plant and equipment, 3,000 taels for working capital. Due to financial constraints, the equipment was simple and crude, the main engine is a modified old motor of the ship. Boil a fire boiler, a pot of cold water storage and dozens of kettles decorated with silk, can accommodate dozens of people to operate, most of the hired laborers from around the countryside. At its peak Jichanglong reeling workers as many as 600 people, Jichanglong implementation of the eight-hour workday, workers can participate in the quarterly dividends, but also the establishment of a corresponding quality management system. This management system served as a model for its successors and established the basic pattern of privately-run enterprises at that time.
For the choice of factory site, Chen Qiyuan not only considered the convenience of raw materials, manpower, trade and information, but also took into account the need to keep a certain distance from the government and feudal guilds, in order to avoid political risks. But it was not to be. From the very beginning of its construction, Chen Qiyuan's mechanical reeling factory was accused of destroying feng shui and hurting the wind and customs.
The landlords and gentry, who had no knowledge of the factory, used the excuse that the high chimneys were destructive to feng shui and the mixing of male and female workers was bad for morals to hinder the opening of the new factory. Chen Qiyuan successfully avoided a head-on conflict by cooperating with outsiders in the manufacture of equipment, and in a year's time, built a steam reeling factory of remarkable scale. The biggest improvement of his hand-reeling process is to change the charcoal fire heating cocoon cooking to steam boiler heating cocoon cooking, this change, so that the reeling production factory possible. The high efficiency and high quality of machine reeling provided a favorable factual basis for Chen Qiyuan to stand firm and convince the villagers.
Jichanglong put into production a year of profits, female workers have savings in their hands, some people have developed the idea of free love, some people are dissatisfied with the feudal arranged marriage, the townspeople originally on the men and women of the same workers have long had the slightest comment, to see a female worker "bold and daring," they accused of "hurting the morals and customs! Seeing that some female workers had the "audacity" to do so, they were accused of "breaking the custom" and severely punished by "immersing them in pigsties", and Chen Qiyuan's Jichanglong naturally became a target of all. During this period, Chen Qiyuan invested a lot in the public welfare of his hometown - running a school, running a medical center, repairing water conservancy, etc. Because of his efforts, Nanhaijian Village flourished for a while. 1876, due to the poor weather in Europe, Italy, France and other countries cocoon serious failure, foreign merchants scrambling to come to China to purchase raw silk, the price of silk rose wildly for a while, and the Jichanglong was also in the year. Jichanglong also gained a huge profit in this year. On the other hand, after a few years, the skills of machine reeling women had matured and the quality of the products gradually stabilized. It was at this time that society's perception of the new reeling factory changed.
Chen Qiyuan was not only an outstanding entrepreneur, but also a pioneer who was open-minded and dared to fight against tradition. As early as during his business days in Annam, he had raised funds to build a clean brick house and invited International Red Cross medics to deliver babies free of charge to pregnant native women in labor, who were regarded as inauspicious. He took the lead in abolishing the bad custom of "Chicken and Rice Wine" for the benefit of his village. Nanhai, Shunde rural women married after the custom of not landing home, the bride after three days of marriage, that is, back to the bride's home to live, only on New Year's festivals only to return to her husband's home to live a day or two, until the pregnancy before landing home. In the fall home, regardless of the in-laws rich or poor, have to set up a banquet, feast that year had been involved in the wedding of relatives and friends, called "chicken rice wine". The poor families suffered, such as not set up the banquet, and quietly fall home, will be the neighbors despised and criticized. Chen Qiyuan saw this, determined to get rid of this bad habit, he started from his own family, all the descendants derived from his father, regardless of male and female marriages, when the fall of the family are not to engage in "chicken rice wine". In this way, the township witnessed a rich township of Chen Qiyuan still do not set chicken and rice wine, and from then on, not only dare not criticize, and successively follow suit, a change in this often make the poor family deep headache of bad habits.