The Fantastic Finish

Today I am making my way to my final destination, the Lijiang Junmin prefecture. Before I go on the last leg of the journey I am being told by many people that the crops this year are bringing many profits and are abundant. Some of the most abundant crops were cotton and rice. to see what I was than her be up against I went to one of the local villagers called Borer the Great. Borer the Great told me that cotton was introduced from Hainan island into central China. Cotton flowers were collected, then the pits were removed, and then they were beaten loose with bamboo bows which I thought was very cool. After that they were drawn into yarns and weaved into cloth. They called this cloth Jibei. The cotton Jibei that they made had a great variety, the cloth had great width , often dyed into brilliant colors. If you stitched up two pieces of Jibei you can make a bedspread, stitching four pieces of Jibei would make a curtain. One other thing they used to make linen was something called Hemp. Independent farms flourished in the Mount Dongting region because of it. The weird thing though, was that the farmers there didn’t make a living on farmland, but instead they grew mulberry trees and bread silkworm to harvest silk. Also, the Jin Dynasty also flourished on tea, it almost tripled the Tang Dynasty in the amount it had. By the time he finished telling a story I had to be on my way. On my way there I found out that everything he said was true. At last my journey is complete and I have to get back into the Jin dynasty’s territory. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot of new things on this journey and I definitely wish to come back. THE END.