No shortage of long johns makers in this village

Packages of freshly finished long johns are piled up at a resident's warehouse in Yaojiapo village in Tai'an, Shandong province, in October. (CHEN YANG/FOR CHINA DAILY)

Upon entering Yaojiapo village in Tai'an, Shandong province, one can observe that nearly half of the households are displaying signs related to knitting processing.

As the temperatures drop, the village is abuzz with producing cozy long underwear for the cold weather.

Renowned as the "Autumn Pants Village," over 160 households of the community comprising 370 homes are engaged in long johns production, providing jobs for more than 1,700 residents in the village and its surrounding areas.

Long johns are thermal underwear designed to keep the body warm during cold periods.

The village has established a comprehensive knitting industry chain that includes weaving, printing, dyeing, cutting, garment making and sales.

Each morning, raw materials sourced from Zhejiang province arrive at the fabric market in the village. The villagers pick up the materials they need and take them home.

Each house operates as a processing workshop. Knitted fabrics undergo cutting, sewing and finishing touches and are transformed into thermal clothing, pants and underwear, which are then distributed domestically to provinces such as Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Gansu and Sichuan.

They even once exported the clothing to countries in Africa.

"We can produce a pair of long johns within just three minutes, with a daily production output ranging from 1,300 to 1,400 pairs," said Zhang Feng, a 40-year-old villager whose family has been in the business for 35 years.

"The peak selling season runs from August to the Chinese Lunar New Year," he added.

When Zhang was a child, his parents could only produce around 20 pairs of long johns a day.

"At that time, my parents used scissors and a foot-operated sewing machine to make the long johns," he said. "Now we use automated sewing machines, which has substantially increased our efficiency."

Automation has been widely adopted in the village. In the printing and dyeing sector, Shi Hui made production changes in 2013 when she returned to her hometown after graduating from Shandong Agriculture and Engineering University and took over the family business.

The 34-year-old introduced efficient and environmentally friendly printing and dyeing equipment, increasing the annual dyeing capacity to 1,000 metric tons and saving 70,000 tons of water each year.

"To further regulate the market and extend the knitting industry chain, we are planning to build a 4-hectare industrial park," said Shi Xijun, Party secretary of the village.

Once the industrial park is completed, household producers in the village can set up shop there for free, managed under a unified collective trademark.

"Our goal is to expand into high-end woolen industries and gradually establish a comprehensive range of high, medium and low-grade knitting specialties, solidifying Yaojiapo's reputation as a hub for knitting production," the Party secretary said.