From Shanghai Yarn Shops to Online Patterns: The People Who Record Chinese Knitting

Start with a city, not a claim about origins

The Shanghai Gazetteer’s section on the knitted-goods trade records imported wool yarn in Shanghai in the 1880s, first used for hair ties and, from 1885, for clothing and hats. Around 1900, more than ten shops specialising in wool yarn stood on Xing Sheng Street. The same account notes that Shanghai-made yarn brands—including names translated as Bee, Queen and General—were on the market by 1934.¹ These dates describe Shanghai’s recorded market. They do not establish when knitting began across China, and they do not tell us what patterns individual households used.

A shop is more than a backdrop. It connects fibre to a maker: someone chose yarn, paid for it, and decided what the loops should become. Yet the gazetteer is an industry record, not a diary of domestic practice. It describes the circulation of material and the growth of knitted goods and factory production; it cannot identify every customer or the sweater made at home. Hand knitting and industrial knitwear belong in the same broad history, but they are not the same kind of work.

The Tianjin photograph offers a view of storage and trade, not proof that this warehouse supplied the Shanghai shops. Its collection describes the image as a wool warehouse in Tianjin around 1900. Placing it beside the Shanghai record helps us ask what happened before yarn reached a pair of needles—how fibre was stored, moved and sold—without pretending the two sources document a direct commercial link.⁸

Hong Kong’s knitting industry has its own archival trail. Hong Kong Memory records that Fung Chou-yu founded the Lee Kung Man Shirt and Stocking Knitting Factory in Sham Shui Po in 1923. The firm produced knitted underwear and socks and participated in post-war exhibitions of Chinese products.¹² A photograph of the company’s Wan Chai shop, taken in 2008, shows a later retail site, not the 1923 factory. Keeping those places and dates separate matters: a business archive can tell us about manufacturing and sales, but it does not stand in for every mainland or Hong Kong household’s knitting.

Hong Kong’s factory knitting: From yarn to underwear

Shanghai’s yarn shops and Hong Kong’s factories can sit beside one another in a history of China, but the records do not show that they shared a market or supply chain. Hong Kong Memory documents Lee Kung Man’s shirt-and-sock knitting factory, founded in Sham Shui Po in 1923, and a separate seven-stage knitting process from the 1950s. The exhibition record discussed above shows how a company and its products entered public view. This is a history of commercial knitwear production, not a story in which domestic hand knitting simply grew into a factory. Hong Kong Memory’s Lee Kung Man exhibition record.

Hong Kong Memory’s account follows cotton yarn from its arrival at a factory to the packing of finished garments. Yarn supplied in hanks is first wound onto bobbins, then onto cones for a Tomkin knitting machine. A circular machine makes tubular fabric; the completed fabric is rolled into a bale and cut to the required pattern. The archive says collars and sleeves were cut from the tube, reducing material waste. The cut parts are then sewn—silk thread was used for women’s underwear—and the finished singlets are ironed, backed with cardboard and packed in cartons. This is one documented process, not a universal standard for every Hong Kong factory. Hong Kong Memory, “Knitting in the 1950s”.

The word “knitting” covers different ways of making fabric. A hand knitter may shape a garment directly, working loops row by row. In this archived factory process, a machine first produces a tube, which is then cut and sewn into a garment. Following the sequence—from yarn preparation to knitting, cutting, sewing and packing—helps distinguish industrial production from a larger version of work done with hand needles. The archive describes this particular workflow; it does not show that all Hong Kong knitwear used the same machinery or construction.

One small firm’s growth and transition

Hong Kong Memory’s company and oral-history records offer another, separate case: Tai Hing Knitting Factory. Au Kwan Cheung and a partner established the business in 1969. The company account says Au handled knitting technology while his partner, who had worked in sales for a chemical-fibre importer, took responsibility for materials and sales. Tai Hing began in a roughly 1,000-square-foot factory, moved to Cheung Sha Wan in 1973–74, expanded its premises and later occupied more than 5,000 square feet. These details describe one firm in its own archive, not the typical size of Hong Kong knitting factories. Hong Kong Memory, Tai Hing/Yick Sun company introduction.

The company account calls the period from the 1980s to 1997 Tai Hing’s “golden age” and says that around 60 per cent of its fabric went into garments for Europe and the United States, while around 40 per cent served Hong Kong customers. Those proportions are the firm’s retrospective figures, not industry-wide statistics. Au described following overseas magazines, developing stretch fabrics and working with dyeing factories. Attempts to establish factories in Zhongshan and Foshan in the 1990s did not succeed. In the 2000s, Tai Hing was restructured as Yick Sun Knitting; the account says the business increasingly coordinated orders, materials and production between mainland factories and Hong Kong customers. The archive does not recover every worker’s pay, hours or safety conditions.

Hong Kong Memory’s garment-industry oral histories also include experienced worker To Sui Wan, whose account discusses factory sections, foremen and differences between plants serving local and export markets. Her testimony helps add workplace organisation to a history often told through company founders. It remains one person’s account, not a substitute for the experience of every worker. Hong Kong Memory, garment-industry oral histories.

Why this case belongs here. The Shanghai yarn market, Hong Kong factory production and today’s online pattern platforms are distinct records, not one uninterrupted path. This Hong Kong section adds the manufacturing layer between a shop selling materials and a digital page sharing instructions. Read together, the sources show how craft knowledge, industrial processes and labour became visible in different ways.

Who makes a pattern—and who gets named?

Wang Huamin’s work moves knitted loops beyond clothing and into landscape. A 2016 profile on 编织人生 describes his interest in embroidery and paper craft as a child and his experiments, beginning in the 1990s, with blending yarn colours to render scenery. The profile says he studied Russian painting books and devised a coordinate grid to translate an image into stitches; it names works including March and Oak.⁶ A 2007 newspaper report also describes his colour-mixing method and grid-based process.¹⁵ These accounts help explain the technical problem he was solving. They are not independent museum assessments of his place in art history, so the story attributes its biographical details to the sources that report them.

Turning a painted area into knitted fabric is not a simple copy. Yarn has thickness; a stitch has width and height; a colour change can leave long floats at the back and pull the fabric out of shape. The maker must decide where colour boundaries fall, how much yarn to carry, and whether several strands can be combined without making the fabric too heavy. The point is not that knitting is better or worse than painting. The two media behave differently, and the design is a translation between structures.

Digital pattern platforms preserve another kind of authorship. 编织人生 pages may bring together a finished garment photograph, yarn and needle information, measurements, charts, notes from the maker and comments from readers. A 2020 cardigan project, for example, lists M and L sizes and yarn at 110 metres per 50 grams.³ A separate 2023 magnolia cardigan gives a 110-centimetre chest measurement, 4 mm needles for the body, 3.5 mm for the edges and a gauge of 23 stitches by 27 rows over 10 centimetres.¹⁴ Those figures belong to different projects; they should never be blended into one set of instructions. They matter because another knitter needs more than a photograph to adapt a design to a different body and tension.

Hookok, a China-based crochet pattern site, publishes English-language instructions for flowers, toys and accessories. Its own “About” page identifies Jennie as founder and a designer interested in colour, Elle as a pattern designer, Emma and Mandy as editors, and Kim as the video maker.⁴ This is a team’s self-description, not a complete biography of each member. It is useful because it makes visible the work behind a downloadable pattern: design, editing, filming and explanation, as well as the hands that follow the instructions.

Read the numbers—and the construction

For a sweater pattern, begin with the yarn length and weight, needle size, washed gauge, and finished measurements. Compare the garment’s dimensions with your own before casting on. A chart marked 棒针 (bàngzhēn, knitting needles) is not a crochet pattern; 钩针 (gōuzhēn, crochet hook) names a different tool. Even when a page includes a chart, check its legend, direction of reading and finished photos together. Translation should preserve the technique, not just the garment name.

Hookok’s lily PDF shows why assembly instructions matter in three-dimensional crochet. Petals and stamens are made as separate parts, then arranged on a stem; wrapping and joining steps turn flat stitches into a flower.⁵ Looking only at the finished image can hide the order of construction. Notice which parts need wire or a support, how high the stamens sit against the petals, and which components are secured first. The document is a pattern, but it is also a record of decisions about sequence, shape and explanation.

A hand-knit sweater and a machine-knit garment are both built from loops, but their design, production and inspection operate at different scales. The machine photograph above is identified as a Chinese-made Guosheng computerized flat-knitting machine; its location is not recorded.¹⁰ It cannot be used to connect a particular factory to the Shanghai yarn brands of 1934. It can, however, remind us to ask how gauge, panel width, stitch structure and joining change when production moves from one pair of hands to a machine.

Learning in Hong Kong: an archive, not a timeless syllabus

A 2008 open-day photograph from the Clothing Industry Training Authority (CITA) shows a knitting workshop at its Kowloon Bay training centre. The image documents one public event; it does not represent every factory or describe today’s courses.¹¹ CITA says it was established by statute in 1975 to support training for Hong Kong’s garment industry.¹³ That institutional history helps place technical instruction alongside the region’s manufacturing sector.

At the time of review, CITA’s short-course page described non-award-bearing classes and an attendance certificate subject to a 70 per cent attendance requirement.¹⁶ Separately, its Textile Technology and Material course listing described a 10-session Knit Product Manufacturing course with an examination and a practical test.¹⁷ These are not interchangeable credentials. One is a short-course attendance certificate; the other is a listed technical course with assessment. Course schedules and admission terms can change, so readers should check CITA’s current pages before making plans. The archive is a starting point for understanding how textile skills were taught—not a promise that a particular class is open now.

A short chronology, with the places kept in view

1. 1880s, Shanghai: the local gazetteer records imported wool yarn used for hair ties.¹
2. 1885, Shanghai: the gazetteer says yarn was used for clothing and hats.¹
3. Around 1900, Shanghai: more than ten wool-yarn shops were recorded on Xing Sheng Street.¹
4. 1923, Hong Kong: Lee Kung Man’s knitting factory was founded in Sham Shui Po; this is a separate Hong Kong record.¹²
5. 1934, Shanghai: local wool-yarn brands including Bee, Queen and General appeared in the gazetteer’s account.¹
6. 1990s onward: Wang Huamin developed a method for rendering scenery in knitted colour, according to later profiles.⁶
7. Today: platforms and pattern sites circulate measurements, charts, videos and assembly instructions; each page documents its own makers, not all knitters in China.²⁴

Sources and image credits

Numbered notes point to the records used for the article. For each photograph, the caption links to the file page and licence; authorship, date and place are stated only where the record provides them.

1. Shanghai Gazetteer, “Knitted Goods Industry” (official Shanghai municipal source; local chronology, including 1880s, 1885, around 1900 and 1934).
2. 编织人生 (Bianzhirensheng), platform and maker pages.
3. Bianzhirensheng, 2020 cardigan pattern post (M/L sizes and yarn specification).
4. Hookok, About (team roles as described by the site).
5. Hookok, Lily crochet pattern PDF (parts and assembly sequence).
6. Bianzhirensheng, 2016 profile of Wang Huamin (biographical details are attributed to this profile).
7. DanielleFay, “Chongming Knitters”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
8. Robert Henry Chandless, “Wool warehouse, Tianjin, China, ca. 1900”, University of Washington collection, public domain.
9. Lurenabc, Lee Kung Man shop, Johnston Road, Wan Chai (2008), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
10. Asivechowdhury, “Automatic Computerized Flat Knitting Machine 01” (2017), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; the file says made in China, but the photograph’s location is not identified.
11. Kbcitaop, CITA advanced knitting workshop open day (2008), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
12. Hong Kong Memory, Lee Kung Man Knitting (factory history and exhibition record).
13. Clothing Industry Training Authority, About Us (statutory establishment and remit).
14. Bianzhirensheng, 2023 magnolia cardigan post (measurements and gauge; separate from the 2020 cardigan).
15. Sohu, 24 October 2007 report on Wang Huamin (independent contemporary account of colour-mixing and grid methods).
16. CITA, Short Courses (non-award-bearing status and attendance-certificate condition; checked 8 October 2026).
17. CITA, Textile Technology and Material (listed Knit Product Manufacturing course; checked 8 October 2026).