70% of the false eyelashes in the world come from this small town in Shandong.
Where do you wear false eyelashes? /tuchong creativity
Presumably, most post-90s people have heard Cyndi Wang’s curved eyelashes.
"curved eyelashes blinks and blinks, and when it comes to his mouth, how can he turn? Your smile is like a curved moon."
At that time, this childish love song was in a terrible fire, which brought a fresh throb to primary and secondary school students.
After listening to this song, I paid special attention to my classmates’ eyelashes.
JJ Lin, a pop singer, also wrote eyelashes as a lyric object in his lyrics. "Small dimples and long eyelashes are hopelessly charming."
I don’t know when, "long and curved eyelashes" became a symbol of beauty and heartbeat in people’s imagination. However, in reality, there are very few people who have long and perfect eyelashes. As a result, false eyelashes came into being.
With false eyelashes, it only takes a few minutes for a person to have a pair of charming and smart eyes. Nowadays, the pasting of false eyelashes has become the most common but extremely important step in makeup.
What few people know is that this important aesthetic task is being undertaken by a county-level city in Shandong, China called Pingdu, where more than 80% of the world’s false eyelashes are supplied.
Pingdu, a little-known place. /hacker video
In fact, as early as the 1990s, the annual income of false eyelashes manufacturers could reach 200,000 yuan, and they were sold all over the world. According to conservative estimates, there are as many as 3,000 enterprises producing false eyelashes in Pingdu. Factories and family workshops with an annual output value of several hundred million yuan are densely distributed in Pingdu city, towns and villages.
For more than 20 years, Pingdu has been quietly producing the most important "beautiful props" for women around the world. Few people know its name except practitioners and locals.
The false eyelashes you use.
Mostly from this small town in Shandong.
If you have recently seen a female friend’s eyelashes suddenly become long and warped, there is no doubt that she may have recently gone to a eyelash shop for eyelash planting.
False eyelashes are not a little bit of improvement in face value.
In domestic cities, just walk into a eyelash shop, and you will see various eyelash products with different prices, ranging from several hundred yuan to thousands of yuan, and even personal tailor according to personal conditions, with prices as high as several thousand yuan.
The eyelash planting with such high price is not permanent. According to Zhou Xiaoyang, who often grows eyelashes, "the planted eyelashes are natural, although expensive, but they can only last for about a month at a time."
Of course, growing eyelashes is just a new trend in recent years, and more people choose to paste false eyelashes at one time, and search casually in online shopping malls. The categories are rich and complete. From the style point of view, there are hairs, hairs, dense rows, etc., from the density and length point of view, there are thick and long ones, and there are also natural ones.
The price of similar false eyelashes is generally a few dollars per pair.
There are many kinds of pseudocilia. /tuchong creativity
Whether it is planted false eyelashes or pasted false eyelashes, if you look carefully at the product description behind the label, you will be surprised to find that all these false eyelashes come from a place where you may never have heard of the name-Pingdu.
If you want to give Pingdu a geographical location, you must first pass through Qingdao. 106 kilometers northwest of Qingdao is Pingdu, and then half an hour by car, you can reach Changle Town under the jurisdiction of Pingdu, a county-level city, which is the location of the legendary false eyelash village.
When you walk into this town, you will find the words "eyelashes" written on the facade of every shop here. Although the scale varies, all kinds of false eyelashes are displayed in these stores in a tacit understanding, and there are boxes full of false eyelashes next to them.
On the not spacious roads in this city, there are "eyelashes" everywhere. /hacker video
These stores integrate processing and sales. The women on the side are concentrating on the final packaging work of eyelashes. The shop assistants are busier. They are facing the computer and constantly sending these false eyelashes out of Pingdu through the Internet.
Eventually, these false eyelashes will flow to all parts of the country, as well as the United States, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and other countries through online and offline, and finally reach the eyelashes of beauty lovers.
Although no one has counted the output value scale of flat false eyelashes, everyone has a number in mind.
Practitioner Wang Tingting believes that this output value is estimated to be more than one billion yuan, and others agree.
These false eyelashes will eventually be sent all over the world. /tuchong creativity
Business is also "beauty"
Wang Tingting is a native of Changle Town, Pingdu. On her eyelids, she planted a pair of false eyelashes with a very natural style, which made her eyes look amazing.
This pair of false eyelashes comes from her own false eyelash factory. Wang Tingting, who is less than 30 years old this year, has been engaged in false eyelashes business for six or seven years and has three related enterprises.
More than 20 years ago, the situation in Pingdu was not the same as it is now. Although a few people are making wigs, most people here used to be engaged in agricultural cultivation.
Well, Wang Tingting’s uncle Gao Shanmin is the kinder of Pingdu false eyelashes business. Twenty-two years ago, Gao Shanmin learned from several relatives that making false eyelashes was "very profitable".
Gao Shanmin is very market-minded, and he has just visited Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Yiwu, Wuhan and the three northeastern provinces. Gao Shanmin was excited by the great demand for false eyelashes in the market.
In 1998, girls in big cities have been very keen to dress themselves up, especially when they go out for dates and dances on holidays, they will wear a pair of false eyelashes.
In the 1990s, disco girls also wore false eyelashes. /"Jianghu Children"
In fact, at this time, beauty lovers all over the world have been using false eyelashes for nearly 80 years.
In 1916, David Griffith, the father of American movies, wanted the actress Sheena Irving’s eyelashes to look like a fan, so he asked his assistant to stick fake eyelashes on Sheena Irving with glue for sticking a fake beard.
Lillian gish, another actor in the film, later wrote: "In the morning, Sheena Owen came to the studio, and her eyes seemed to be covered with eyelashes. But in the camera, she is as beautiful as a fairy. "
Eyelashes can create different emotional effects. /Glass Tears by Man Ray
In 1921, false eyelashes became popular in Hollywood circles. In 1930s, false eyelashes became ubiquitous, black, brown and gold. That fashion magazines at that timeVoguePraise this way: "False eyelashes give women a fascinating twinkle."
It was also at this time that the eyelash grafting technology appeared. At that time, eyelash grafting was not much different from modern ones. It used a very strong glue and used tweezers to stick a single eyelash to the eyelid, which could last for a period of time after completion.
In 1950s and 1960s, there were more and more kinds of false eyelashes. At that time, Twiggy, an American supermodel and singer, became a hit with her iconic exaggerated eyelashes and eyeliner, which caused the public to imitate it.
Twiggy, the eyelash fairy.
In another 20 or 30 years, with the reform and opening up in China, the trend of false eyelashes has also reached big cities in China.
In 1998, Gao Shanmin, who returned from an inspection tour all over the country, roughly calculated that if there were 50 million women in a big city and everyone wore 10 pairs of false eyelashes a year, the market demand for that year would be 500 million pairs, which was a considerable sum.
That year, Gao Shanmin returned to Changle Town, Pingdu with the expectation of the market, and started a false eyelash processing workshop. Please invite the women who used to grow wheat and potatoes at home to process them.
It is a group of people who run the market like Gao Shanmin who bring the fire, but in the end, Pingdu’s false eyelashes industry is pieced together by local women one by one.
From the earliest factory of Gao Shanmin to the 3000 false eyelash enterprises and numerous false eyelash workshops in Pingdu, all the people engaged in the production of false eyelashes are women. They walked out of the original farmland and family, and stayed in the false eyelash processing factory every day, assembling, shaping and packaging the eyelashes on a one-meter-long workbench.
Women hold up half the sky in the false eyelash processing factory. /hacker video
Women in the eyelash factory produce eyelashes, while women who love beauty in the world use fake eyelashes made in Pingdu to decorate their faces. At the same time, those false eyelashes made by themselves occasionally appear on their eyelids.
In a factory in Wang Tingting, women workers are doing their work skillfully. Looking closely, almost all of them have traces of dressing up.
Wang Tingting said that since the development of false eyelashes industry, the annual household income of workers has increased from 10,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan to at least 50,000 to 70,000 yuan.
For these women workers, the eyelashes on their hands are a proud livelihood and a yearning for beauty.
These women who are confined to their families have not lost their love for beauty.
The release of aesthetics and the challenge of flatness
In 2019, pingdu city received a "bronzing" business card from Alibaba-the origin of false eyelashes. From a little-known eyelash production and processing village to a global false eyelash production base, Pingdu took 20 years.
But in fact, before false eyelashes became an industry, they also experienced a longer struggle for aesthetic rights.
In ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder, who wrote Natural History, once commented on women’s eyelashes: "Eyelashes are the embodiment of evil charm." And claimed: "eyelashes fall off due to excessive sexual behavior, so it is particularly important for women to keep eyelashes for a long time to prove their virginity."
This didn’t stop Roman women from staring into their eyes. Rome was full of smoky makeup, which was famous for its thick and upturned eyelashes.
Cleopatra’s smoky makeup is still a trend today. /Cleopatra
Contrary to the customs of ancient Rome, in the Middle Ages of Europe, under the oppression of the church’s abstinence, women were forced to become popular with the "pure" trend of eyelash cutting, because the exuberance of hair was regarded as a symbol of lust. As a result, the church also participated in forcing women to pull out their eyelashes.
Under the control of pure wind, women even clean their eyelashes. /Wiki
However, no matter how the church suppressed it, people’s pursuit of long eyelashes still returned.
In the late 19th century, there was even a fierce eyelid transplant-hair transplant to the eyelid.
This kind of operation is quite cruel now. The initial use method is to sew natural hair into the eyelid with a needle, and the whole process is not anesthetized. The painful process can be imagined.
Grafting of false eyelashes in the 19th century.
Thanks to the invention of false eyelashes, women can decorate their eyes more easily. Today, in all kinds of formal occasions and even at work, it is common for women to stick false eyelashes or plant false eyelashes.
False eyelashes have also become one of the most popular beauty trends.
According to the data collected by Pinterest, the image material website, the number of searches for "eyelashes" in 2019 increased by 125% compared with 2018. Brands have been responding by using technology to develop some unusual and creative products to meet the demand.
Sister Jing’s long eyelashes and big eyes in the program are unforgettable. /@ sister braving the wind and waves
For example, Ardell, an American false eyelash company, invented a magnetic eyelash sticker, which allows people to completely throw away glue when sticking false eyelashes;
Germany also invented eyelash regeneration therapy not long ago, which can realize permanent eyelash regeneration of 5-8mm;
In recent years, Led eyelashes, which are more suitable for parties, have even become popular, and they are enough to stand out from the crowd by sticking them on the eyes.
This is the challenge of Pingdu false eyelashes production base. Can the low value-added mode of production, which once relied on women workers to post one by one, meet the impact of the rapid change of global aesthetic trends and the continuous participation of more competitors?
This is actually considered by false eyelashes practitioners such as Wang Tingting. False eyelashes must keep up with the latest fashion trends and trade methods.
Nowadays, whenever she has free time, she and other partners will go online to see the latest fashion styles and styles at home and abroad. In addition, they are gradually trying to join the e-commerce live broadcast to make Pingdu’s false eyelashes go further and further.
The beautiful cause of this town has yet to be continued.
Author | street angel
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