Madras (cloth) handwoven (evidenced by the small flaws in the fabric). Cotton madras is woven from a fragile, short-staple cotton fiber that can't be combed, only carded, resulting in bumps known as slubs which are thick spots in the yarn that give madras its unique texture. The cotton is hand-dyed after being spun into yarn, woven and finished in some 200 small villages in the Madras area. Madras fabric is generally regarded as belonging to the peasant class in its native India. Dutch traders arrived in India in the early 1600s to trade in the local calico cloth, followed by the British.
North China Plain North China Plain The North China Plain () is a large-scale downfaulted rift basin formed in late Paleogene and Neogene and then modified by the deposits of the Yellow River and is the largest alluvial plain of China. The plain is bordered to the north by the Yanshan Mountains, to the west by the Taihang Mountains, to the south by the Dabie and Tianmu Mountains, and to the east by the Yellow Sea. The Yellow River flows through the middle of the plain into the Bohai Sea. Below the Sanmenxia Dam is the multipurpose Xiaolangdi Dam, located in the river's