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.
Yangtze Plain Yangtze Plain The Yangtze Plain (Chinese: 長江中下游平原/长江中下游平原; Wade-Giles: Ch'ang Chiang P'ing-yüan; Pinyin: Chang Jiang Pingyuan) is made up of a series of alluvial plains of along the Yangtze River and its major tributaries. The Yangtze Plain starts east of Yichang (Hubei province), China. The Middle Yangtze Plain is made up of parts of the north-eastern and south-eastern Hunan, Hubei, and north-central Jiangxi provinces, and includes the Dongting, Poyang, and Hong lakes. The Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain stretches eastward from Mount Wu to the coast. It is made up of alluvial deposits from the Yangtze River and its tributaries. The plain is