West Lake Towels – Soft! White! Fragrant!

Hangzhou (Hangchow) is not really especially regarded for its towels these days – but it used to be…back when China did quality. Sean You Zoo & Co. Ltd. at 587 Nanking Road (Nanjing West Road) stocked them. The “No.4 Triangle” was apparently the most popular towel in stock but they also stocked “Turkish towels”, bedcovers, cotton cloths and table linen. Sean You Zoo had their own factory out at Hangchow and their showroom on Nanking Road – they must have done well as in the 1920s they moved from North Szechuen Road (Sichuan Road North) to better premises, south of the Creek, on the Nanking Road. Then, in the mid-1930s, they moved their showroom along Nanking Road from 497 (where they’d been since at least the early-1920s) to larger premises at 587. They had retail branches back in Hangchow and Hankow (Hankou) while their factory in Hangchow wove 25,000 piculs of cotton a Shensi (Shaanxi) and American cotton a year, by far the most of any of the Hangchow area cotton mills.