In a café in a small town in Jiangsu, I listen as the neighboring table heatedly discusses international affairs and Brent crude oil trends. Were it not for the trucks parked outside, I might have thought I was still in an office within the Third Ring Road of a first-tier city.
The town itself looks nothing like a global frontier. Its narrow streets are lined with storefronts resembling rural self-built houses, crowded vertical signs mostly faded, many bearing the characters for "XX Textile." The café I am sitting in is located right on Textile Street.
Beside me, a fabric boss in his early thirties is scrolling through a screen of red futures prices and sighing to a peer: "The entire polyester supply chain has been affected." Today, nearly 60% of the world's textile raw materials are polyester fiber, which traces back to petroleum derivatives PTA and ethylene glycol. Until today, I never imagined that wars seven or eight thousand kilometers away could affect Shengze Town in Jiangsu.
This town is home to over ten thousand private textile trading enterprises. Its economic output exceeds that of many prefecture-level cities, making it one of China's top ten strongest towns.
What amazed me even more than its industry was the life in this small town. A Porsche every ten steps, a Mercedes every five, a NIO every three. In 1986, CCTV filmed a documentary called "Tales of the Grand Canal," one episode of which featured Shengze Town. The camera swept over a breakfast shop where the cloth used to wipe tables was actually silk floss, astonishing outsiders with such luxury.
Shengze has been a famous textile town since ancient times. Much of the silk shipped along the Maritime Silk Road to Southeast Asia and West Asia came from here. Entering the new century, Shengze gained another name—China's Silk Capital.
The storefronts on Textile Street are fronted by the luxury cars of local bosses. A saying circulates in Shengze: a Mercedes every five steps, a Porsche every ten; in the new energy era, a NIO every three. Brother Long's car is parked right at the café entrance. A friend with me tells me that two-tone NIO Inc. (NYSE: NIO) ET9 costs over 800,000 yuan. Clustered with it are several other NIOs—"these are 400,000 to 500,000 each." Further ahead, a 1.1-million-yuan Mercedes S450 is parked; opposite it, a 1-million-yuan Porsche Cayenne.
The dream cars of Beijing and Shanghai drifters are casually parked on the streets of this small town. Forklifts carrying cloth and trucks loaded with rolls of greige fabric hurry past these luxury cars. A Shengze boss is unfazed: "A car is meant to be driven. A 2,000-yuan electric scooter is driven, and a 2-million-yuan luxury car is driven too." In Shengze, even the most expensive car is used to haul goods. When going to the factory to show customers fabric samples, you need to bring a small roll of sample cloth, about two or three meters wide, and just stuff it in the car and go, saving the trouble of trailing a tricycle behind.
So when Shengze bosses buy cars, they like to glance at the trunk. Later, with electric cars, storage space grew larger. The everyday NIO ES6 and ES8 have frunks as standard; the five-seat ES8 even has a compartment in the trunk that fits 21 suitcases, making cloth hauling effortless.
People in manufacturing like things that are practical. Inventory must be practical, materials must be practical, and the car itself must be more practical than the badge. This pragmatic standard doesn't only hold in a small town. In August, NIO Inc. (NYSE: NIO) sales across 37 cities in 8 provinces had already surpassed the German luxury trio of BBA.
On the local Bailong Bridge is carved a line of poetry: "The wind carries the sound of ten thousand looms," speaking of the practical people of Shengze. Every household, working in shifts at the looms, ten thousand looms roaring day and night. From this town emerged two Fortune Global 500 companies, Hengli and Shenghong, more than in many provinces. In 2025, Hengli Group's revenue reached 899 billion yuan, ranking 81st in the Fortune Global 500, 3rd among China's top 500 private enterprises, and first among China's top 500 private manufacturing enterprises for four consecutive years.
Shengze Town, on the edge of Suzhou, was an unnoticed small village before the Ming Dynasty. From a remote speck of land to a silk market rivaling Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Huzhou in the Qing Dynasty, to today's clusters of private enterprises like Hengli and Shenghong. From a single cocoon to a bolt of silk, from a drop of oil to a bolt of cloth, a group of pragmatic bosses built a complete industrial chain.
In 1986, the Oriental Silk Market opened in the western suburbs of Shengze Town. Initially just a few rows of low bungalows, it attracted merchants from all directions, with bicycles filling the entrance by three or four in the morning. The year before, sociologist Fei Xiaotong, also from Wujiang, proposed "small commodities, big markets," advocating that township industries grow their own circulation legs. The Oriental Silk Market was a stroke of this idea in his hometown. Upon learning of its establishment, Fei Xiaotong happily inscribed its name and wrote of the past glory: "Ten thousand bolts of silk at sunrise, clothing the world."
This was not the first time Shengze people stood at the forefront. In the early Republic, astute Shengze silk merchants had already sensed the electrification opportunity of the Second Industrial Revolution. In the 1910s, when electric lights were not yet widespread, Shengze silk merchants proposed building electric silk weaving factories. In 1915, Shen Huaqing, head of Chunji Zheng Silk Firm in Shengze, purchased 9 German-made all-iron looms and opened China's first electric silk weaving factory. By 1937, Shengze Town had dozens of electric silk weaving factories, with power looms accounting for about half of Jiangsu's total.
A century later, the same move is repeating in new energy. In 2018, electric cars were still a novelty, with pure electric market penetration at only 3.5%. Shengze bosses read the signal behind that 3.5%. Among the first batch of NIO owners delivered in Jiangsu were many from Shengze. Today, many first-generation Founder's Edition ES8s can still be seen on Shengze's streets. When most people were still using old technology, Shengze people paid for new technology first. The 1915 electric silk weaving factory—Shengze bosses paid for the idea that "electricity can liberate manpower"; the 2018 first NIOs—Shengze bosses paid for the idea that "pure electric will replace fuel."
Making chemical fiber fabrics means watching oil prices. Cloth is sold by the meter, with a meter of greige fabric earning a few cents; an order of hundreds of thousands of meters of thickened Oxford cloth yields only tens of thousands in profit. Yet raw materials must be bought by the ton—a thousand-yuan rise per ton of PET chips translates to tens of thousands in cost differences on an order, wiping out profits entirely. Buying raw materials in bulk upstream daily and selling greige fabric in bulk downstream, with large inflows and outflows, Shengze bosses are highly sensitive to changes of a few cents or mills in unit costs.
Boss A Long did the math for me: driving from Shengze back to his hometown in southern Fujian for Chinese New Year, plus visiting relatives there, required six tanks of gas round trip, each costing five or six hundred yuan—over 3,000 yuan gone. Now "one tank" of electricity costs just seventy or eighty yuan, making car use far cheaper. More importantly, electrification is a completely different technological experience for cars. Long's first NIO was an ET9. "When I saw the dancing chassis, I loved it." Before that, his garage held no shortage of fuel luxury cars costing over a million yuan, and more than one. Traditional fuel cars transmit steering torque via mechanical hydraulics; the ET9 uses a steer-by-wire chassis, with no mechanical hard connection between steering wheel and steering gear. Each wheel can respond independently in milliseconds, and when going over potholes, the wheels actively extend and retract to stabilize the body, like dancing. With rear-wheel steering, the turning radius approaches that of a compact car, so narrow town roads are navigated in one go.
Daring to pay first when others can't see clearly is in the bones of these merchants. What NIO Inc. (NYSE: NIO) has done over the years is precisely what others were unwilling to do first. As a car company firmly committed to the pure electric route from its founding, NIO's pure electric technology has iterated to its third generation. On Shengze's streets, NIO products from various generations can be seen, like three generations of a big family under one roof.
A boss who has bought generation after generation of NIO cars explained to me: "If you buy a large car, the requirements for the three electric systems, chassis tuning, and safety redundancy are far higher than for a small car. Without multiple generations of refinement, it can't be done well." The boss who was just discussing international situations now chats with me about everyday car buying. Another boss in the dyeing industry joins in. Strangers at the table nod, add each other on WeChat, and become friends. One café, half a car club.
Brother Long and A Jie, who chat with me in the café, share a common identity—NIO owners. Or rather, many who come to this shop are NIO owners. No other reason: on Textile Street, there are simply too many cars of this brand. Besides running a fabric factory, A Jie is also the owner of this café. Watching the factory while replying to customers sounds stressful. But sitting in his café chatting with me, he is calm. "Try this cold brew we made ourselves." In the centrally located storefront on Textile Street, he didn't display goods but created a cozy café. "We can't just work; we need a place to drink specialty coffee."
The coffee beans, equipment, and brewing process all follow specialty shop standards. I took a sip—the cold brew is no worse than Shanghai's. Nearby bosses, after lunch, like to come in for a coffee together. This desire for a gathering place is familiar to anyone in business. During the Republic era, many Shengze silk firms opened branches in Shanghai. Every morning, Shengze silk merchants held routine tea gatherings at teahouses like Risheng Lou, Tongyu Chun, and Qinglian Ge, listening to the market and discussing business, forming their own faction in Shanghai's silk industry, known as the "Shengze Gang."
As they drank, this café gradually grew a second function—a NIO owner stronghold. A Jie already has five NIOs at home, and many friends in the shop were inspired by him to buy one. An outsider, seeing the dense parking of the same brand downstairs, asked curiously: "Are you having a car club meetup?" The bosses waved their hands: "Shengze's parking lots and storefront streets are car club meetups anytime, anywhere."
A Jie has placed many collected car models in the café, including a NIO EP9 signed by founder Li Bin. Whenever a new car is released, someone always picks it up and drives straight to the café entrance, where a group of bosses gathers to study the details. Before NIO opened a sales showroom in this small town, everyone arranged test drives at A Jie's café entrance. To this day, the colors and models of NIOs at the café entrance can be more complete than those displayed in stores.
Many bosses own more than one NIO. After buying one for themselves, they want to buy one for their wives; with an ET5T touring car, they also need a large SUV ES9 that fits the whole family. From 2018 to now, over 4,000 have been delivered in this one town. I couldn't resist asking the question: "Over the years, haven't you ever thought, what if NIO goes bankrupt?" Everyone smiles, noncommittal. "It's not like we don't know how to judge cars," A Jie says. "Since NIO came to this town, we've been good friends with many staff. With many brands, the relationships are gone, but with NIO, after all these years, the relationship has never broken."
This is a wonderful sense of connection. The town is small; if there's any problem, NIO staff can even show up in 5 minutes. Relationships in a small town, in Fei Xiaotong's words, are a kind of familiarity. "Familiarity is the intimate feeling that arises from time, many aspects, and frequent contact." In Shengze, interaction between people relies on this familiarity. Storefronts are nearby, business is nearby, life is nearby. In A Jie's café, everyone chats about crude oil, fabrics, cars, and hobbies. At 4:30 p.m., a boss glances at his watch and rushes to pick up his child from school. A Shengze boss's day is busy yet calm.
After a few rounds in Shengze, you'll find there's no distinction between locals and outsiders. The town has three famous streets: Fujian Road, Guangdong Street, and Wenzhou Road. For decades, different merchants have flowed through here. Brother Long's hometown is in Jiaxing; his parents started with a small textile factory. In an era of scarce goods, Long's mother had to row a boat to Changzhou to receive goods. Decades ago, the only road connecting Shengze to the outside was a gravel road from Suzhou to Jiaxing, with few trucks, so transport relied mainly on water. Sitting in a small boat with an awning, listening to the creaking oars, swaying all the way, is the memory of Shengze's previous generation.
Later, rural silk weaving factories rose, and transport switched to cars. By the time Long took over, Shengze's land, labor, and utilities were becoming increasingly expensive. As the Yangtze River Delta cleared out old birds for new, Anhui's Jinzhai County was offering incentives, with favorable land and tax costs. Long gritted his teeth and moved the factory there. Coincidentally, many of the factory's skilled workers originally came from Jinzhai, Anhui. Moving the factory solved both workers and costs.
A Jie moved his factory to Xinyang, Henan, not far from Jinzhai, Anhui. In recent years, more and more Shengze merchants have moved outside the Yangtze River Delta, even to distant Xinjiang. Making fabric requires melting chips, extruding and spinning, drawing and setting—each process consumes large amounts of electricity. "Electricity in Xinjiang is cheap, so some moved their factories there." When electric cars first became popular, Shengze bosses calculated cars that could swap batteries. Since factories are mostly hundreds of kilometers from Shengze, a 3-minute battery swap on the highway, as fast as refueling, is far more convenient than charging.
This month, NIO Inc. (NYSE: NIO) has achieved battery swap coverage in every county in Anhui; now in the Yangtze River Delta's 305 counties and districts, every one has a battery swap station. Shengze already has 4 swap stations, and a fifth-generation station is under construction. Even in Xinjiang, NIO's Silk Road battery swap route is about to be fully connected. In the past, Shengze's silk traveled the Maritime Silk Road to Southeast Asia and West Asia; now, Shengze merchants, following the Silk Road swap route, travel between factories in Xinjiang. The farthest factory moved to Xinjiang, and the farthest fabrics are sold to over 100 countries. In the first half of the year, Shengze's cross-border e-commerce import and export volume reached 2.464 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 292.5%.
Breaking through alongside Shengze bosses is NIO. Wherever cars flow, the battery swap network is laid. All the way to Khorgos in Xinjiang, westward, ever westward. When I left Shengze at night, the street-side shops had closed, and the cloth trucks were much fewer. I dragged my luggage and took a taxi to Shengze High-Speed Railway Station. That a small town has a high-speed rail station surprised me too. But then I felt, in Shengze, it's not surprising. From rowboats to cars to high-speed rail, the tools Shengze people use to go out have changed generation after generation, but the unchanged action is "one step ahead."
For a century, Shengze has repeatedly done the same thing: flow, then break through. The 1915 electric silk weaving factory, the 1986 Oriental Silk Market, the factories moving out of the Yangtze River Delta in the 2010s. Three generations of Shengze people have turned what the previous generation thought was too far away into places this generation can reach. At this moment I probably understand why this town is full of NIOs. Many things seem unrelated, but the direction is the same: where everyone thinks it's far enough, take one more step.
When others rushed to make range extenders and hybrids, NIO Inc. (NYSE: NIO) chose the harder path of pure electric. From chips and smart cockpits to the entire vehicle operating system, full-stack technology is self-developed. In August, in the Yangtze River Delta's 500,000-yuan car market, the ES9's market share exceeded the sum of BBA; for every 4 cars sold at the 500,000-yuan level, 1 was a NIO ES9. Every step pushes back the old saying that "Chinese cars can't go high-end" by an inch.
When others think charging is enough, NIO chose the heavier path of battery swapping. From the first swap station in 2018 to over 4,100 stations now, even about to connect the Silk Road swap route, cumulative battery swap services exceed 120 million. Every step pushes back the old saying that "electric cars can't go far" by an inch. See the distance one step ahead, then take one more step again and again. The distance will become a place you can reach.
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