How Christmas Trees Are Made | I Didn't Know That

the last 20 years have seen a huge increase in the Chinese economy thanks partly to Christmas trees the tradition of Christmas trees is believed to have begun in Germany around the 18th century but it was Queen Victoria who made them fashionable in Britain when she was pictured standing next to one with her family in 1846 this factory in Suzhou makes Ching Dan shoot as they call them in all sorts of sizes and this is how they produce a 2 meter high version the branches start out as flat strips of polyvinyl chloride or PVC to you and me the reels are unraveled and as they pass through rollers they're bonded and stick together then a circular blade slices through the PVC shredding it and making the needles the shredded PVC is twisted around a metal wire and then pulled through a small coil this separates the needles who makes them nice and bushy these machines produce branches measuring around 6 meters long a tree with branches this big isn't very practical so they're cut to size by hand but cut this way because a mechanical cutting machine would flatten the needles back down a bunch of branches have been stained together using a polypropylene twine and the sharp edges are bent over to stop little children hurting themselves as they hang their baubles from the tree now all that's left to do is attach the branches to the metal trunks of the tree and it becomes one of 1 million Sheng Tang Xu that are made here at this Factory in China happy Christmas

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 164,549

Rating: 4.6923075 out of 5

Keywords: Nat Geo, I Didn't Know That, Jonny Phillips, Richard Ambrose, science, cool, Christmas, tree, Christmas tree, factory, China, produce, Western, market, assemble, assembly line, holiday, festive, tradition, decoration, national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, explore, discover, survival, nature, documentary

Id: wD5m6vhLV-A

Length: 1min 46sec (106 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 11 2012