SILK

I think when one thinks of China, one thinks of silk. After all, it was the birthplace of silk. In the same vein, no visit to China would be complete without a visit to a silk factory.

The history of silk

Our guide who spoke very good English at the silk factory

Raw silk, not so good quality onesEggs of the Silk Moth. Real tiny, sneeze and it's gone!

Silk worms
Silk worm pupae Moths
Coccoons
Silk dresses on display Our former PM at the APEC meeting
Bush wore silk too Harvesting silk strands from the coccoons.
Basically you crack open the coccoon, remove the now dead pupae inside, and stretch the coccoon over a bamboo apparatus shaped like a semi-arch.
You do the process repeatedly and in the end you will end up with a bunch of silk like the one above.
A coccoon in my hand (and now on display in my home!)
You get a group of people and each pick up a corner of the silk bunch earlier and pull (evenly) to produce a thin layer of fine silk!
The end product. One of the silk quilt on display. Cost RMB 600 only.... ouch!
More silk cloth on display.

I didn't really take a lot of pics that day mainly because I was totally exhausted and having a migraine headache. I totally hate to wait for people and that day we waited 2 and half hours! The time given was actually 45 minutes but most of the ladies in our group went hysterical and berserk on seeing such fine (and cheap, or so they claimed) silk for sale. They were buying up the silk cloth like there was no tomorrow. I even came across a 70 something malay lady (not from our group) who ordered her poor (and nearly bankrupt) hubby to go borrow some money so that she can buy some more silk cloth!!!

We bought a nice little silk blouse for my MIL. It was on 50% discount (from RMB 360). Nice piece of cloth. After that we just sat and waited, and waited and waited.....