The Mysterious Origins of Silk
It is well known that silk is discovered in China as one of the best materials for clothing--it has a look and feeling of richness that no other materials can match. Silk could date back to the 30th century BC when Huang Di (Yellow Emperor) came into power. Legend has it that Lei Zu, the wife of Huang Di, taught people how to raise silkworms and how to extract the silk. There are many other legends about the discovery of silk; some of them are both romantic and mysterious.
One of the legends has it that once there lived a father with his daughter, they had a magic horse, which could not only fly in the sky but also understand human language. One day, the father went out on business and did not come back for quite some time. The daughter made the horse a promise: if the horse could find her father, she would marry him. Finally her father came back with the horse, but he was shocked at his daughter‘s promise.
Unwilling to let his daughter marry a horse, he killed the innocent horse. And then a miracle happened! The horse’s skin carried the girl flying away. They flew and flew, at last, they stopped on a tree, and the moment the girl touched the tree, she turned into a silkworm. Everyday, she spit out long and thin silk. The silk represented her feeling of missing the horse.
Another less romantic but more convincing explanation is that some ancient Chinese women found this wonderful silk by chance. When they were picking up fruits from the trees, they found a special kind of fruit, white but too hard to eat, so they boiled the fruit in hot water but they still could hardly eat it. At last, they lost their patience and began to beat them with big sticks. In this way, silk and silkworms were discovered. And the white hard fruit is a cocoon.
The Art of Sericulture
The business of raising silkworms and unwinding cocoons is now known as silk culture or sericulture. It takes an average of 25 to 28 days for a silkworm, which is no bigger than an ant, to grow old enough to spin cocoons.
An interesting fact is that we can unwind about 1,000 meters long silk from one cocoon, while 111 cocoons are needed for a man’s tie, and 630 cocoons are needed for a woman’s blouse.
Silk and the Silk Road
Chinese people developed a new way by using silk to make clothes since the discovery of silk. This kind of clothes became popular soon. At that time, China’s technology was developing fast. Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty decided to develop trade with other countries.
To build a road became priority to trade silk. For nearly 60 years of war, the world-famous ancient Silk Road was built up at the cost of many losses of lives and treasures. It started from Chang’an (now Xi’an), across Middle Asia, South Asia and West Asia. Many countries of Asia and Europe were connected.
Silk's Global Impact and Symbolism
From then on, Chinese silk, along with many other Chinese inventions, were passed to Europe. Romans, especially women, were crazy for Chinese silk. Before that, Romans used to make clothes with linen(D cloth, animal skin and wool fabric. Now they all turned to silk. It was a symbol of wealth and high social status for them to wear silk clothes. One day, an Indian monk came to visit the Emperor. This monk had been living in China for several years and knew the method of raising silkworms. The Emperor promised great rewards, so the monk hid several cocoons in his cane and took it to Rome. Then, the technology of raising silkworms spread out.
“A silkworm spins all its silk till its death, and a candle won’t stop its tears until it is fully burnt.” This Tang poem accurately describes the property of the silkworm.
