Making of the silk fabric

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, silks and silkworms were discovered. And the white hard fruit is a cocoon!

The business of raising silkworms and unwinding cocoons is now known as silk culture or sericulture. It takes an average of 25-28 days for a silkworm, which is no bigger than an ant, to grow old enough to spin cocoon. Then the women farmers will pick them up one by one to piles of straws, then the silkworm will attach itself to the straw, with its legs to the outside and begin to spin.

The next step is unwinding the cocoons; it is done by reeling girls. The cocoons are heated to kill the pupae, this must be done at the right time, otherwise, the pupas are bound to turn into moths, and moths will make a hole in the cocoons, which will be useless for reeling. To unwind the cocoons, first put them in a basin filled with hot water, find the loose end of the cocoon, and then twist them, carry then to a small wheel, thus the cocoons will be unwound. At last, two workers measure them into a certain length, twist them, they are called raw silk, then they are dyed and woven into cloth.