Silk

For a long time for the West, China was primarily the birthplace of Silk.
Even the Greek name of China - Seres, which became the basis for the names of China originated in the majority of European languages, goes back to the Chinese word “sī” - silk. Weaving and embroidery have been always considered in China as a gender-specific occupation, a skill for female hands. Every single girl in the country, even from the highest class learned this craft.
The Goddess of silk
The secret of silk production has been known to the Chinese since ancient times. According to the legend, Xi Ling Shi, the young wife of the Yellow Emperor Huang Di, who ruled China in about 3,000 BC, taught the Chinese women to breed silkworms, process silk and weave silk threads into a fabric and this knowledge became widespread in China. The Chinese named her as the patroness of sericulture and even built a separate temple dedicated to her. Every spring, the emperor's older wife collected mulberry leaves and sacrificed them to the Goddess of silk.
Silk production
Silk fabric is made from the silk threads obtained from the silkworm cocoons. Cultivation of the silkworm is known as sericulture and it requires a lot of attention and patience. You also need to carefully control the environment and pay attention to noise, draft, smoke, temperature, and humidity in the room because they are very sensitive to these factors. The worms or the larvae feed solely on the large amounts of mulberry tree leaves, completely clean, exceptionally fresh and dry. Silkworms are rather fragile creatures and prone to various diseases: a whole colony can die in just one day due to poor care. In early April, tiny larvae hatch from the eggs, and in 40 days they reach maturity and can spin a silk cocoon. The adult worm is usually skin-colored, 7-8 cm long and as thick as a little finger of a human. These worms spin cocoons on the pieces of straw prepared for them in advance. The process lasts for 3 to 4 day period, and generally, one cocoon produces between 350 to 1000 meters silk thread. Silk is obtained from the cocoon by the so-called process of unraveling. The cocoon consists of a silk thread and glue that holds the thread together.
The cocoon is thrown into hot water to make it softer. Since a thread of one cocoon is invisibly thin, it usually takes filaments of 4 -18 cocoons to make one single thread. All these fibers are collected and passed together through an agate ring and then attached to the slowly rotating reel, which glues them together. This is the method of producing raw silk. It is so light that to produce 1 kg of the finished silk fabric you will use 300 to 900 kilograms of the silk thread.
Geography of sericulture
The sericulture is widely developed in southern and central China. Natural silk comes in white or yellow colors. The white one is produced mainly in the provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, and Hubei. This particular variety is spun by caterpillars of a “domesticated silkworm”, which is fed only with leaves of the garden mulberry tree. Natural yellow silk is produced in the provinces of Sichuan, Hubei, and Shandong. In the first half of their life the caterpillars eat the leaves of Zhe tree (it looks like a mulberry tree and grows in the mountains) in order to obtain the yellow color, and the other half of life they are fed with the leaves of common garden mulberry tree. There is another type of silk known as wild silk, and it comes from certain types of wild moth, which feeds on leaves of different species of oak. This silk is brown in color and is more difficult to dye or bleach.
The art of weaving
The Chinese traditions of weaving and dyeing have quite a long history. Some weaving samples dating back to the second half of the first millennium BC have reached us almost intact. Among them - all kinds of silk, from thin gauze fabric to brocade. Many of them have embroidered ornaments of mythical animals or various geometric shapes.
The Chinese art of weaving reached its peak during the Tang dynasty. According to historical sources, there were at least 50 varieties of silk patterns: “dragons playing in the flowers”, “lotus and cane”, “water plants and fish”, “peonies”, “Dragon and Phoenix”, “palaces and pavilions”, “pearls with rice grains” and much more. Many of these patterns were created in the Han Dynasty and have reached our days. The Song Dynasty was particularly famous for its beautiful designs woven on silk, known as “engraved silk” or Kesi technique. Silk paintings are a valuable part of the Chinese cultural heritage. They often reproduced calligraphic inscriptions and landscapes of famous artists. Wen Zhenheng (1585–1645) states in his book “Treatise on Superfluous Things” (“Zhang Wu Zhi”) about the elegant household objects, interior design, and garden architecture that “a noble husband should own one or two of such canvas in his house along with other paintings”.
Silk embroidery
Exquisite Chinese silk embroidery is pinned with perfection. Among the most popular embroidery patterns were benevolent symbols like birds, fishes, butterflies, lotus flowers and others. Most Chinese fine embroideries were made in silk and were created for home screens, ceremonial clothes, fans, shoes, pouches, and other various personal items. There was a technique of reversible embroidery where the front and the back created identical patterns. In Suzhou, even nowadays, there is a unique tradition of colorful embroidery, where each side has a separate image.
If a day is too hot or too cold, or too rainy or windy the embroideresses never start to work. They can only put their glorious feelings in the art of embroidery on beautiful days when the sun is shining, birds are chirping and the flowers are in bloom. Their art is a true wonder of the world.
The quality of Chinese silk
The quality of Chinese woven fabrics made with gold and silver threads is second to none. In fact, the number of filaments in the works of Chinese masters is 3 times higher than in the best French tapestries, and their golden embroideries haven’t faded even after 6-7 centuries.
Priceless treasure
Silk is a very important and precious discovery that China has gifted to the entire world. The secret of silk production has been carefully guarded for a long time, and silk fabrics were valued as highly as gold. Eventually, silk spinning became widespread only in the 18th century when the technology for producing silk thread reached Western Europe. However Chinese silk carries a reputation for the finest quality in the whole world.