Making Silk for Dummies

During my time in China, I have visited two silk factories---the first in Beijing a few weeks ago, and the second in Suzhou, which I went to today. These silk factories are NOT to be confused with the Silk Market, which is the place to buy knock-offs that I mentioned in an earlier post. At these places, they actually make the silk, from start to finish. I was relatively unaware of the process prior to visiting the factories, so in case you don't know much about silk-making, I will do my best to relate the entire process to you with the help of pictures:

The process always begins with these guys: THE SILK WORMS. These ones here are actually alive, and squirming around a lot. As you can see, they are happily munching on their mulberry leaves, which are the extent of their diet. The mulberry plants are grown just outside on the premises, and leaves are also brought in from farms in the surrounding area.

Here you can see a close-up of TONS of silkworm cocoons inside a barrel, ready to be sorted. It's hard to tell from the photograph, but some of the cocoons are large (containing two silk worm pupae) while others are much smaller (containing only one pupa).  Each has a distinct purpose that I will eventually describe.

This is a machine that "cooks" the cocoons before they can be used. The cooking involves bringing the cocoons to a certain temperature in order to ...err... kill the pupa inside. It also involves adding enough moisture to the cocoon so that the silk filament may be more easily extracted.

This is the de-Pupa-fication station (most likely, not its real name), where the pupae are removed from the cocoons and deposited in the little basket. Don't fret, these pupae have not died in vain! In fact, they will be used to make some special sort of...face cream? OK. So now that the depupafication process is complete I will discuss the difference between the single and double cocoons.

Single Pupa Cocoons

This picture shows step 2 for single pupa cocoons. Each pupa produces a single silk filament that makes up the cocoon. As such, just one little cocoon alone produces a filament that is 1500 METERS in length (that's 4921.25984 feet). The cocoons are placed in boiling water, as shown in the picture, and the end of the filament is located and attached to this machine. Each reel on the machine draws out the filaments from several cocoons at once, spinning them to eventually be made into thread.

I'm skipping the intermediate steps where tons of filaments are put together to make thread, and also the step where the thread is dyed. The above picture shows the mechanical loom that weaves the patterns that make up the silk that most people think of when they think "silk".  OK, so now for...

Double Pupae Cocoons

These cocoons contain two Pupa, so therefore two 1500-meter filaments. It is too difficult to separate the two filaments to make thread, so these cocoons are generally used to make silk duvets / comforters. 

After the pupas are removed, the cocoons are soaked in cold water and then stretched over a small u-shaped ring (a smaller version of the one above). 8 layers of stretched-out cocoons go onto the small ring, and then the result of that is stretched over one of the big rings (above). This is repeated 10 more times, and the final result is shown above, which contains 80 layers of stretched out silk cocoons. This is then air-dried and will eventually be part of the inside of a silk comforter.  

The result of the big ring is then stretched out into a large square that will eventually be the duvet. If you visit the factory, you get the chance to actually try and stretch out the silk, and trust me, this stuff is strong and its surprisingly difficult. It takes 100 layers of silk to make a single comforter (essentially, the result of 8000 cocoons). If you buy the comforter directly from the factory you can get a wholesale price, and it is actually very affordable (and guaranteed as 100% silk by the Chinese government, so no worries about it being fake). They are very light and warm, and I couldn't resist buying one during my second trip.

Whew! i hope that wasn't boring... it's actually very cool if you get to see it in person

Starting to Wrap Up Beijing...

Hey everybody! First of all, I want to apologize to anyone who has been sending emails to RBallard14@gmail.com. It hadn't occurred to me that it was the email sending out blog notifications, and I happen to rarely check that email address (my main email address is kovax14@comcast.net). I'll reply to all of you soon!

Second of all, I'm in Shanghai! However, before I move on to talk about Shanghai, I have a few things to wrap up with Beijing. 

The first thing is Yuan Ming Yuan (圆明园）, which roughly translates to English as the "Garden of Perfect Clarity". Construction for this old summer palace (which was originally known as the Imperial Gardens) began in 1707 and consists of three main gardens. The architectural style of the whole complex is very divergent from traditional Chinese architecture, and has a distinct Western influence as you will see.  The palace was, however, destroyed in 1860 during the Second Opium War. That it has since lain in ruins was entirely the decision of the Chinese government, whose intention for the site was that it would provide future generations with a reminder of foreign aggression against China. If you want to read more about its history, you may do so here: Yuan Ming Yuan (Old Summer Palace)

Here's the link to the album, and here's the slideshow: (take note of the print that shows the palace before it was destroyed)

The lotus flowers floating on the water in this garden are harvested and made into a special flower tea (花茶) that can be purchased at the gardens. I didn't buy any for myself but my host family bought a container of it so I was able to try it later on, and it was good！ 

This next slideshow shows the Temple of Heaven. It has been a while since I visited, so most of the particulars about its history are not clear in my mind. So since I would otherwise be paraphrasing from my favorite online encyclopedia, I might as well just give you the link if you are just that curious: Temple of Heaven

I will take note of one thing. As you will see in the photos there is a set of stairs leading up to the temple. The stairs are divided into three tiers, and each tier contains NINE stairs, which continues the trend that I started to explain in my post about the Forbidden City. Also, the Temple of Heaven is a popular place for Elderly people to come and do their morning exercises. You will usually see groups of people doing Tai Chi together or some kind of aerobics, and there are also usually several groups scattered throughout the park singing loud (and sometimes out of tune) karaoke...and shamelessly at that! Anyway, here's a link to the album, and here's the slideshow:

If you are interested, right outside the the gates to the Temple of Heaven park is a teahouse that performs tea very simple and traditional tea ceremonies that are worth stopping for. The tea of choice in Beijing is usually 茉莉花茶, or Green Tea infused with Jasmine Flowers. It's excellent.

This is a picture from the tea ceremony. Look a little bit left of the middle of the picture to see two glasses, a green one and a clear one with a brown thing floating inside. That thing is a ceramic sculpture of a little boy, fondly known as "The Pee-Pee Boy". He first has to float in cold water and fill up with water, and afterwards you stand him up and pour boiling water on his head and he shoots cold water out of a peculiarly shaped spout in his lower region. It actually shoots the water several meters, and the tea ceremony lady kept spraying me with it!  I got one free with my purchase, and when I get back I will do demonstrations at request.

I have two Beijing posts left in me, one is short and will probably be tomorrow, the other will have to wait because it contains several videos, and I won't be able to format the video files correctly until I get home (but the videos are awesome, so wait for it). After that I'll do some posts on Shanghai, and then probably one post each for Nanjing, Suzhou, and Zhou Zhuang (each of which is a different city or town)