Silk

The cultivation of the silkworm can be traced back to the 3rd century B. C. It was said that Leizu, a legendary figure of prehistoric China, started the planting of mulberry trees and raising of silkworms. According to archeological discoveries, silk and silk fabrics emerged at least 5, 500 years ago.
As early as the 4th century B. C., local people in Sichuan Province were able to produce a kind of plain silk cloth called bo; and silk brocade was first produced in Chengdu, Sichuan.
In the Zhou Dynasty, a special administration was set up to manage sericulture and silk production, and from 138 to 126 B. C., Zhang Qian ( 张骞 ) carried a diplomatic mission to the west under imperial order along what was called the Silk Road. From that time on, sericulture and silk production techniques gradually spread to many other countries.
Down to the Song Dynasty, the center of silk production gradually shifted to areas south of the Changjian River from areas along the Yellow River, and in the Northern Song Dynasty, the brocade industry advanced into large scale workshops. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Suizhou and Hangzhou became important bases for silk production, and many markets and towns were fully engaged in the sake of silk sales.
Legend 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 promised the horse that if he could bring back her father, she would marry him. Several days later, her father arrived home, riding the horse, but he was unwilling to let his daughter marry a horse and so he killed the innocent animal. Then a miracle happened! The horse's skin carried the girl up into the sky. They flew and flew away and at last stopped on a tree. The moment the girl touched the tree, she turned into a silkworm. Every day, she spun out long, thin silk that expressed her feeling of longing for the horse.
Another story says that some ancient Chinese women discovered silk by chance. Once, as they picked fruit from trees, they found a special kind of fruit that was white in color. They tasted it, but it was hard to eat. So they boiled the white fruit in hot water, hoping it might taste better, but it still tasted awful. The women lost their patience and began to beat it with large sticks. Unexpectedly, they discovered silk and silkworms, for the white hard fruit was cocoons!
The silkworm is not a worm, but a caterpillar, the larva of a moth. Its diet consists solely of mulberry leaves, and it is native to Northern China. It is called silkworm because it spins its cocoon for raw silk. The cocoon is made of a single continuous thread of raw silk from 300 to 900 meters (1, 000 to 3, 000 feet) long. If the caterpillar is left to eat its way out of the cocoon naturally, it cuts the threads short, and the silk will be useless. So silkworm cocoons are usually thrown into boiling water, which kills the larva and makes the cocoons easier to untwist. This operation has continued for thousand years.