Rainy Sunday, we decided to go to the #1 Silk museum in Suzhou with Angela (a very nice lady my wife met a few days ago) and her husband Richie — both from New Zealand. A foggy and raw day with intermittent rain; a perfect day for visiting anything indoors.
Suzhou is known for having the highest quality of silk in China, hence the world. The history of silk started in China about 5,000 years ago; from there it spread into Korea, Japan and later to India. Some interesting and brief facts about silk:
- The silk worm is one of the most genetically modified insects in the world.
- Without human intervention, these type of worm would not be able to recreate.
- The silk worm life cycle is 2 months.
- In their worm stage they create their cocoon which is raw silk (made from salivary gland excretion).
- The cocoon serves as protection while they change from a worm into a moth. If they were allowed to complete this cycle the single stand of raw silk (about a kilometer long) would be split into several sections. To avoid this, the cocoon is boiled and the worm removed in a way that preserves the single strand. This in turn allows the raw silk to be processed for use in large looms.
- They allow about 5% to become moths. They have an amazing system to grow the worms. They grow them on top of wicker like disks (about 4 feet in diameter. They feed them a specific type of leaf; they spent their brief life on this disk until they complete their cocoon.
- A raw silk strand is about 1/7th of a human hair thickness
- Eight raw silk strands (cocoons) are combined to make one single strand for use in the manufacture of silk cloth.
Some pictures of our visit explaining the top-level process: