Sorting silk worm cocoons

We walked in the building, and right away there were women seated at a small, waist high conveyor belt. They were seated on some rickety old chairs sifting through the cocoons of their matured silk worms. It was beyond me how they could tell the difference between the mature ones and the worms not quite ready yet. If a worm was not mature enough to be boiled, they’d throw it back and wait a week for it to spin a complete web around itself. Without enough padding to their cocoon, it would of course be pointless to boil it to death and only be put to half-use. The women smiled at us as we passed through, but the next room was different. To the left of the door, there was a large machine emitting steam and spewing forth ravenous smells. The dark clang of the metal and the meditative whirr of the wooden spools spinning to the right sent our acclimated (for almost two weeks thus far) senses in to an uproar. It was the strangest thing, at least for myself, to have encountered in a long time. That is, of course, after being acquainted with many strange things at the beginning of the trip and getting used to it early on.

Stringing cocoons on silk spinning machines

The large machine to the left was a machine in which they boiled the live worms. It stunk poorly and was so loud it felt silent. We made our way from the “death-machine” to the rows of women with their hands in hot water pulling strings from each cocoon and attaching them to spools overhead. It was an experience to turn any amateur photographer into a syndicated National Geographic type. After the large room with the “death-to-all-worms-who-pass-this-way-trap” there was a small room with just a bunch of finished spools lying against the wall.

Storage Room

Next came a woman who took unspun cocoons, removed the worm (with her bare hands), and stretched it over a wooden frame that was based in a cold water basin. Then, once she had enough, she put a few together and stretched it over a larger frame. Women and men in the same room took the dried pallets of silk (what the woman in cold water had been doing) and stretched them over a square table. We got an oppurtunity to help them out by being on an honorary stretching team. They did something like 150 layers of silk stretching, and then topped it off by covering it in a silk jacket. Yang bought the finished product from them, the one whose work involved our hands.

Stretching silk over wooden frame

Our visit in the factory was an influential one, so our visit in the silk shop was a walk in the park…even though it still smelled a bit. They put on a fashion show for us, one that was put together very well, I thought, and then we got a chance to explore the store and buy our own goods.

Fashion show at the garment factory