Did you think that our day was over after only visiting Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City?
We DID take a short break for lunch, and then proceeded to a nearby silk factory where we learned about two common methods of silk production.
Silk thread is made by dipping the cocoons of single larvae of the mulberry silkworm into boiling water before the adult moth emerges, in order to unravel the cocoon as a single thread. The silk filaments of 8 cocoons are wound together, which helps to strengthen the silk thread.
Spools of thread. In instances were there are two larvae in a single cocoon, the thread cannot be extracted independently, and these cocoons are instead, gathered together and streached to make the soft andwarm filling for silk throws and comforters. Mark and I tried our hand at this technique, and quickly saw how delicate the process is.
Trying to stretech evenly.
We spend a bit of time perusing the silk factory (and making a few purchases), after which we headed to the nearby Summer Palace, the most celebrated imperial garden in China. Here, we enjoyed the beauty of dusk and a lovely sunset on the Kunming Lake.
1 comment:
I had no idea silk was made from the cocoons! Fascinating.
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