How they make silk in China

Did you know: 

In Shanghai families, guys are the ones that do the house chores. Not the women! So if you marry a Shanghai man, you don't have to do any house chores. They'll do the cleaning, the cooking and at the same time, they have to work too. Interesting? No?

************************************************

I know this is quite a late post since I came back from China like months ago BUT late is better than none isn't it. ;D

There's a lot of places that I set my feet on in China. Some are pretty boring (I shall not torture you with those boring places) and some are really interesting! Like the Silk Factory.

I pretty sure everyone knows that silk comes from silk worms. I didn't get to see any because I went during the winter season when they're all hibernating in the holes. =((( Total disappointment.

Nevertheless, we did visit the factory and witness how they make silk. Now, before I start, let me put you to a guess....

You know that silk comes from the pupa of silk worms. Pupa is their babies just in case you don't know. So, in the above picture, you have 2 different types of pupa. Which is the twin pupa and which contains only one pupa in it?? Take a wild guess....

The pupa on the left are the twin ones and the one on the right are the single pupa. Notice how the left sets are slightly bigger than the right ones. That's because the twin need to contain two pupa in it. So, it's slightly larger.

Not only do their sizes differ, their functions differ as well. Single pupa silk are use to make silk threads for clothing, scarf and etc. Generally anything that has to do with garments. While the twin pupa are used to make silk blankets, pillows and etc. To explain it easier, twin silk are used for anything that has to do with bed and single silk are used to make thread which can then be made into anything.

To make into thread, the single pupa are placed in warm water to soften the egg-like structure so each strand of thread can be separated. Once the thread are separated, one thread of silk used to make clothing is made from combination of 6 smaller silk threads.

6 pupa = 6 smaller silk threads = ONE strand of silk thread used to make garments

All of these processes from the warming of the pupa to making the thread uses these machinery.

Too bad I didn't take an upclose picture. It's really super interesting.

Now that we know about the single pupa, what about the twin pupa? The process of making silk pillow or blanket is even more interesting than making the thread. The thread making is actually quite easy peasy. =P

For twin pupa, they don't separate them into single smaller threads. They use the whole silk covering directly. Don't understand?

What I mean is they warm the twin pupa silk covering (the white stuffs covering the pupa inside) to soften it and they do this....

The biji-biji on the left of her hands are the soften twin pupa. After softening, they directly remove the pupa from within and pull the silk covering over the upside-down-U-shape metal to stretch the silk.

There's too many strands of silk in there cause it's made by 2 pupa. So, it's easy to be tangle up. That's why they don't use it to make threads.

After that, the stretched silk is dried. Another group of ladies then further pull it into this table...

Can you see the silk piece they're stretching?

My mom, my sister, another lady from our tour group and I tried pulling one piece. We ended up making the ladies that work there frustrated cause we didn't pull it evenly. Too much silk at one corner. Hahahaha!!!

One blanket is made from many layers of this silk piece. So, you can imagine how soft and cozy it'll be.

For blankets, this whole piece of many layers of silk pieces is directly inserted into blanket coverings made from silk cloths.

For pillow, this bundle of silk pieces is further folded to make into a pillow shape before inserting into silk cloths. So, pillow requires less silk pieces from twin pupa as they need to be folded.

This is the Silk Factory interior.

So, after knowing the whole process, imagine how many pupa are used to make even one blanket. A LOT!

Now's another trivia, if the silk covering of the pupa are used to make silk threads, silk blankets and pillows, what happen to the pupa???