The Role of Silk in Ancient China

What is silk? Silk is a thin, but strong fiber that Silkworms produce when they’re making their cocoons. It can be woven into a very soft and smooth fabric. Silk fabric was invented in Ancient China, and played an important role in their culture and economy for thousands of years.

Silk Cloth was extremely valuable in Ancient China. Wearing silk was an important status symbol. At first, only the members of the royal family were allowed to wear silk. Later, silk clothing was restricted to only the noble class. Merchants and peasants were not allowed to wear silk. Silk was even used as money during some Ancient Chinese dynasties.

Silk became a prized export for the Chinese. Nobles and Kings of foreign land desired silk and would pay high prices for the cloth. The emperors of China wanted to keep the process for making silk a secret. Anyone caught telling the secret or taking silkworms out of China was put to death. Legend has it that the process to making silk cloth was first invented by the wife of the yellow emperor, Leizu, around the year 2696 B.C. The idea for silk first came to Leizu while she was having tea in the Imperial Gardens. A cocoon fell into her tea and unraveled. She noticed that the cocoon was actually made from a long thread that was both strong and soft.

Leizu then discovered how to combine the silk fiber into a thread. She also invented the silk loom that combined the threads into a soft cloth. Soon, Leizu had a forest of mulberry trees for the Silkworms to feed on and taught the rest of China how to make silk.

The Chinese managed to keep silk a secret for over 1000 years. However, in 550 A.D., the secret of silk became known to other countries when two monks from the Byzantine Empire managed to snuggle some Silkworm eggs out of the country. They hid the eggs inside of their bamboo walking sticks.

The Ancient Chinese bred special moths to produce the quality silk they wanted. Here are the steps in the process for making silk:

1. A moth lays 500 eggs and then dies
2. Baby worms hatch from the eggs are fed Mulberry leaves for one month until they are fat
3. The worms spin cocoons
4. The cocoons are steamed to kill the growing moth inside
5. The cocoons are rinsed in hot water to loosen the threads
6. Women would unwind the cocoons and then combine six of so fibers into the silk thread
7. The threads are woven into cloth
8. The cloth is then pounded to make it softer

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