Silk, sometimes affectionately referred to as the “queen of fibers,” is the strongest natural fiber in the world, and it is used to make expensive cloth. There’s more to silk, though, than being great to make fine garments. Did you know that a thread of silk can be stronger than some kinds of steel? Probably not. We hope to give you more insight into the wonders of silk in our report.
THE DISCOVERY OF SILK
One of the only – if not the only – documentation on the discovery of silk is an ancient Chinese legend. According to this legend, silk was discovered in the garden of Emperor Huangdi around 2700 B.C.E. The mulberry trees in his garden were being destroyed, and he ordered his wife, Xilingshi, to go out there and see what was the cause of the damage done to his trees.
When Xilingshi went out to examine the trees, she found white worms eating the leaves of the mulberry leaves and spinning shiny cocoons. She then accidentally dropped one of the cocoons into some hot water. And when she started playing with the cocoon in the water, long white strings disentangled themselves from the cocoon. It is said that this was how silk was discovered.
Xilingshi then went to Emperor Huangdi to ask him to give her a grove of mulberry trees, in order for her to breed thousands of worms that would spin these beautiful cocoons. The king then obliged.
Some accounts claim that she was the person who invented the silk reel, which is a device used to join fine silk filaments into a thread thick enough to be used for weaving. Others also credit her for being the maker of the first silk loom.
How true these stories are still remain uncertain with historians. One thing they are sure about, though, is that silk was first used in China. The Ch...
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...pired designs (like leaves or cherry blossom trees) or of animals (like dragons or phoenixes). Pictures of Chinese silk are on the last page of the report.
Works Cited
"History of Silk." Silkroad Foundation. Silkroad Foundation, 2000. Web. 16 Feb.
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Hong, Lily Toy. The Empress and the Silkworm. Morton Grove, Illinois: Albert
Whitman, 1995. Print.
"Silk." World Book S-Sn Volume 17. 2004. Print.
Textile Fabric Consultants Inc., Amy Willbanks. "Silk." www.fabrics.net/
amysilk.asp. fabrics INC, 19 Feb. 2011. Web. 19 Feb. 2011.
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"Who smuggled the silkworm into japan + broke the silk monopoly of the Chinese?"
Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo! Inc., 2008. Web. 16 Feb. 2011.
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To begin, around 4000 B.C.E., China’s biggest seller was Silk. In fact, that’s mostly why the Silk Road was built! Everyone wanted some of China’s beautiful silk. In India, everyone traveled for spices as Christopher Columbus...attempted. But that was in the 1400’s. Around 50 C.E., the Kushan Empire started to take over these countries and the road after the Han Empire was overthrown. In the Background Essay, it says “Starting in 50 CE, another Asian Empire took shape and began profiting
Russell’s story takes place in old Japan where Women become hybrids of silkworm and human, they live and work in a mill where they produce thread. The whole procedure to get the thread from their bodies to turn into silk is just as awful as the machine from The Penal Colony. The machine is described as “. . . a great steel-and-wood beast with a dozen rotating eyes and steaming mouths-it’s twenty meters long and takes up half the room. . . Pulleys swing our damp threat left and right across it, refining it into finished silk” (Russell 31). In order to remove the threads from their body, they dip their hands into boiling water, which helps loosen the thread then machine reels it from them and turns it into silk. These poor women are treated like animals, they are made to work continuously in an environment that reminds me of a sweatshop. They have no choice but to work because of their mutated bodies so even if they didn’t want to, they’ll have to. The machine has so much power over the women because it relieves them of the silk that builds up within them. At a certain of the story, one worker, Kitsune who is the main character goes on strike. The story describes her body as “her belly is grotesquely distended and stippled with lumps, like a sow’s pregnant with a litter of ten piglets. Her excess thread is packed in knots. Strangling Dai from within.”
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"Four Inventions of Ancient China: Paper Making, Gunpowder, Printing, Compass." Four Inventions of Ancient China: Paper Making, Gunpowder, Printing, Compass. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
Mao Dun, author of "Spring Silkworms", was a twentieth century Chinese novelist, critic, organizer, editor, and advocate for Chinese Communism. According to David Wang, Mao Dun was one of the most versatile Chinese literati among the May Fourth generation. Mao Dun was an advocate and practitioner of European naturalism. Motivated by history and politics, Mao Dun has introduced western literary ideas to China in his novels. As a left wing writer Mao Dun focuses on the peasant's point of view and relies on his depiction of reality to evoke change. A good example of this style of writing is the story "Spring Silkworms".
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Over a thousand years before crafters in Rome began molding bronze, artists in China's Shang dynasty were begining to experiment. The works were burried and forgotten, but in 1934, dozens of inscribed bronze works were excavated at Anyang in Honan province. The pieces of art that were discovered were nearly perfect, and historians could not beleive what they saw. Most of the art had been burried in the soft banks of the Yellow river, and were perfectly preserved. The National Palace Museum in Taipei has more than 4,000 bronze items.
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