China Trip: Day 5 – The Silk Factory

After leaving the Panmen Scenic Area, we visited a nearby government-owned silk factory. The silk in Suzhou is considered the best in China and some say, the best in the world. I vaguely remember our tour guide explaining that the plants silkworms favor in the region contain a higher amount of nutrients making their silk finer than in other regions.

When we entered the doors, we were ushered over to a small podium where an employee showed us the difference between pure silk (made in the factory) & silk blends (often found in the street markets). Believe it or not, the easiest way to tell pure from blended silk is to burn it. Now I wouldn’t go lighting up your favorite silk scarf or anything, but it was interesting to see. When pure silk burns, it has white smoke while a silk blend emits black smoke.

After the burn test, we were taken to see the actual process where cocoons are transformed into silk thread.

The process begins when cocoons are hand-picked by workers & placed in an oven. The heat of the oven is enough to kill the silkworm inside but not damage the silk in the cocoon. To make a strand of silk thread that will later be weaved into silk fabric, it is necessary to use the individual strands of eight cocoons. Amazingly enough, each cocoon is actually a continuous strand that is around 3600 feet long!

The cocoons are first soaked in water so that the individual silk strands will come loose. A worker will then locate the ends of the 8 strands and attach them to a spinning machine. The spinning machine automatically unravels the eight cocoons, simultaneously creating a single strand of silk from them. As the wheels above spin, the cocoons bob up & down in the water. When the silk from the cocoon is completely unraveled, the remaining cocoon shell & worm are left floating & are either discarded or used for other purposes (they are actually eaten by some of the locals!) Once the final thread is made, it can be dyed various colors & woven into beautiful garments, scarves, etc.

Next, we were shown double cocoons. These cocoons actually contain two worms, are about twice the size, and are stretched & used for other purposes. One of the ways they are utilized is to create silk duvet comforters. One silk comforter can contain up to 10,000 stretched cocoons inside. Basically four workers will stand together, grab the edges of a flattened cocoon & stretch it out into a paper-thin rectangle shape. Surprisingly, the cocoon does not break. It looks a bit like those spiderwebs that you buy at Halloween time…but obviously much softer & a wee bit more expensive. After seeing how the silk comforters were made, we visited the factory store and picked up some goodies. I bought a silk scarf for my mom (Happy Belated Mother’s Day!) as well as a silk comforter for my bed.