Sericulture
Silk fiber is an important material for clothing, which sustains humanity. It is ancient Chinese who developed this valuable material for textiles.
Sericulture is the most successful example of exploiting insect resources to serve mankind in
ancient China. The legend says Leizu, wife of Emperor Huangdi (or Yellow Emperor), was the first to teach women to pluck mulberry leaves and feed silkworms. People learned to obtain silk filament from wild silkworms before they were domesticated. The domestication of silkworms began about 5,000 years ago. Archaeologists found in a site of the New Stone Age in Shanxi Province in northern China half a cocoon, which was cut more than 5,000 years ago . In another site of the same period in Zhejiang Province in eastern China, archaeologists unearthed silk fabric, strip and thread, which date from 4,700 years ago. In inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty, there were the characters for can (silkworm), sang (mulberry), si (silk), and bo (silks); and records of sacrifices to the god of mulberry and inspections of silkworm production. This shows that at that time sericulture had become part of the daily life.
Sericulture was quite developed in northern China. A poem about sericulture in Shaanxi Province in Shi Jing (The Book of Songs) reads, "In a shiny day in spring, orioles are singing. On a small path, women carrying baskets are going to pluck tender mulberry leaves." On an unearthed bronze ware from the Warring States Period, a drawing shows vividly women collecting mulberry leaves. Another poem in The Book of Songs reads, "In the ten-mu (acre) mulberry fields, people plucking leaves come and go." A chapter in Mencius says, "To plant mulberry trees in a five-mu compound, it will turn out enough silk to clothe fifty people." Xun Kuang, a noted thinker of the Warring States Period, wrote in Ode to the Silkworm that after three times of dormancy, the silkworm builds its cocoon. In Li Ji (The Book of Rites), which was compiled 2,000 years ago, methods for preventing silkworm diseases were recorded: to wash silkworm eggs in vermilion solution, salt water or limewater can effectively prevent silkworm diseases.
Raising silkworms and weaving silk fabrics were for a long time a unique Chinese technique. Colorful silk fabrics added to the dignity of monarchs and their officials, and to the beauty of women. Silk fabrics became a major export of ancient China after the Silk Road was opened. For a thousand years the several- thousand-kilometer road served as a major channel of exchanges between China and the rest of the world, and a driving force for economic and cultural development in China. All silkworm-raising countries in the world obtained their silkworm eggs and sericulture techniques from China, either directly or indirectly: Korea, 3,000 years ago; Japan and Vietnam, 2,000 years ago; central Asian countries, 1,600 years ago; Europe, 1,400 years ago; and South America, 400 years ago. |
