Blogging
From Abroad

It would be an inexcusable thing to talk about Suzhou and China without talking also about silk…here’s some photos from our visit to “Suzhou #1 Silk Factory”...I’m not sure how I feel about silk now that I know it’s obtained by boiling the silkworm whole in it’s cocoon, though…it’s a shame, though, because embroidered silk is so beautiful…not to mention there’s a much more humane way to harvest the silk…namely, waiting until the silkworms hatch into moths…

Silkworms chowing down amidst the mullberries…

Sorting out the cocoons…

The sad boiling process…

This machine weaves patterned silk…it’s almost like an old player piano…the wooden sheets folded up like an accordian alongside it play the pattern through the machine, which then appears in the silk…

The finished products…

Yuki and Jillian checking out the merchandise…specifically, the 旗袍 (qipao) or Chinese style dresses…in an interesting side note, if you change the tone of the word qipao from second to fourth, it refers to an air bubble… ;)

On another interesting side note…one of the patterns produced in the factory is on a laptop bag I have at home…purchased, I believe, at TJ Maxx…when I told this to our tour guide, she told me I had to be mistaken…well, what do you think? The first photo is from the Suzhou shop, the second is one of my friend Shari and myself taken at the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC last year. Does the fabric look the same? Anything to make a sale, I guess.