Hello and welcome to Chinese Folk Tales.
This is Bei Bei.
In our past few episodes we've got to know quite a few of the most important figures in Chinese mythology.
Today, we'll talk about someone a little bit less known, but certainly not less significant.
What she invented is something that China is known for.
And there is even this ancient major trait root that's named after it.
That's right.
We're going to talk about silk.
No one needed to teach the silkworms how to spit out silk and make a cocoon.
But they were not doing that for us humans.
Who would look at a cocoon of a worm and think of making a dress out of it?
I, for one, would never have made that connection.
Well, first of all, I'm terrified of worms to start with.
But someone did, and her name was Lei Zu.
As we've seen in movies like Tarzan, the ancient humans wore tattered brown loincloth if they were lucky enough to get a piece.
Many others wore scratchy bikinis made from hemp or even leaves.
They seemed more for social etiquette purposes than for warmth or comfort.
So here starts the story of Lei Zu, a very smart lady who was not satisfied with what people were wearing.
She kept trying to find softer materials, but people's vision was limited to animal skins or plants in this regard,
Like Mr Curious, the botanist, she often went up into the mountains to check out different plants in the hopes of finding something nice and soft, and preferably elegant too.
One day, when Lei Zu was on one of her material hunting expeditions, she noticed a lot of chubby and soft worms munching on leaves on a certain tree.
So these worms were having a feast.
Shen Nong, the botanist, might have been intrigued by the taste and medicinal properties of the leaves.
But Lei Zu, the fashionista, noticed something else.
She saw that the biggest and fattest white worms were spitting out silky white threads, just like the ones spit out by spiders.
They kept spitting and spitting and eventually surrounded themselves with all those threats, making cocoons that looked like little bird eggs.
Hmm, were they edible?
That was probably the first thought, which was reasonable.
When you were constantly hungry and yearning for more protein.
So Lei Zu picked some of those eggs and brought them home.
And guess what she did next?
Yep, she threw them in a pot with boiling hot water.
Poor worms.
And also be thankful that this happened in China, where ovens have not been that common until the recent decade or so.
Or the legend of silk will probably stop at the story of some crunchy white worms.
Anyhow, Lei Zu started boiling these small white eggs.
And unlike normal eggs, however, these ones floated.
What's even weirder, the egg white started to unravel into thin white threads.
So this thing was definitely not food material.
What was it then?
Lei Zu picked out one of the eggs with a stick and examined it closely.
The white egg was basically a ball of threads and they felt rather soft.
And what's the word?
Well, silky.
Shen Nong might have been disappointed.
No food material after all.
But Lei Zu was getting all excited.
Why not weave these threads into a net, a piece of clothing, or even a dress?
How gentle it would feel on one's skin.
Got to have more of these.
Lei Zu ran back to the mountains the next day and found that tree with the white worms.
But the worms were all gone.
What she found instead were soft white eggs all over the tree and with many moths and butterfly-looking things fluttering around them.
Now that's definitely a sight that I will run away from.
But Leizu was special.
She could already envision her silky new dress.
She climbed the tree, picked all the soft little eggs, and carefully transported them home.
Instead of putting all her eggs in one pot, Lei Zu divided them up one pile to be boiled like before the other to be watched to see what would happen.
Naturally,
The ones that were boiled loosened up into silky threads just like before.
Lei Zu unraveled each bundle of threads and separated them into strands of silk.
This took time.
It's very, very time-consuming.
In fact, there is a Chinese saying that when an illness hits, it's like a mountain has collapsed.
But the healing process is as slow as pulling silk threads.
When she finally turned all these silk eggs into silk threads, she held them up against the sun.
The thin threads shimmered in the light, and they were so soft and smooth to the touch.
It was all worth it.
These would make dresses as light as the clouds.
Lei Zu named these white eggs Jian, or cocoons.
The other bunch of these silky white eggs.
Things were happening there too, just not as pretty.
Whatever was inside these cocoons turned into moths and they bit through their little enclosures and flew out into the world.
A few days later, these moths laid eggs.
And then many days later, these turned into new white worms.
And then these started munching on leaves from that same type of tree.
And this whole cycle starts again.
And in case you're interested in raising some silkworms, which was somehow a fashionable thing to do when I was in elementary school, It was a very hard time for me, someone who can't stand worms.
But anyhow, in case you're interested, they only eat mulberry leaves.
So you will probably need one of those trees in your backyard.
Back to Lei Zu.
So she was the one who discovered this miracle.
And she taught others how to plant mulberry trees, how to take care of the silkworms, how to patiently coax threads out of these cocoons, and how to weave with these delicate and precious threads.
Now we can better understand why silk has always been a luxury, especially back in the ancient times.
People were very thankful and honored Lei Zu as the goddess of silk.
Back in the ancient times, silk making had equal status as farming.
And from emperors to the common man, people worshipped the goddess of silk.
Even today, in fact, one can find the author of The Goddess of Silkworm in Beihai Park and the Silkworm Temple in the Summer Palace, and both are in Beijing.
And of course, not to mention the famous network of trade routes, the Silk Road.
All right, in simple eight episodes, we covered food, housing, healthcare, and clothing.
It was now the time of silk and tea.
What else do humans need?
Well, that list turned out to be endless.
What we will discover in the next episode is extremely important for someone like me.
Hmm, what can that be?
Well, hold your guesses and we'll be right back.
Hope to see you soon.
Bye for now.
If you've got any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact us via email at podcast at cricomcn or find us on Twitter China Plus Pods.
