As we all know, China, which has a history and culture of 5,000 years, was the leader of all countries in the world at that time, the Western Han Dynasty opened up the Silk Road, but also opened the door to communication between all countries in the world, for a time the scene of "all nations coming to the dynasty" appeared repeatedly in China, countless countries came to China with large boxes and small boxes of gifts, paid tribute and worship.
Of course, our country does not only accept their gifts, the atmospheric Chinese emperors will often give them more expensive gifts, such as what foreigners want - silk. In ancient times, if you wore silk, you had status, status, and wealth. At that time, people in a certain country even succeeded in smuggling in order to study silk, causing China to lose hundreds of billions of dollars! Who, exactly?
Silk, a textile, is a general term for fabrics that are purely woven or interwoven with silk or rayon. In today's productive forces, it is easy for us to buy silk, but in ancient times, the status of silk was not ordinary, and only the emperor could wear it at the beginning.
Silk is our Chinese specialty, is the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancient working people, it is it, opened the world's history of the first large-scale trade exchanges between the East and the West, with the "Silk Road" reputation, Europeans also call us "Silk Country". Foreigners can not produce silk, silk fabrics are naturally more rare and valuable.
In the "Interpretation of the Name", it is clearly recorded: "Jin, Jinye, is made with great effort, and its price is like gold, so its characters are from Shu and Jinye." The simple explanation is "inch brocade inch gold", brocade is one of the varieties of silk, after artificial processing, the top woven with colored patterns of silk fabrics, beautiful and generous, luxurious and solemn, the price is the highest. What we often call "golden food" is it.
According to historical records, Julius Caesar of Rome once wore a robe made of Chinese silk at a huge banquet, and the whole robe set off Julius Caesar as noble, and the Romans who had never seen silk opened their eyes and let out an exclamation, so the banquet ended, and all the Romans frantically asked where the silk came from.
When they learned that the silk came from China, the nobles rushed to buy the silk of "inches of gold", and for a time, the money kept running into the pockets of China, and this time, Julius Caesar panicked, and he was afraid that the money in Rome was "gone"! He ordered that the nobles should be prevented from continuing to buy silk products, but the Romans were already so fond of noble and silky silk products that the emperor's orders did not work at all.
According to the data, in the 2nd century AD, 1 pound (0.45 kg) of fine Chinese silk fabrics sold for 12 ounces, equivalent to 454 yuan of silk equivalent to 360 grams of gold. Rome spends at least 425,000 gold pounds a year on it. In 301 AD, the Roman Emperor Diocletian even forcibly set the price of raw Chinese silk, which still did not work, and everyone still went crazy to buy.
And you want silk, but you don't want to spend money, what to do? They moved their minds.
The Roman emperor sent several "capable" subordinates to ancient China separately, just to find out how silk was produced, after their "efforts", they knew that the raw materials for silk were waiting for the cultivated silkworms to spit silk knots, collected the cocoons and boiled them, spun silk with the boiled cocoons, and finally began to weave silk, and there was a very complicated process in the middle.
Then master the "confidential" process, and then bring the most important silkworm back. You know, for the technology of silk and the control of silkworms, China is strictly controlled, and it is not allowed to carry it out of the country without permission, and the Romans have begun to "think of ways" again.
They found a hollow bamboo pole, wrapped the silkworm into the mulberry leaf and put it into the hollow bamboo pole, the inspectors on each floor did not feel that there was anything inappropriate about a bamboo pole, so the Romans successfully evaded all the inspections and brought the silkworm back to Rome, and later Rome itself began to study and produce silk, reducing the purchase of silk from China, which made China lose at least hundreds of billions!
This kind of sneaky behavior is really despised!