The first country in the world to plant mulberry silkworms and nest silk is China, and it has remained for a long time. Ancient Greece and Rome called China "Seres", which means "silk country", which is obviously transformed from the Chinese "silk" sound. The modern English word for "silk" evolved from the Greek word Seres.
Around the late Neolithic period, the working people of our country may have known how to use silk. Although no definitive evidence of this has been found yet, some clues can be found in some myths and legends.
Legend has it that in ancient times, there was a family, the mother died early, and the father and daughter depended on each other for their lives. Once when her father had not returned from a long absence, the daughter was very worried about her father and said to one of the stallions in the family: "If you can bring my father back, I will marry you." The horse ran out and took her father back.
Since then, the horse has proposed to the girl in various ways. The girl's father, in a fit of rage, killed the horse and dried the peeled skin in the treetops. The girl passed by and kicked the horse's skin with her foot and said, "You are a beast, how can you marry someone?" Before he could finish speaking, Mapi swept the girl away.
A few days later, the girl was found to have turned into a silkworm wrapped in horse skin, spitting silk into a cocoon on a tree. People call this tree "mourning", and later generations take its harmonic sound, called mulberry tree.
Legend has it that the Yellow Emperor's wife, Changzu, was also an expert in silkworm breeding, teaching people to raise silkworm nest silk, and was revered by later generations as a silkworm god...
Of course, these myths and legends cannot be used as evidence, but at least it can be said that since then, China has begun to cultivate mulberry silkworms.
During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, China has developed a silk weaving industry. In the Oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty, the words "mulberry", "silkworm", "silk", "帛" and so on appeared, and there were more than a hundred words connected to these words.
On the bronzes excavated from the Yin Ruins, fine plain silk and diamond-shaped fabrics often appear, which shows that silkworm weaving became an important economic sector during the Shang Dynasty.
During the Western Zhou Dynasty, silk weaving was further developed, and verses about mulberry, silkworm and silk weaving appeared in the "Daya" and "Youfeng", "Qin Feng", "Wei Feng", "Zheng Feng" and "Tang Feng" of the Book of Poetry.
At that time, not only slave owners were spinning silk privately, but the state also had an official handicraft industry specializing in silk weaving, and the division of labor was very fine. For example, "basket people" and "panic people" are responsible for boiling silk veils; "dyeing people" are responsible for dyeing silk; "paintings" and "performances" are responsible for the decorative processing of silk paintings, embroidery and other decorations.
The state also set up official positions such as "Dian Women Gong" and "Dian Silk Official" to supervise slave labor, be responsible for the inspection of silk quality and quantity, and the storage of raw materials.
Silk weaving technology was further improved, and in addition to weaving one-color and diverse patterns, slaves would also weave colorful silks, such as silk and warp brocade.
Jingjin, with two or more groups of different colors of warp silk directly woven on the loom pattern, one color for the ground pattern, the other color for the pattern, but also marks the major development of China's silk weaving industry.
After the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, china's silk weaving industry has made great progress in successive dynasties. In the long-term production practice, the working people invented and created nest silk carts, pedal three-key spinning wheels, jacquard looms and multicolored chromatic printing and other world's most advanced silk weaving tools and silk weaving technology at that time, weaving brocade, yarn, silk, satin, silk, covenant, ji, Luo and other dazzling silk fabrics, but also woven some of the amazing products known as "heavenly sampling human weaving", which shows the exquisite craftsmanship.
After that, several major silk producing areas were formed:
Qilu region. Qilu grows mulberry silkworms. According to the "Book of Han and Geography", the silk fabrics of the State of Qi during the Warring States period were famous all over the world, "weaving pure and beautiful things made of rice and embroidery, and the number was crowned with clothes and shoes in the world." "Qi (Ji) Yin Zhi Zhen" and "Kang Father's Silk" were all famous products at that time. In the Western Han Dynasty, there were only two service officials, one of which was linzi (Zibo City, Shandong), the capital of the State of Qi, named Qi Sanfu (spring, winter and summer) officials, "working thousands of people each, one year old cost tens of thousands", the products are mainly embroidery.
Henan region. The silk weaving industry area is in the area from Xiangyi (杞县) to Suiyang (Shangqiu). Xiangyi, another place in the Western Han Dynasty, is mainly based on brocade, as the saying goes, "Xiangyi customary brocade, pure women are all unlucky", becoming a special tribute to the imperial court. In the southeast of Xiangyi, there are "articles between Suizhuo, tianzi suburb temple royal clothes out of yan", and the irrigation babies in the early Han Dynasty were once Suiyang sellers. Another source was the former Weiguo land in the area of present-day Puyang. "Poetry, Wei Feng, Luo" cloud "hugging cloth trade silk", it can be seen that "silk" has long been traded as a commodity. "Yu Gong" contains: Yanzhou "Mulberry soil silkworm,", "厥gong lacquer silk, 厥篚织文". Gunzhou is between the rivers and the ji, which happens to be the weiguo region.
The old land of the Chu kingdom. Since the 1950s, many high-quality silk fabrics have been excavated from Chu tombs in Xinyang, Henan, Jiangling, Hubei, changsha, Hunan and other places. In 1957, a batch of silk fabrics were excavated from the Zuojiatang Warring States Tomb in Changsha, with silk of different colors and brocade with intricate patterns. In 1972, a Zen robe as thin as a cicada's wing was unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha. Embroidered robes and colorful silks have also been unearthed. It can be seen that since the Warring States period, the silk weaving process of the Chu State has been very exquisite.
Chengdu Plain. The most famous is Shu Jin. According to the "Miscellaneous Records of Xijing", Emperor Hancheng ordered Yizhou to keep a tax for three years as a cost for the court to weave 70% of the brocade tent, decorated with shenshui incense. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a Jinguan City in Chengdu, which was used to store jin. The Jinjiang River in the city is said to be named after The Maundyaki
Exquisite and varied silk fabrics have not only become one of the clothing raw materials for the people of all ethnic groups in ancient China, but also an important commodity for China's ancient foreign economic and cultural exchanges.
Since Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty traveled to the Western Regions, Chinese silk has been exported along the "Silk Road" to the Western Regions and European countries, winning the favor of the local people. According to relevant historical records, Caesar, the ancient Roman emperor in the first century BC, once wore a robe made of Chinese silk to watch a play, and it caused a sensation in the whole theater, and people looked at it one by one, envious, and even had no intention of watching the play.
With the increasing frequency of foreign trade in silk fabrics, China's silkworm farming and silk weaving technology has also spread to all over the world. According to research, in the early years of the Common Era, China's sericulture and silk weaving technology have been transmitted to the West; by the seventh century AD, it spread to Arabia and Egypt, the tenth century AD to Spain, the eleventh century AD to Italy, and the fifteenth century AD to France.
Nowadays, silkworm species in various regions of the world are passed down from China, and many key inventions in textile technology have been completed or laid the foundation in China. Such as nest cars, foot-stepped vertical looms, as early as the Qin and Han Dynasties, our people have been invented and used, and Europe did not begin to appear similar looms until the sixth century, until the thirteenth century was widely used; the new French Jacquard machine that emerged in modern times is also based on the basis of the ancient Chinese jacquard machine and so on.