Suzhou: City of Silk

Yesterday our group went on a day trip to Suzhou, a city about an hour and a half away from Shanghai. The bus ride seemed to take FOREVER, but it was worth it!

We started off at Tiger Hill, which was the burial site of Wu King, Helu, and legend has it that three days after his burial, a white tiger was seen “guarding” the site. It was a really beautiful park and I wish we had had more time to walk around, but we only had an hour since our bus ride took much longer than expected. The group I was walking around with finally discovered my awful sense of direction when I led them in the complete opposite direction of the exit where we were supposed to meet the bus. Oops! However, my mistake made it possible for us to walk along a small yet very scenic river. I’m glad we went the wrong way because it was my favorite part of the park!

After a delicious lunch, we went on a short bus ride to a silk factory. Suzhou is responsible for a large proportion of China’s silk production, so it was only fitting that we got to see how it was done. Basically how it goes down: Silk worms eat (only) the leaves of mulberry trees. So they pretty much just crawl around and eat all day, all the while excreting this string of silk from their mouths. 

A Silk Worm!

Eventually, the worms roll these silk strands around themselves to make a cocoon so they can eventually evolve (can’t think of the proper term here… looks like Pokemon terminology is going to have to cut it for now) into moths. Little do they know that they are just going to be boiled to death as soon as their little cocoon is complete. But anyway….as mentioned, after each cocoon is done being formed, it is collected and then sent through this machine that kind of looks like the machines at Krispy Kreme where the cocoon is “cooked.” This 1- kills the silkworm and 2- loosens the silk strands and helps them become more separable. After this, some ladies will get them out of the water and move them to a different area where groups of 8 cocoons are gathered, and then the silk strands from each one are woven together and formed into a huge spool. After this, I’m not really sure what happens, but I DO know that it goes into a huge machine/loom thing, which kind of looks like a giant printing press, and somehow silk comes out of it. It was really cool seeing all of this because I never realized (or even really thought about) what a process it is to make silk! They had some pretty awesome silk products there, namely the pajamas, but everything was very expensive so I didn’t get anything. When I’m rich I’ll come back and buy all the silk I can handle. ;)

Silk Robe Thing

After this we went on a short boat ride through the city and saw a neat little river town, as well as some beautiful scenery and parks. It was no different from any other boat ride, really, but it was very calm and pretty. I wish we could spend more time in Suzhou, but since it was only a day trip, we had to go back on the bus for our nearly 3 hour bus ride… For some reason, there was ridiculous traffic on the way back. Everyone slept on the bus, but I was productive and read all but 50 pages of Slaughterhouse Five.

This week is the Moon Festival, so we only have class this Monday and Tuesday (oh and we also had class today, Sunday, to make up for it… blah). I think a small group of us might try to go to Hangzhou, which is similar to Suzhou, for a couple of days. But who knows where we’ll end up… I just hope we go somewhere where we can see the mountains and greenness of China.  I’ll write about wherever we end up going, though, and will take lots of pictures!