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Toshiie Maeda
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China's last factory in home of silk shuts down
The last silk factory in Jili, a small village outside Shanghai celebrated in Victorian times as the home of Chinese silk, has shut down.
A model from China's top model agency Silk Road walks the runway Photo: GETTY
By Malcolm Moore, Jili 9:00PM GMT 02 Jan 2011
Jili has been one of the most famous villages in China on the back of its silk output for centuries.
Its silk won gold and silver prizes at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London and was presented as a gift to Queen Victoria.
The Qianlong court, during the Qing Dynasty, was dressed in silk from Jili, whose merchants grew so rich that their bank accounts held more taels of silver than China’s entire annual tax revenue.
But today, China’s rapid industrialisation, and the industrialisation of the silk industry, has extinguished Jili’s competitive position. The village’s final silk factory has retooled to begin making escalators for shopping centres.
“Jili’s silk is thinner and stronger than silk from elsewhere,” said Shen Jiandong, a 35-year-old Jili native who recently opened a small workshop to make silk duvets from Jili silk.
“But it is difficult to tell the quality of silk these days. Traditionally, the best silk is pure white. This shows the cleanliness of the water. But now you can bleach the silk and you can only tell the difference with chemical tests,” he said.
“And also our water is less clean. You used to be able to drink straight from the river when I was young,” he added.
The 50 homes in Jili lie clustered around a central pool and are surrounded by orchards of mulberry trees. Although the factory has closed, the villagers continue to raise silkworms, using wide bamboo pans to house the larvae before transferring them to a spiky cable, around which they spin their cocoons.
But the activity is more of a sideline than a job. “I learned how to raise silkworms when I was little,” said Pan Huifeng, a 54-year-old woman. “But today we only raise silkworms twice a year because most of us have factory work to do,” she added.
Her grandchildren, returning home from school, professed to have no interest in the silkworms at all. “I don’t care,” said Wang Jianyi, 8. “But I help my grandparents spread the leaves when I have to.”
Mr Shen now buys the cocoons from the village and sends them away to be processed into silk. Then he uses the material to stuff blankets.
“As China has become rich, more people want to wear natural fibres,” he said. “But silk fades in sunlight and stains easily, so the best way to use it is for bedding.”
