More silk quilts, fewer silkworm farmers
Foodthink says
In 1924, Fei Dasheng and the teachers and students of the Jiangsu Provincial Girls’ Sericulture School arrived at Kaixiangong Village in Wujiang County and established the Silk Improvement Society, which has now existed for nearly a century. Later, the experiences of this cooperative were documented by Fei Dasheng’s younger brother, Fei Xiaotong, in his doctoral thesis—the later-famous *Peasant Life in China*—which also served as the narrative basis for Fei Xiaotong’s novel, *The Cocoon*.
In May this year, at a reading group session organised by Foodthink on *Peasant Life in China* and *The Cocoon*, we invited Yu Jiangang from Zhenghebang, a silk-producing village in Jiaxing, to provide an overview of the silk industry reforms in Kaixiangong Village and the various developmental stages of the industry in the modern era. He also shared why, in a 21st century where sericulture culture is in decline, he decided to return to his hometown to produce artisanal silk quilts and preserve the traditional craft.
– Click to read –
China is the birthplace of silk, and while history is replete with writings on the subject, I have a particular fondness for a line from *Mencius, King Hui of Liang I*: “On a homestead of five *mu*, if one plants mulberry trees, fifty people may be clothed in silk.” It is a phrase that possesses a profound humanistic essence.
In the millennia that followed, silk became one of China’s most vital export commodities, giving rise to the famous Silk Road; in more recent times, the livelihoods of countless silkworm farmers in the Jiangnan region depended upon it.
In the 1920s, traditional cottage-industry silk production was dealt a severe blow by the onset of large-scale industrialisation, forcing a struggle for survival amidst the crisis. Over the century since, China’s silk industry has evolved in various ways, and I believe this history can be divided into the following three stages.
I. Learning from the Enemy
To revive the domestic silk industry and strive for national independence, China sent students to Japan on numerous occasions to master new silk-making techniques; among them was Fei Dasheng, the elder sister of Fei Xiaotong. In 1924, Fei Dasheng and the modern sericulture educator Zheng Bijian began a 14-year project of rural silk development in Kaixiangong Village, Wujiang County, Jiangsu Province—an endeavour that can be described as an experiment in humanitarian economics.
During the 1920s, a period of plummeting silk prices, a series of reforms were introduced to boost the income and autonomy of silkworm farmers. By experimenting with hybridisation to improve breeds, training villagers in scientific methods to prevent disease and regulate temperature and humidity, and implementing the “collective rearing of young silkworms”, cocoon production in Kaixiangong Village increased by at least 40% over traditional methods.
To improve the uniformity and consistency of local silk fibres, the sericulture school introduced improved wooden machinery to replace outdated equipment, alongside technical training for farmers. In this way, even as farmers continued to reel silk in their own homes, product quality could be standardised to some degree.
Out of necessity, and to secure the livelihoods of the silkworm farmers, the silk-based rural reconstruction in Kaixiangong Village turned towards industrial silk production.
II. From Cottage Industry to Rural Industry
With these aspirations, Kaixiangong Village established a cooperative factory in 1929, purchasing steam-powered reeling machinery. Both the raw materials and the labour were provided by the members of the cooperative.
The introduction of mechanical power certainly improved the industrial suitability of raw silk for weaving, while fundamentally altering the traditional cottage industry structure of Kaixian Gong Village.
Chapter 12 of *The Economy of Jiangcun* cites these figures: during the era of manual reeling, at least 350 women in the village were engaged in domestic silk reeling. Once mechanical power was introduced, productivity soared; the cooperative factory required only 70 female workers to carry out all the reeling, leaving more than half of the village’s women as surplus labour and depriving them of a portion of their income.
Consequently, some sericulturists chose to sell two-thirds of their cocoons to the factory, reserving the remaining third for manual reeling at home. Although this traditional silk was less suited to the industrialised market than machine-made silk, the reeling process added more value, yielding a higher income than the sale of cocoons alone.
According to Fei Xiaotong’s statistics, in 1935, 32 young women aged 16–25 from Jiangcun went to work at the Wuxi silk mills and thus lived outside the village; some women also moved to large cities for work. The silk-based rural reconstruction of that time did indeed keep industry in the countryside, but it could not prevent the exodus of the rural population.
III. The Separation of Agriculture and Industry: How Silkworm Farmers Exit the Value Chain
The silk industry is a labour-intensive one; leveraging the advantages of being a populous nation, China rapidly regained its position as the world’s leading silk producer, consistently accounting for more than half of total global production.
During this phase, sericulture remained concentrated in the Jiangnan region. Compared to the cooperative factory in Kaixiangong Village, silkworm farmers of this period no longer performed hand-reeling at home. Instead, they sold their cocoons entirely, leaving state-owned reeling factories to handle subsequent processing, such as the production of raw silk. This achieved a complete separation of agriculture and industry; in fact, a transit “cocoon station” was even introduced between the farmers and the reeling factories.
In the 1950s, numerous state-owned cocoon stations were established across the Jiangnan region. Their primary role was to collect cocoons from silkworm farmers and carry out processing steps, such as drying, before eventually selling them to silk mills.
This prompted skepticism from Fei Xiaotong: “Taking cocoons as an example, if the drying process is also assigned to the commercial sector, the result is truly far from ideal.” Fei believed that this policy undermined the economic interests of the silkworm farmers; by inserting an additional link between the farmers and the silk mills, it would lead to a decline in rural supplementary income and hinder the development of local rural industry.
It is evident that as the silk industry became fully industrialised, the role of the silk farmer in the value chain was gradually diminished.
IV. The Disappearance of the Silkworm Farmers
In the 1990s, the rapid economic development of the eastern regions led to a growing scarcity of land and a subsequent rise in labour costs. This, combined with the excessive appropriation of farmers’ interests by foreign trade and industrial sectors, triggered the famous ‘Cocoon War’, further accelerating the decline of sericulture.
At the same time, China began implementing the ‘East Mulberry to the West’ policy, shifting the primary sericulture production areas from the east to the central and western regions—a move of great significance for increasing farmer incomes and promoting economic development in these areas.
However, during this westward migration, a new phenomenon emerged: ‘silkworm farmers who do not know how to raise silkworms’.
Traditional sericulture in the Jiangnan region comprises a complex suite of labour- and technique-intensive processes: preparing the equipment, inducing greening, pest control (collecting ants), the first instar, the first sleep, feeding, the third instar, the ‘fire’ (rapid growth) stage, the great sleep, twig-feeding, testing the larvae, mounting, cocoon spinning, and cocoon harvesting. The entire spring silkworm season lasts from late April through to late May.
I once visited industrialised sericulture regions and found that the farmers there did not possess this set of rearing techniques. In their partnership with factories, they were responsible for only two stages: planting mulberry trees and rearing the larger silkworms after the fourth instar.
Unlike the young silkworms, which require meticulous care, rearing the older ones is less technically demanding; the cocoons can be harvested in about ten days and then sold to the factory. In other words, through the practice of industrial sericulture, the silkworm ‘farmer’ has become a silkworm ‘worker’. A subtle change in terminology, but a world of difference in reality.
We are currently in the early stages of industrial sericulture, and many factories are already implementing fully industrialised methods, achieving a ‘feed-based, workshop-based, and all-season’ approach to rearing. This requires neither the expertise of a farmer nor the use of mulberry leaves.
The industrialisation of silkworm rearing has stripped farmers of their ownership of the technique and gradually replaced their labour; this is what I mean by the ‘disappearance of the silkworm farmer’.
For the traditional silk-producing regions of Jiangnan, the westward shift of sericulture also signifies a separation between culture and economy.
As is well known, Jiangnan has been the primary hub of silk production since the Southern Song dynasty, preserving a long-standing sericulture culture. However, in recent years, both the number of silkworm farmers and cocoon yields have declined sharply. In my own village, for instance, sixty households once raised silkworms; now, only six persevere.
Although intangible cultural heritage activities related to sericulture and weaving are flourishing, these are often little more than hollow symbolic performances; the true, living culture is now in peril.
V. Silk-based Rural Reconstruction Rooted in Cultural Identity
Initially, we were involved in ecological agriculture, volunteer teaching, and the protection of ethnic minority cultures in the outskirts of Beijing, Guangxi, and Southeast Guizhou. At the end of 2011, we returned to Zhenghebang, my hometown on the Hangjiahu Plain.
Zhenghebang is just an hour’s drive from Jiangcun (Kaixiangong Village). Since returning home, I have visited Jiangcun several times; it was at the Fei Xiaotong Memorial Hall there that I first learned the story of Fei Dasheng. Unexpectedly, the sericulture industry, which featured so prominently in *The Economy of Jiangcun*, had already vanished from the village many years ago.
Much like Jiangcun in the 1920s, Zhenghebang is a quintessential Jiangnan silk village that still preserves the tradition of silkworm rearing. Consequently, our initiative upon returning home evolved from the vague notion of ‘starting an ecological farm’ to a focused effort to revive the culture of silk farming, beginning with the production of traditional handmade silk quilts.
Compared to the vast majority of commercial branded silk quilts, the output of traditional handmade quilts is limited (Mei and Yu produce around a thousand a year). However, the craft is highly unique and provides vital protection for small-scale producers and artisans. Although this tradition is fading with age, we are committed to sustaining this culture.
Many might question whether such handicrafts are simply a matter of paying for nostalgia. In reality, the price of traditional handmade silk quilts is no higher than that of commercial branded ones. Most branded silk quilts use raw silk sourced from the off-cuts of the industrial reeling process, meaning the quality is often subpar. Setting aside the impact of advertising, traditional handmade silk quilts remain competitive in both quality and price in the current market.
From the very beginning, our return to the countryside was an inward journey, aimed at strengthening our identity and cultural connection to our roots. It was not merely rural revitalisation on an economic level, but on a cultural one.
Unlike the homogeneity of industrial thinking, the production and daily lives of traditional farmers are intertwined. Silkworm farmers are not merely tools for producing silk; behind the production of silk lies an entire system of production and living, which I prefer to call a “sustainable agriculture and sericulture cultural system”.
For instance, rice is also part of the sericulture culture. Since ancient times, rice and silk have been closely linked in the Jiangnan region. Consequently, in 2020, we attempted to make traditional Jiaxing zongzi using our own ecologically grown rice. We also intercrop zhacai within the mulberry groves, allowing the zhacai and mulberry trees to share the same land. This reflects the intensive cultivation characteristic of Jiangnan agriculture, demonstrating the smallholder farmers’ cherish and respect for every inch of land.
Beyond material culture, there are local beliefs—such as those surrounding the Silkworm Deity and King Maming—that maintain a deep connection between humanity, nature, and tradition. Professor Fei Xiaotong once reflected that *Peasant Life in China*, written from a sociological perspective, lacked cultural discussion; I believe this may be the most essential aspect of rural issues.
We hope that rural reconstruction, as a more humanised and alternative practice of economic development, remains meaningfully connected to local rural culture, rather than treating it as a mere static symbol.
Back then, Zheng Bijian and Fei Dalieseng left the city for Jiangcun to pioneer sericulture practices—from introducing scientific silkworm rearing to improving manual reeling machines, and eventually cautiously establishing local reeling factories, in the hope of keeping industry within the countryside.
Nearly a century later, we have returned from Beijing to Zhenghebang, just an hour’s drive from Jiangcun, to produce exquisite handcrafted silk quilts and preserve the craft, safeguarding a sericulture culture on the brink of disappearance.
The drive to promote machine reeling and the effort to revive the handcraft of silk quilts may seem diametrically opposed, but I believe their essence is the same. Though our influence is modest, our fundamental aim is to foster positive rural development by reviving silk production—ensuring the village retains its people and its cultural roots, so that eventually, ‘even those in their fifties may dress in silk’.
Text compiled by Shan Wei
Edited by Zeen