During the Spring and Autumn Period, a border dispute between Wu and Chu over a mulberry tree eventually escalated into a regional conflict or even a national war. The butterfly effect of this war reflects the far-reaching influence of silkworm culture on Chinese agriculture.
01 It is rumored that the ancestor of the Yellow Emperor's concubine is the founder of China's mulberry cultivation and silkworm breeding, silk weaving. At that time, the people were generally poorly clothed, and the winters were cold. One day, she was resting under a mulberry tree when a silkworm cocoon fell into her cup.
The cocoon swelled when it met the water, and when she pinched it, a slender filament thread came out. The ancestor realized the truth of raising silkworms and weaving cloth, and led people to search for excellent wild silkworm seeds in the mountains, and personally planted mulberry and fed silkworms.
The special animal protein fiber of silkworm cocoons is used for silk reeling, making this pest, which can only gnaw on mulberry trees, become a necessary "pet" for people to cultivate and weave. Later, people deified the ancestor and respected him as the first silkworm Niangniang.
The technique of raising silkworms and extracting silk that she founded is regarded as the germ of China's mulberry sericulture.
Primitive man's discovery that all things have spirits, and that the insects make cocoons and first become clothes, which indicates that people have begun to realize that natural and social phenomena are dominated by gods. In the Neolithic Age, archaeologists found a basket of carbonized silk thread and a piece of silk cloth on the Yangliangzhu cultural site in Qianshan, Wuxing, Zhejiang, indicating that people had begun spinning and raising silkworms as early as 5288 100 BC.
In the time of the Yellow Emperor and his ancestors, people paid more attention to the development of silkworm production and textile technology, and even prayed for a good harvest by sacrificing to the silkworm god. During the Shang Dynasty, people paid more attention to the production of silkworms and the activities of worshipping silkworm gods.
During the reign of Shang King Wuding, he inspected the silkworm affairs many times, and even convened the Zhenbu historians to divinate the evil fortune of the silkworm affairs to ensure the harvest of the silkworm industry. The rulers of the Shang Dynasty believed that worshipping silkworm gods and ancestors was the best way to pray for a good harvest of silkworms, so they would sacrifice cattle and sheep to silkworm gods and worship ancestors at major celebrations.
In the late Shang Dynasty, the Shang king Gengding set up a special silkworm official to manage the production and development of silkworms. During the Zhou Dynasty, mulberry sericulture was paid more attention, and male farming and female weaving became an important agricultural production method.
At the beginning of the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, the Zhou people put forward the slogans of "simultaneous development of agriculture and mulberry" and "equal emphasis on cultivation and weaving". In the Book of Songs, people recorded in detail the process of raising silkworms, from collecting white artemisia and boiling it into a pulp to soak silkworm eggs, to hatching silkworm babies, to picking reeds to make silkworm foil, and then to peeling cocoons and dyeing and weaving, reflecting the daily life of the people of the Zhou Dynasty.
In general, since ancient times, mulberry sericulture has been closely related to human life. Whether it is the nature worship of primitive society, or the sacrifice of silkworm gods and ancestors in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and then to the cultivation and weaving of men and women later, mulberry sericulture has played an important role.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, people attached great importance to the cause of silkworms, and even regarded food and clothing as the most basic needs of human beings.
For this reason, during the Zhou Dynasty, silkworm chambers were built near the water to hatch silkworm babies. In the early morning of the first day of the third month, the king of Zhou would select the auspicious people among the ladies and maids of the three palaces through divination, and they would preside over the silkworm affairs in the silkworm room.
All silkworm seeds used for silkworm relatives need to be bathed and washed in the river, and mulberry leaves are picked in the mulberry field of the public house, dried and then fed to silkworms. After the Zhou Dynasty moved eastward, the mulberry sericulture has been widely developed in all parts of the Central Plains, in the north and even in the south of the Yangtze River.
Qi country, located in the Shandong Peninsula, is famous for the most suitable mulberry hemp, relying on the independent planting of mulberry silkworms, Qi dominates the princes in a short period of time, its capital Linzi produces Luo, 纨, Qi, 缼, exquisite craftsmanship, gorgeous color, quite a lot of output, ** countries, known as "the crown with clothes and shoes in the world".
The Song State obtained greater economic growth because of the Xiangyi rich in silk brocade, and its monarch Song Xianggong was among the "Spring and Autumn Five Hegemons" by virtue of his own strength when the princes rose together.
Due to the vigorous development of the silkworm industry in various parts of the Central Plains, Confucian sages such as Confucius and Meng, who had always "despised the peasantry", had to include the two most basic human needs of food and clothing in the country's "royal road" thinking.
Mencius believed, "A house of five acres is covered with mulberry trees, and fifty people can be clothed." Chickens, guineas, dogs, and animals, without losing time, can eat meat at seventy. A hundred acres of land, don't take it away, a few families can be hungry.
The teaching of the order, the righteousness of Shen Xiaoyi, the confessor is not loaded on the road, the seventy are clothed and meat-eating, and the people are not hungry or cold, but those who are not kings are not not. ”
The silk fabrics preserved in the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha demonstrate the excellence of the Han dynasty silk weaving industry, which has reached unprecedented prosperity despite the resurgence of troubled times.
As a result, Chengdu has become a well-known silk weaving center in the country, and it still maintains a prosperous situation in the environment of the war of the Three Kingdoms.
China's Silk Technology Monopoly Breaks: Overseas Envoys Steal Secret Skills In the Tang Dynasty, the sericulture silk weaving industry spread all over the country. The official implementation of the "uniform land system", mulberry planting fields became an important part of the granting of land to the government and the people.
Silk fabrics circulated among the people, and private brocade workshops, dyeing workshops and carpet workshops appeared. He Mingyuan, a wealthy man in Dingzhou, opened a silk weaving shop and inn, specializing in the business of Hu people. Over time, land annexation led to the loss of land to farmers, and the silk weaving industry was hit.
After the Anshi Rebellion, the silk weaving industry moved to Jiangnan. Xue Jianxun advocated the cultivation of mulberry and silkworms in Jiangdong, and through technical immigration, the silk weaving industry in Jiangnan surpassed that of the north. In the Song Dynasty, the silk weaving industry developed rapidly and became a tool to encircle external forces.
Jiangnan has become recognized as the hometown of the silk weaving industry, and the silk fabrics produced are dazzling.
The Southern Song Dynasty "Cultivation and Weaving Map" collected by the National Museum of China reveals the official policy of the Song Dynasty to link the distribution of silk with the first silk in order to solve the problem of "three redundancies", and promoted the innovation and industrial optimization of the silk weaving industry in Lianghu and Jiangdong.
In this process, due to the differences in silkworm raising, mulberry planting and weaving skills, various places have formed their own characteristic crafts of silk weaving. These characteristic crafts laid the foundation for the rise of "professional towns" in later generations.
In the Yuan Dynasty, although the silk weaving labor force was basically the same as that of the previous generation, the sericulture growers began to pay attention to the quality control of raw materials and mastered the general laws of silkworm disease control.
During the feeding period, they carefully control the temperature, give the appropriate amount to the mulberry and keep the silkworm seat dry to reduce the occurrence of silkworm disease.
Although the Yuan Dynasty only began to sprout silkworm disease control, it could still burst out with great potential through technological improvement. According to the travelogue, the silk weaving industry in Suzhou is very developed, and the products are exported to other markets.
In the Ming Dynasty, the silk weaving industry chain ushered in an unprecedented evolution. In addition to Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Lianghu, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi and other places have also become important silk production areas. In Guangdong, farmers began experimenting with "mulberry fish ponds", which by the end of the Ming Dynasty had become the largest agricultural project in the region.
Although the farmers thought about giving up rice cultivation and focusing on sericulture, this idea was not put into action in the end due to the reality of valuing agriculture and persuading farmers. During this period, the silk weaving process completed the last technological innovation in ancient China.
The skilled craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty invented a new type of silk loom called "flower machine", which not only effectively solved the cumbersome weaving process in the past, but also made a qualitative leap in the output of silk fabrics in the south of the Yangtze River.
At the same time, the silkworm breeding technology also ushered in a greater breakthrough, and the mulberry silkworm hybrid technology was discovered, which brought more possibilities to the silk weaving industry at that time. According to the "History of the Ming Dynasty", in the first year of Zhengde, the silk of all colors stored in the inner library, such as silk, leno, gold, and flash, were woven during the Tianshun period, which is the proof of the important impact of the technological progress of silkworm breeding on the innovation of the silk weaving industry.
Throughout the ages, Chinese silk has always been a symbol of Chinese civilization, which has witnessed the vicissitudes of history and carried the memory of the nation. This long-standing product originates from a small insect - silkworm, whose life course is like a microcosm of silk.
In the long years, silkworms used their lives to weave gorgeous silk threads, which achieved the glory of Chinese silk. Today, China's silk weaving industry is still developing rapidly, and a variety of exquisite silk weaving products are emerging, showing the charm of Chinese silk.
Silk, a product of ancient times, has never been depressed by the passage of time, but has become more and more dazzling in the precipitation of years. Let us be grateful to this little insect, it is it that has allowed Chinese silk to be passed down through the ages and become a treasure of Chinese culture.