How did silk originate?
Once upon a time there lived a Chinese empress, Si Ling Chi, who watched a silkworm spinning its cocoon while on her morning walk through the royal gardens. She dreamt of clothing herself entirely with fabric made only from these fine, shimmering threads. Such was the beginning of the breeding of silkworms 5000 years ago, and even today the principles remain the same. Another less romantic but more convincing explanation is that some ancient Chinese women found this wonderful silk by chance. When they were picking up fruits from the trees, they found a special kind of fruit, white but too hard to eat, so they boiled the fruit in hot water but they still could hardly eat it. At last, they lost their patience and began to beat them with big sticks. In this way, silks and silkworms were discovered. And the white hard fruit is a cocoon!
