Buddhist temple and the silk factory

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Today was another wonderful day in China. Because of our concert this afternoon, our morning was filled with two visits. The first one was at a famous Buddhist temple, known for its Jade Buddha statue. At first, we saw similar statues that we had seen in the Lama temple in Beijing. However, there is no doubt that the jade white Buddha, which we saw near the end of our visit, was like no other. The facial expression was peaceful and serene. People came to give fruits as an offering to their spiritual leader. Our visit was short but it was worth it.

When we were done with the temple, our tour guide Julia told us that we were to go to a silk factory. As we stepped in, we were greeted by a young lady. She started off by explaining to us the five steps of the life of a worm. When the worm is an adult it creates a web around itself as it is attached to a leaf. Worms can either do this step alone or as couples. The singles have a smaller cocoon, and the couples a larger one. Depending on the type of cocoon a different process is done to collect the thread which will be used to make silk. For the singles, they have to kill the worms by putting the cocoons in hot water. Then, they take a brush and stir it in the water with the cocoons. The thread from each cocoon gets attached to that brush. Then each thread is inserted in a machine that pulls it until the entire cocoon is unthreaded. My interesting experience at the factory was to pull the sheet of silk just to see how stretchy it was. I and three other members of the group grabbed a part of the silk and pulled at the same time. It was incredible how far we could go. We were then introduced to all of the things we could buy made with one hundred percent silk. A full store of scarves, clothing, purses, and many more were in the store. Carol asked me to pick a present for ABT so I picked out a nice green silk scarf for her. I wish her a wonderful Birthday.

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