Reading — Test 7

Reading passage

The Silk Industry For more than four thousand years, the production of silk remained one of the most closely guarded technological secrets in human history. According to Chinese tradition, the discovery of silk is attributed to a legendary empress who, while sitting beneath a mulberry tree, observed a cocoon fall into her cup of hot tea. As the cocoon softened, a single continuous filament began to unwind, revealing a fiber of remarkable strength and luster. Whether or not this account is historically accurate, archaeological evidence confirms that silk cultivation, known as sericulture, was practiced in China as early as the third millennium B.C.E. The process depends on the domesticated silkworm, the larva of the moth Bombyx mori, which spins a cocoon composed of a single thread that can extend over three hundred meters in length. Producing silk on a commercial scale requires meticulous control over every stage of the insect's life cycle, from the hatching of eggs to the feeding of larvae on mulberry leaves to the careful unwinding of cocoons before the emerging moths can break the filament. Because the technique demanded such precision and sustained labor, the Chinese state treated sericulture as a matter of considerable economic importance, and for centuries it maintained a virtual monopoly on silk production. The value of silk extended far beyond its use as clothing material; it became a form of currency and a marker of diplomatic and social status. Chinese emperors used bolts of silk to pay officials and soldiers, and the fabric served as tribute in exchanges with neighboring states. As overland trade routes connecting China to Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean expanded during the Han dynasty, silk became the most coveted commodity carried along these paths, eventually lending its name to the entire network now called the Silk Road. Merchants transported silk thousands of kilometers, exchanging it for horses, glass, precious stones, and other goods unavailable in China. The Roman Empire developed such an appetite for the fabric that, according to some ancient writers, its importation contributed to a notable outflow of gold and silver from Roman territories. This demand persisted despite the fact that Roman consumers had little accurate knowledge of how silk was produced; many believed, mistakenly, that it was combed from the leaves of trees rather than spun by an insect. China's ability to control the silk trade depended on preventing knowledge of sericulture from spreading beyond its borders. Historical accounts suggest that revealing the secrets of silk production to foreigners was punishable by death, and export restrictions were placed on silkworm eggs and mulberry seeds. Nevertheless, the secret gradually escaped containment. By the early centuries of the common era, sericulture had been established in the kingdom of Khotan in Central Asia, reportedly after a Chinese princess smuggled silkworm eggs concealed within her elaborate headdress upon her marriage to a foreign ruler. Knowledge of the craft continued to migrate westward, reaching Byzantium by the sixth century, when, according to the historian Procopius, two monks smuggled silkworm eggs out of Central Asia hidden inside hollow bamboo canes and delivered them to the Byzantine emperor Justinian. This event allowed the Byzantine Empire to establish its own silk industry, breaking the long-standing Chinese monopoly and reshaping the economic relationship between East and West. Once sericulture spread beyond China, it took root in a succession of new regions, each adapting the craft to local conditions. Persian weavers developed distinctive patterns and techniques that influenced textile design across the Islamic world, while Italian city-states, particularly Lucca and later Venice and Florence, became major centers of silk weaving in medieval Europe, importing raw silk before eventually cultivating their own silkworms. France developed a significant domestic industry centered in Lyon by the sixteenth century, supported by royal patronage. The Industrial Revolution introduced mechanization to silk throwing and weaving, increasing output while reducing dependence on manual labor, though the delicate process of tending silkworms and harvesting cocoons remained largely unmechanized well into the twentieth century. Even today, despite competition from synthetic fibers developed in the twentieth century, silk retains a distinctive commercial and cultural prestige, valued for qualities that artificial substitutes have not fully replicated, including its natural sheen, breathability, and the fineness of its weave. China and India together continue to account for the overwhelming majority of global raw silk production, a testament to the persistence of an industry whose origins reach back to the earliest centuries of Chinese civilization.