A couple of thousand years ago, China closely guarded the secret of how to make silk and raise silkworms. The reason was simple. Silk made up most of the wealth of China. They didn’t want others to find out and start producing silk. Today, you can just watch a YouTube video how silk is made.
The process of silk production is known as sericulture. It involves extracting raw silk by cultivating the silkworms on mulberry leaves. Once they start pupating in their cocoons, they are dissolved in boiling water. These allows us to extract individual long fibers and add them to the spinning reel.
Some people find silk production a cruel process. Tens of millions of silk moths are boiled alive every year.
