| Popis: |
From the 1870s, Jiangnan raw silk, which was exported from Shanghai, was losing its popularity in the European market due to its low quality. The main cause of the low quality of Jiangnan raw silk was the lack of technology for killing the silkworm pupae. Since the late Ming period, Jiangnan peasant farmers and their wives had used light reeling machines to produce raw silk that they could sell to pay their rents, land tax and debts to the silk dealers in cash. Due to the small scale of this household industry and their low capital investment, they could not afford to buy large amounts of cocoons and store them for a long time. They had no choice but to reel the silk from the whole fresh cocoons as quickly as possible because the moth would break through the cocoon within about ten days. As a result, Chinese raw silk had a bad reputation due to its unevenness and coarseness. |
