From Wood, Frances The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia (University of California Press, 2002) pp. 26-35 ISBN # 0-520-24340-4

Chapter 2: Coiled Dragons and Filmy Fleeces: Jade and Silk

Some seven thousand years before the Silk Roads were first given the name, goods were traded between the oasis towns surrounding the Central Asian deserts and China. One of the earliest materials to have been transported from the Khotan area on the southern Silk Road was jade. Since jaded is still transported by road from khotan to China, it may have been more appropriate to use the term 'Jade Roads' rather than Silk Roads, were it not for the fact that, unlike jade, silk was traded over a far greater distance. It was once thought that all the neoloithic jade carved in China came from this area, but other sources have been discovered around Lake Tai in southeastern China. The jade-carvers of the Xinglongwa and Chahai cultures (in western Xinjiang and southern Inner Mongolia) made ring-shaped pendants and long scoops from greenish jade from Khotan as early as 5000 BC. Jade-carvers of the subsequent Hongshan culture (c.4000- 2500 BC) in the same area of northeastern China later described as 'beyond the Great Wall' - a traditional Chinese term for a non-Chinese or outlandish culture - carved hoof-shaped cups of translucent greenish jade, bird ornaments of yellow jade and little coiled dragons which were placed in graves.
….. (Talks about the difficulty in working jade , labor, technology, etc.)… The tomb of Fu Hao, a Shang dynasty queen who died in c.1200 BC, contained more than seven hundred jades, some of which were already thousands of years older than she was.
…..(Talks about how jade remained prized even after metal-working techniques unlike other Neolithic cultures.) …. (Confucius and qualities of jade….)….
According to Chinese legend, the creation of silk is credited to Xi Ling, the wife of the legendary Yellow Emperor who is supposed to have lived from 2698 to 2598 BC. Though legends usually place inventions back in the dim and distant past, recent archaeological discoveries in China have produced dates anterior to the supposed inventor. Weaving implements and dyed silk gauzes dated to 3600 BC were found in a Neolithic site at Hemudu in Zhejiang province, which is still one of the major silk-producing centers in China. More complex woven patterns, including damasks dated to 2700 BC, have been excavated from another Zhejiang site. These finds perhaps help to substantiate the claim made that a silkworm cocoon, found in 1927 at an earlier Neolithic site dated to c.5000 - 4000 BC, had been artificially cut.
Talks about silk in the Han, … Tomb of the Marchioness of Dai and the silk grave goods in contained….
Imperial silkworm production during the Ming and Qing….
Talks about the silk road from 200 BC through Roman times, Roman trade with the East, etc…
Talks about silk production and the silkworm… Moving its head from side to side the caterpillar lays its double filament in a figure-of-eight pattern, forming a cocoon around itself as the sericin hardens. Left to itself, the caterpillar would turn into a chrysalis inside its nut-shaped cocoon and, after a week or so, a fat hairy moth. The moth's exit from the cocoon would break the filaments so that they could not be reeled into a silk thread; thus the majority of the chrysalises are stifled by hot air or steam. Their cocoons are then placed in hot water which softens the sericin…..
Talks about distribution of silk production in China… …talks about care for silkworms.
A Chinese villager describes his childhood memories of caring for his silkworms.