Taiwan Today

Hard it was to see each other,
     harder still to part.
An east wind with no force
     and a hundred flowers withering,
A silkworm dying in the spring,
     when her precious thread is spun;
A candle drying waxy tears,
     when its flame is fully spent ....

When Lady Diana, wreathed in ivory tulle and trailing a 25-foot silken train, stood with Prince Charles in sharp relief against the red-tinted carpet of the Cathedral of St. Paul in London, her spe­cial luminance enchanted both the wedding guests and a worldwide TV audi­ence, and set tens of millions of young girls dreaming of their own silken wed­ ding gowns.

The silken wedding fashion fascina­tion has roots as deep in time as the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.), when the line in the Li Shang-yin poem, above, first linked the silkworm to romance. For more than 4,000 years, the sensuous silken texture, conjured from the sleeping bag of a lowly worm, has reigned supreme, queen of romance.

China is the birthplace of the silk­-weaving art. Although no one knows for sure when silk was really discovered, one Chinese legend dates its "invention" at about 2700 B.C., in the gardens of Emperor Huang Ti. The Emperor, says the tale, ordered his wife, Lei Tsu, to see what was devouring his mulberry trees.

The Empress found that white worms ate the mulberry leaves, then spun shiny cocoons. She accidentally dropped a cocoon into hot water and, playing with it, drew out a delicate, silken cobwebby tangle. She soon found that single slender filaments could be un­wound from the wet cocoon and wound with others into threads. She had discovered silk.

The Empress persuaded her husband to give her a grove of mulberry trees, where she could cultivate thousands of the worms that spun the beautiful cocoons. Lei Tsu is said, also, to have in­vented the silk reel, which joined the fine filaments into thread thick and strong enough for weaving. Some stories also credit her with inventing the first silk loom.

No one knows how much. if any, of this story is true. But historians are certain that silk fabric was first used in China, where it was originally so trea­sured that it became a measure of curren­cy and reward. The Imperial Court estab­lished factories to weave silk fabrics for ceremonial use and as gifts for foreign powers-so silk also became a means for China to extend its influence abroad. For centuries, the Chinese guarded the secret of their marvelous fabric, including the existence of the silkworm. Impe­rial law decreed death by torture to those who disclosed it.

China's silk production grew into a profitable silk trade with Western nations along the famous caravan route known as the Silk Road, a trail beginning in what is now Sian in Shensi Province. The old silk caravans traversed a very barren stretch of the earth's crust through treacherous mountains and brooding deserts, across Central Asia to Antioch and Tyre; the last lap, to Europe and Egypt, was by water to numerous Mediterranean ports.

As early as the 300's B.C., the Western world heard rumors of the strange worm that spun precious silk threads. But no one in the West was to actually see the mystical creature until about A.D. 500. At that time, Persia controlled all the silk coming out of China.

Then, if another legend is to be be­lieved, the Roman Emperor Justinian specifically dispatched two monks on an espionage mission to bring back eggs of the fabulous silkworms from China. And risking horrible deaths, they smuggled out of China, both silkworm eggs and mulberry tree seeds, hiding them in hollow bamboo canes, thus ending the Chinese and Persian silk monopolies. Over the next few hundred years, people of various countries learned how to raise silkworms and make silk from the cocoons.

The word silk is the sound of luxury itself-sleek, synonymous with splendor, sibilant with luster. It is a yarn from life, extruded by an unassuming caterpillar in a continuous filament as long as a mile. It has been woven into luxurious tapestries, rugs, clothing, and accessories, and has enriched religion, tradition, and ritual. It has dressed crowned heads and garnished glorious palaces, adding luster to the pageantry of the ages.

Although largely replaced by nylon, especially for hosiery manufacture during and after World War II, silk has remained an important luxury material despite competition from nylon and newer man-made fibers.

Eliza Wang, Taiwan's well-known "Chinese-heritage" fashion designer, prefers silk: sixty percent of her brain­-children originate from the sleek, shining material.

"Silk garments, though extremely light in weight, are warmer than cotton, linen, or rayon. Dyed silk has a deeper, richer appearance than most other fabrics. It wicks moisture away from the body and fits the figure marvelously. No wonder it is also dubbed a 'second skin,'" she declares, encouraging women to try more silk garments.

Hou Jung-ling revels in its feel, its look, even its smell. "The odor of silk is magnificent," trumpeted Hou, costume designer for the Lan Ling Theater Workshop production of The Mask, as she buried her face in a lustrous wad of the yellow fabric. "It lives ... it moves ... you know it will react. You want to do something with it immediately, not only be­cause of its sumptuous color, but also be­cause of its feel. Look, it immediately suggests its own design for a costume." She let the fabric fall, and as if by magic, it formed a skirt.

Ironically, Taiwan's silk industry long remained in a basic stage: The island exported quality cocoons and unrefined grey cloth, while local consumers paid high prices to import finished silk products.

The watershed came last October, when Truness Silk & Developing Co., Ltd., a pacesetter in the manufacture of 100 percent silk products, made its formal-dress debut under the brand name B. Mori.

From the comfortable vantage of a cream-tinted chair at B. Mori's spacious demonstration rooms on Taipei's Fu­hsing South Road, general manager Hsu Yen-hao talked about the firm's new adventure:

"Our mother factory, Taiwan Silk Co., Ltd., has been in the silk industry for 32 years, mainly supplying quality cocoons and grey cloth to Japan, the world's number one silk consuming country-mostly for use in kimonos. But in recent years, the increasing preoccupa­tion with all things Western has caused a dramatic decline in Japan's national cos­tume—We have seen a similar decline in popularity for the Chinese chi pao. This year, Japan cut 70 thousand yards from its purchases of our grey fabric. One-third of our machines have already ceased production. If we sit still and stagnate, silk will be a sunset industry."

One and a half years ago, Hsu and his firm decided to meet the challenge head on.

Their initial efforts, an array of versatile fashion items, are on display in the giant-sized glass windows of the firm's distinctly up-class showrooms. Colorful neckties, quality ladies' fash­ions, auspicious quilts (a traditional dowry item for the Chinese bride), and shimmering shirts flaunt the silken beauty of designer originals.

Near a scarf counter, a very well­-dressed elderly lady with an Yves Saint Laurent purse was discussing—obvious­ly, half with herself—the attributes of an Eliza Wang suit dress with hand painted peacock in bright, shimmering colors. She was quite emphatic: "How wonder­ful! From now on I can get my silk dresses locally-no more waiting for imports." Her high-pitched pronouncement pierced everyone's ears.

"We are now concentrating on the development of women's ligerie," Hsu continued. Statistics indicating that the Japanese women have a lower percentage of breast and cervix cancer touched off the firm's marketing interest. "The scientists discovered that the findings are directly connected with Japanese women's choice of silk undergarments. But the Japanese are unwilling to release a report, fearing disturbances in the world silk market," Hsu asserted.

B. Mori plans to emphasize consumer education this year: 40 percent of its ad­vertising budget is aimed at just promot­ing silk. "Reducing costs and populariz­ing silk in the domestic market are our immediate goals," Hsu said.

The origins of its Italian-sounding trade name are, suitably enough, in the company's own academically-oriented sericulture roots. B. Mori is the Latin abbreviation for the species, bombyx mori (The first part of the name derives from bombycidae, the family of moths to which the transformed worm belongs. The mori is from morus multicaulis, the scientific name of the mulberry tree on which it feeds.)

And there is academic effort ahead too, Hsu said, indicating the company was intent on research to secure advances in its refining and dyeing techniques.

Remarking on negative reaction to silk's high prices, Hsu pointed out that in comparison to prices of quality man­-made fiber products, "silk isn't really so expensive, considering all the merits of silk, and the hand-labor costs involved." And an overwhelming majority of B. Moris finished products require special input, such as hand-dyed patterns.

A visit to B. Mori's Taipei pattern workshop, sited on Hulin Street in the Sungshan district, reveals the complexity of pattern production. The overall process encompasses designing, sketching, dyeing, steaming, washing, and fixing.

Tsai Jih-hsin, who studied the hand-­dyeing arts for three years in Japan after his graduation from the National Taiwan Academy of Arts, is in charge of the whole operation. Tsai explained: "Hand­-dyeing deals with myriad color and design variations, and produces a smooth final finish, a far cry from ma­ chine dyeing with its limited colors and monotonous layouts. Our work involves creativity as well as art."

The delicate, laborious hand-dyeing demands an absolutely clean working environment. All personnel have to change from shoes to slippers before entering a studio, whose innards, divided into separate working stations, are equipped with specially-designed wooden frames to hold the ready-to-be-dyed materials. Ample lighting, sparkling from all direc­tions, helps the dyers to bring their artis­tic excellence into full play. An electric dryer, placed user each silk processing station, speeds drying of the stains.

Hsu Chiu-hsiang, a dyeing expert with seven years' experience in kimono work, relies on her mother-in-law to care for her two children while she works. She enjoys the work very much, she says with a smile, even though it "demands concentration, patience, and persis­tence." A David Bowie record flows from a radio on a side table, echoing her upbeat mood.

Huang Yu-hua, who prepared for a career in tourism, switched to dyeing three years ago, and now noted a major difference between her early work on kimonos and present tasks: "The pat­terns for kimonos were rather fixed, while our new productions vary both in color and design."

Taiwan's sericulture industry also includes the governmental Taiwan Sericultural Improvement Station (TSIS) and the nearby Taiwan Silk Co., Ltd., a major island manufacturer of grey cloth, both located at Kungkuan in Miaoli County, the island's earliest silk center.

The early sericulture industry was a state-run business, opening fully to pri­vate enterprises only after the realization here of family-owned farms—within the land to the tiller program, the final phase of the Republic of China's land reform.

Founded in Taipei in 1897, TSIS was reorganized in 1945 as a research branch under the Provincial Department of Ag­riculture and Forestry, and was moved to Kungkuan in 1977.

Warm local temperatures and ap­propriate rainy seasons suited to silk-worm rearing resulted, in 1974, in new sericultural production areas being set up—in addition to Miaoli, Nantou, Yunlin, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pingtung, Taitung, and Hualien Coun­ties-to expand the scale of silk farming management and extend the new tech­niques of sericulture, thereby reducing the cost of production.

In the past, rearing seasons here were limited to spring and fall. But with the improvement of rearing techniques and feeding tools, mulberry leaves can now be harvested four times a year and silkworm generations be raised eight times a year, even in summer.

Liu Tai-hsueh, TSIS's promotion section chief, enthusiastically outlined the details of silkworm rearing:

"Because silkworm raising requires a great deal of care and patience, silk farm­ers treat bombyx mori as carefully as newborn babies, under carefully controlled temperatures, and protected from mosquitoes, flies, and other insects. The fragility of these creatures is evidenced in the following ancient Chinese comments for raising them:

• The bark of a dog, crow of a cock, even a foul smell can upset freshly hatched worms.

• Larvae should rest on dry mattresses. They must sleep, eat, and work in harmony.

• A worm out of sync with the rhythm and transformation of the majori­ty should be buried or fed to fish to avoid any variation in the silk.

• Drowsy, newly hatched worms should be tickled with a chicken feather to prod development.

• The silkworm mother (attendant) should have no bad smell, should wear clean and simple clothes so as not to stir up the air, and should not eat chicory (or even touch it).

"In early summer, a female bombyx mori moth lays from 300 to 500 eggs and dies soon after. The eggs now undergo many immediate tests to make sure that they contain perfect, disease-free worms. About 20 days after they are laid, they hatch out into tiny silkworms.

"Extraordinary eating machines, cul­tivated silkworms increase their body weight 10,000 times in their 25 to 28-day lives. Even respiration doesn't interfere with their constant gorging. They breathe through nine holes in each side.

"They are fed five times a day, the mulberry leaves first being cut into small pieces, then larger ones, until finally the mature worm receives whole leaves. Each worm consumes about three­-fourths of an ounce of mulberry leaf during a lifetime. Periodically (four times) the worms sleep for about a day, wake up and wriggle out of their old skins, which have become too tight, and start eating and growing again, occasionally munching up a cast-off skin."

After the final molting, they scout a place to start cocooning. First they throw a safety net, a light anchoring web, tossing their heads in figure-eight movements. Two glands near the silkworm's lower jaw give off a fluid that hardens into fine silk threads as it hits the air. At the same time, it gives off a gum called sericin that cements threads of silk together.

The silkworm spins the silk around and around its body. It does not stop until the fluid has been used up. Finally, after about three days of spinning, the cocoon is complete. "In that time," Liu noted, "the worm will have moved its head back and forth some 300,000 times and spun about a mile and half of silk."

The worm then changes into a pupa, the third stage of its life cycle. If permitted to live, the pupa becomes a moth in about three weeks, completing the life cycle, or metamorphosis, of bombyx mori-egg, silkworm (caterpillar), pupa, and moth.

When a pupa changes into a moth, it bursts the silken cell and leaves an indeli­ble stain on the silk cocoon. For this reason, silk farmers allow only a small percentage of pupae to develop into the moths required to lay the next batch of eggs. The other pupae are killed. "It takes 110 cocoons to make a tie, 630 to make a blouse," Liu's concluding statis­tics sated our curiosity.

TSIS claims significant achievements during the past years, including improvement of mulberry and silkworm varie­ties, extension of labor-saving tech­niques, mechanization of mulberry field operations, technical improvement of mulberry propagation, and cooperative control of mulberry and silkworm diseases and insect pasts. To broaden the horizon for Taiwan's silk industry, TSIS is now emphasizing research into processing techniques and designs.

Production manager Hsu Tyh-rong of the Taiwan Silk Co. led a tour of his plant, a stone's throw from the Ching Hwa Art-China Co., a manufacturer of fine porcelain figurines (see FCR, October 1983).

At his plant, cocoons bought from farmers, after being sorted for size and quality, are soaked in basins of hot water to dissolve the gummy sericin that holds the silk threads together. Filaments from several cocoons, picked up by circular brushes on a reeling machine, are un­wound at the same time, because a single filament is far too fine to be reeled sepa­rately. The silk yarn is removed from the reel and twisted into skeins.

The raw silk, now much stronger than when it left the cocoon, is still not strong enough for weaving, except as the sheerest material. It is strengthened now by a series of processes called throwing, increasing the twists or adding strands and twisting them together.

When the silk comes from the throw­ing machines, there is still too much sericin on it, and a sericin removing process, boiling-off, takes place either before or after weaving. "The drawbacks in boiling-off techniques are our greatest technical challenge," Hsu remarked.

Hsu completed his commentary with an imperative for the future: "Unless there is an integrated operation of moriculture, silkworm rearing, silk manufacturing, and finishing products down the line, Taiwan's silk industry will eventually lose its competitiveness in the tough international markets."