As part of our honeymoon on the Diamond Princess cruise ship we had three stops in China, those being Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong (I’m never sure if you should include Hong Kong with China or not). At the first two of those we had excursions that included us being taken into silk factories.
They were both interesting though they were primarily used as sales pushes as a lot of these side-trips on excursions tend to be. This is not to say that we wouldn’t have bought some of the items on offer if we’d had the money because the stuff being produced was stunningly beautiful and we got to feel a quilt that was so soft we were within a whisker of making the arrangements to pay for it and have it shipped home.
Yuan Long Silk Factory, Beijing
Yuan Long is just to the north of the large parks in which the Temple of Heaven – our favourite place in Beijing – can be found.
While sales might have been the ultimate goal of the visit we still did learn a lot.
Tian Hou Silk Factory, Shanghai
I would like to make silk fabric in my own design.