Silk factory and store, Shanghai

What I love about the tour was that the guide was flexible. Our entire itinerary was changed as we all had a late night sleep with our baggage delayed. We woke up at about ten, if I am not wrong and was then back on the road at about 11am.

Our first stop was a visit to the silk factory. The places we visited; the pharmaceuticals, souvenier stores, yak beef jerky store, even this silk factory, there were all so commercialised. Everything was well-planned to the likes of the tourist, it just kinda seemed artificial to me. I was immediately thrown into the skepticism of this whole marketing ploy by the end of the tour around the factory because of all these very nice displays and their flow. As we walked into the lobby of the factory, we were ushered into their museum where there were displays of silkworms in jars, silk dresses (for both men and women) that dated from the many dynasties back, the route of silk trade all throughout the world, some traditional weaving machine and there was some workers working on the modern weaving machine, and finally, we see how the silk is stretched to form layers that become our duvet. And well, well, well, what do you know. By the end of our tour, there is the store, and they have specially stacked into a nice pile of their duvets, the ones with the lowest tog, well-suited to the Singaporean climate. These were all in the bedroom section where pillows, cushions, sheets, etc were sold. At the back of this was a door leading us to the clothes section, which then lead us to the art pieces section. I am so in love with these silk embroidery paintings. Instead of being painted or drawn, these ones were being sewn! They were so beautiful and they looked like hand-painted paintings. I am so impressed! I bought a smaller one costing about 680RMB of the hustle and bustle of an ancient Chinese city.


Silk worms


Poster showing the lifecycle of silkworms


Traditional weaving machine


Traditional weaving machine - close-up


Modern weaving machine


Pulling the lump of silk to form layers of a duvet


Extracting silk from the silk worm


These are used to make pillows and cushions


It apparently does not catch fire easily as our guide was doing a demonstration to prove this claim


Beautiful silk embroidery paintings with poems and Chinese sceneries. I really like this one! It cost about 26,000RMB if I remember correctly. 0_o


I have always love horse paintings and have yet to find one which I really like and can afford. This one was also costing many thousand RMBs! It's looks exactly like a hand-painted painting. Sewn painting is truly an amazing art!


Look at the detail of this one! And, there's shading and different tones on these shades to give it the texture and feel. This is such a romantic painting and it's truly beautiful.