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Health & Fitness

Brewster High School China Trip: May 25, Day 7

A look into the thoughts of Brewster High School students and faculty as they settled into Chinese culture.

Our day started early taking a bus from the hotel to a silk factory in Suzhou. Thinking we were heading straight to the factory, we were greeted upon arrival by boats for a tour of the
Grand Canal of Suzhou. The tour took us through the canal, which Marco Polo called the Venice of China.
Homes were built right next to the Canal, leaving no room between the home and water.  Seeing homes lining the Canal brought Marco Polo’s comparison to Venice to life. Heading down the Canal, people of Suzhou were going about their daily lives. This brief glimpse
of rural life provided us with great appreciation for the diversity found throughout China.
From workers repairing roofs along the canal to women washing clothes in the canal, omnipresent friendly waves and lack of pretense from everyone on shore made us all feel welcome.

After the canal ride, we took the bus to the silk factory. The factory was set up for touring,
beginning with a brief talk detailing the lifespan of the silk moth. Collecting silk from a spun cocoon is intensely labor intensive.  
Cocoons are first sorted for quality and size. After sorting, cocoons are soaked in warm water to loosen the silk filaments from cocoons.

One silkworm’s cocoon has about 1.6 km (1 mile) of silk filament that must be unraveled and spooled. 

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Several cocoons are spooled together to increase the thickness of the silk thread. These threads are then joined with others to create the final silk thread.
 
The silk factory wasn’t just about making silk. Our tour truly showed us the entire process from silk collection to final products, including retail areas where we could purchase silk scarves and clothing. Silk clothes can be purchased for less outside the factory, but a large portion of clothes, scarves, and ties with the 100% Silk label are actually polyester. The
easiest way to definitively determine if a garment is silk and not polyester is to burn a part of it. If the garment melts, it is polyester. Clothes purchased in the factory are guaranteed by the Chinese government to be pure silk.
 
The final part of our tour was a private fashion show.  The fashion show made us feel like VIP guests. After the show we were shown another shopping area. Very few of us could resist the shopping!

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