How were the chinese able to make so much money off silk?
The Chinese protected the secret of silk production and created massive demand for the product by the secrecy. The rest of the world wanted silk and great efforts were made to find easier trade routes to China in order to buy it. China also had many other items (spices and technology) that were in great demand so the world literally was beating a path to China’s door throughout history. The key to understanding the great mystery and magic of silk, and China’s domination of its production and promotion, lies with one species: the blind, flightless moth, Bombyx mori. It lays 500 or more eggs in four to six days and dies soon after. The eggs are like pinpoints – one hundred of them weigh only one gram. From one ounce of eggs come about 30,000 worms which eat a ton of mulberry leaves and produce twelve pounds of raw silk. The original wild ancestor of this cultivated species is believed to be Bombyx mandarina Moore, a silk moth living on the white mulberry tree and unique to China. The sil
