Chapter 1369 - Silk Prices
Basket after basket of white cocoons piled high in the warehouse. Wang Siniang and Lizheng were both Jiangnan women who had witnessed many silkworm harvests in their lives, but neither had ever seen silkworms raised so successfully or so smoothly.
The losses to disease and death were minimal—almost negligible. Wang Siniang had raised silkworms her entire life. In her experience, at least ten or twenty percent were lost in every season. She hadn't expected the methods Miss Li taught them to be so effective. And the quality of the harvested cocoons was astonishing. By ordinary reckoning, this harvest exceeded one hundred and twenty percent—in previous years, seventy or eighty percent would have been considered an excellent yield.
The master's silkworm eggs were good. The methods Miss Li taught were good. Finally, they had results worth reporting. Both Wang Siniang and Lizheng exhaled with relief. They understood how much their performance here would shape their future standing at the mountain villa. For Lizheng especially, who was one of six students personally taught by Zhao Yingong from the beginning—together with He Ning making them the "Divine Seven"—the stakes were high. As the master's personal students, their status in the mountain villa set them apart from ordinary servants. Everyone knew they were destined to become the master's trusted aides. This sense of superiority came with an equally strong sense of insecurity, sharpened by fierce competition among themselves.
With the spring silkworms harvested, Wang Siniang gave the workers a respite. Those from the village could go home. The household servants rested for a few days to prepare for the upcoming summer silkworm season.
In theory, silkworms could be raised multiple times a year. In regions blessed with superior water and heat conditions and abundant mulberry leaves, farmers might raise as many as eight crops annually. Given Jiangnan's climate, four or five crops posed no technical difficulty. In Huzhou, some farmers did raise five crops.
Yet in practice, most sericulture households raised only one—the spring crop. Once raw silk came onto the market in June, their silkworm work ended for the year. One reason was economic: small-scale farming operations had limited resources, and farmers had to balance silkworm raising against crop cultivation and other sideline work. Silkworms demanded enormous labor. Continuous, multi-crop production simply wasn't sustainable for small households. The other reason, and the more decisive one, was sanitation. Traditional sericulture lacked any clear concept of disinfection. Though farmers might clean the silkworm room or brush on lime water, they had no real understanding of what caused silkworm diseases. Disinfection of equipment and facilities remained inadequate. As summer temperatures rose, viruses and bacteria became more active, and disease rates climbed sharply.
Additional challenges involved temperature and humidity control. Spring offered naturally moderate conditions—neither too cold nor too hot, neither too wet nor too dry. Summer and autumn lacked this advantage, demanding active human intervention. Maintaining proper conditions required both technical knowledge and capital investment—resources beyond the reach of most sericulture households, who were typically impoverished small farmers.
In Li Yao'er's view, the fact that Jiangnan farmers generally raised only one crop was a criminal waste of their mulberry resources. With the region's water and heat conditions, raising three crops per year should have been entirely feasible.
When the Shen Da family began collecting cocoons, the silkworms at Shen Kaibao's house had not yet "gone up the mountain." The entire family endured the tension. As they watched the silkworm bodies turn translucent and gradually cease eating, their hearts rose into their throats. This year's success or failure depended entirely on this moment. If the harvest was poor, the mortgaged land would pass into Master Cao's hands—not to mention the debt owed to Master Zhao. What would they use to repay it? Whenever Shen Kaibao contemplated these possibilities, he couldn't sleep.
The fire basins were taken down from beneath the mountain sheds. The mature silkworms had been transferred from the silkworm trays to the sheds. Heat was applied from below. When the silkworms felt the warmth, they crawled toward the straw clusters. A rustling sound filled the room.
This was the first stage before cocoon-spinning. Silkworms that couldn't climb onto the clusters weren't healthy—they couldn't spin cocoons. Even those that did climb sometimes just wandered aimlessly, refusing to spin. At this point, the family could only pray in silence and leave everything to fate.
The humidity in the silkworm room was oppressively heavy. Before mounting, the silkworms excreted waste, filling the air with a wet, strange smell. But this odor was also a signal that the silkworms were mature and about to spin. Despite everything, the family felt hopeful—perhaps this would be a good year.
Three days after mounting, the fires were extinguished as usual. Shen Kaibao opened the corner of the reed curtain with trembling hands. His heart pounded. The whole family gathered behind him, holding their breath, not daring even to exhale.
It was good.
The straw clusters were patched with white—an expanse of snow. At a glance, it looked like eighty percent, perhaps ninety. This was a rare excellent year. Laughter erupted throughout the Shen household. Their hearts finally settled. The whole family's month of hunger, sleeplessness, debt, and compounding interest had not been in vain.
Similar laughter rose elsewhere in the village. The silkworm harvest had been excellent, and most families had achieved yields of seventy or eighty percent. A fortunate few, like Shen Kaibao's family, reached ninety.
Farmers who had been gasping for breath under the weight of famine and debt could at last exhale. They would get through this year. The riverside and the threshing ground filled again with women and children. These people looked considerably thinner than a month before—sunken eyes, raspy voices—but the weight lifted from their shoulders animated them with high spirits.
Everyone began calculating what to do with their cocoons. Part of the harvest would naturally go toward repaying the rice and mulberry leaves borrowed from Master Zhao. Lucky they'd had Master Zhao this year—otherwise it was hard to say how much of these cocoons would have remained their own.
The next step was the women's main show: reeling silk. They would spin white silk, sell it to the silk merchants, and exchange it for silver and copper coins. Owed debts had to be repaid. The padded clothes and summer garments at the pawnshop had to be redeemed. Housewives and men throughout the village sat calculating their essential expenses, determining which payments couldn't be postponed and which could be delayed.
Duoduo's mother returned from the Shen Da household radiant. Though the past month had been exhausting, the freshly settled wages weighed heavily in her jacket—one tael of silver. She also brought back four kinds of thank-you gifts from Wang Siniang, all "good food," which set her children leaping like unbound monkeys. Additionally, there was a bolt of Songjiang cotton cloth.
Her own household's silkworm harvest had also been strong—a full eighty percent. Combined with the month of wages earned while eating at someone else's table, Duoduo's mother became the envy of every neighbor. Raising your own silkworms meant leaving the outcome to heaven's whims. Earning money by helping others raise silkworms was the safer path.
Every household brought out their silk reels. Women began spinning silk, and the sound of reeling machines joined the steam rising from boiling water pots throughout the village. It was a scene of bustling contentment.
But their joy didn't last. The first batch of silk-and-cocoon merchants to arrive along the pond road brought grim tidings.
The first to appear was "Little Pigtail Huang." He'd been sickly as a child, and fearing they couldn't raise him, his family had left a small pigtail on the back of his head—a superstitious precaution. The pigtail wasn't cut until after his marriage, but the nickname stuck.
He didn't own a silk guild himself. Each year he came to the surrounding villages to purchase cocoons and raw silk on commission for several silk guilds in Hangzhou city, living off his percentages. He knew the villagers well and was considered a decent man. Though he inevitably cheated a bit—everyone in the trade did—he didn't go too far. When someone truly couldn't manage and faced desperate straits, he'd sometimes lend a small sum at one or one and a half percent interest, without collateral, to tide them over.
The family Little Pigtail Huang knew best in the village was Shen Kaibao's. In past years, when he came to collect cocoons and silk, he lodged at Shen Kaibao's house. This time, as always, he brought four kinds of gifts.
"Kaibao, are you selling cocoons or reeling silk yourself this year?" Little Pigtail Huang pulled Shen Kaibao aside to sit beneath a willow tree behind the Shen house and asked quietly.
"Selling silk, naturally. How much money can raw cocoons fetch?" Shen Kaibao replied dismissively. Selling cocoons was something only families lacking manpower would do.
"The market this year is bad." Little Pigtail Huang slapped his thigh and sighed, lowering his voice. "You probably don't know yet. In the city, the yamen issued a notice about this year's silk and cocoons—"
"I've heard something about that. But how bad is the market exactly?" Shen Kaibao felt a chill run through him. He'd been harboring dark premonitions about this year's raw silk market for some time. The hardships of the silkworm season and the joy of harvest had briefly drowned out those worries. Now Little Pigtail Huang's words made his whole body tense.
Little Pigtail Huang sighed again. "Very bad. So bad that people will have no way to live."
He was literate and often traveled to the city, so his information was far more detailed than Shen Kaibao's. This year, in the name of famine relief, sales of raw silk and silkworm cocoons throughout the entire prefecture had been contracted to the Famine Relief Bureau. Consequently, every silk and cocoon guild had to obtain written approval from the Bureau before purchasing.
"Think about it, brother. On one hand, the silver for famine relief has to come from this. On the other, from the Prefect on down to the committee members of the Bureau—who doesn't expect to wet their hands? Can the market possibly be good this year?"
Because of this, the industry peers had met and agreed on a public price. All merchants, large and small, including the silk buyers traveling to the countryside, were to purchase at this public price. They could go lower but never higher.
Shen Kaibao felt the blood drain from his face. "Don't keep me in suspense. What's the price this year?"
"Twenty-five taels of silver per picul of silk."
"What?!" Shen Kaibao nearly leapt from his seat. The market price had dropped by more than half compared to the previous year. His heart sank like a stone; his head spun. "They want us silkworm farmers to hang ourselves!"
"Brother, don't get upset!" Little Pigtail Huang said hurriedly. "There's no other way..."
Shen Kaibao didn't know how he made it home. A heavy pall of unease soon descended upon the once-joyous village. After Little Pigtail Huang, several more silk merchants arrived. Their words largely echoed his. As for the price, they refused to add a single coin. No matter how farmers pleaded or cursed, these men held firm. They also spoke bluntly: "If we add one or two taels for you, what do we eat? The silk business is hard enough this year!"
(End of this chapter)