Leizu, the wife of the Yellow Emperor – the First Silkworm Empress. Legend has it that Leizu, the wife of the Yellow Emperor, invented sericulture. One time, Leizu was drinking water in the wild mulberry forest. A wild silkworm cocoon fell from the tree and fell into the water bowl. When he fished it out from a branch, the silkworm silk hung out, and it was continuous and growing longer. Leizu used it to spin thread. Weaved clothes and began to tame wild silkworms. Leizu was worshiped as the ancestor of silkworms by later generations. Throughout the dynasties, there were rituals of queens and concubines offering sacrifices to the ancestors of silkworms.
In Shengze Town, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, there is still an ancient silkworm temple built in the seventh year of Daoguang reign (1827) in the Qing Dynasty. It is the only remaining temple that worships the sericulture culture, but it also shows that at least in the late Qing Dynasty, there were still The legacy of worshiping the ancestors of silkworms was that until 1949, some silkworm temples similar to the ancestors of silkworms could still be seen in many sericulture areas, but they also enshrined the “ancestor of silkworms” Leizu. There is also the Leizu Temple in Xiangfu Temple Lane in Suzhou, where the Suzhou silk weaving industry pays homage to the founder of the Suzhou silk weaving industry, Xuanyuan Huangdi (2697 BC-2599 BC).
In Suzhou folklore, Leizu became the youngest of the three daughters of Emperor Xuanyuan, and was affectionately called the third girl by folk silkworm farmers. Legend has it that Emperor Xuanyuan invented the loom for weaving silk with the help of the twelve divine beasts in heaven. He was inspired by the grate used by the three girls to comb their hair and invented the reed, so that the warp threads would no longer be cut during the weaving process. These legends, like other agricultural inventions, attribute them to one or two heroic figures in prehistoric times. Although there is no evidence, they still retain some historical facts.
There is also a very touching myth about the origin of sericulture in “Sou Shen Ji” (ancient Chinese myths and folklore, written by Gan Bao of the Jin Dynasty):
It is said that in ancient times, there lived a father and a daughter in Shu. The father went out to work, leaving his daughter at home to raise horses. For a long time, the daughter missed her father and told the circus that if she could find her father back, she would marry him. After hearing this, the horse broke free from the reins and ran away. After many twists and turns, it finally found its father, and looked in the direction of home and screamed in agony. The father was greatly surprised. Knowing that something was going on at home, he rode back home. The horse refused to eat after returning home and would clap its hooves every time his daughter came in and out. The father felt strange and asked his daughter what was going on, and she told him the truth. The father thought this was a disgrace to the family, so he shot the horse with an arrow and dried the horse’s skin in the courtyard.
This story slowly spread, and one day, my daughter and her neighbor’s girlfriend came to the horsehide again and laughed: “Why do you, a beast, marry a woman? Why bother to get yourself killed?” Who knows when the words have just finished? , the horsehide suddenly flew up and swept her daughter away. The father searched everywhere and found them on a big tree a few days later. The daughter and the horsehide turned into silkworms at the same time and lived in the tree. Their cocoons were thick and large. The girlfriend next door took some of them to raise and weave silk, and this is where silkworm rearing and silk weaving came from.
