Raw Silk Attempt #1

So, my friend Luisa has requested that I bring back raw silk for her so that she may spin it herself (that’s right – she owns a spinning wheel). I had mentioned my task to one of the Chinese students during a class break and she surprised me the next day with three different shops in Beijing where she thought I could purchase raw silk. A group of us picked one off the list and set out to the south side of Beijing to the Xuanwu District. It would seem that this area is being completely remodeled for the Olympics probably because it is the main walking path to the Temple of Heaven (see my earlier post on this place).

After many tiny little side streets and much construction dust we arrived somehow at the shop where we were taken through the main store front, through a back alley, and into their main factory area (which was beautiful).

Side Street:




Front of Shop:


Main Store Area:


Back Alley:


Interior Hidden Workshop:






Unfortunatly, the language barrier failed me and they thought I was looking for bolts of silk cloth. But armed with my Blackberry I quickly found a picture Luisa had sent to me of what the raw silk looked like and was able to get my message across. As it turns out they did not in fact sell raw silk but drew me a map of another shop where they thought it might be sold. However, since the map had no street names and the woman didn’t know the name of the shop we thanked the stop owners kindly and gave up for the day and had lunch.

I wouldn’t even really mention my lunch except you have to see how our dishes were presented to us in wrapped plastic. Needless to say, this was the cleanest restaurant we have encountered in the city thus far.