Cocoons bob in boiling water as silk is rapidly teased out, spinning on reels skillfully operated by women in Vietnam’s Co Chat village of Nam Dinh Province, where households have been making thread for more than a century. AFP reports.
The village in Nam Dinh province, two hours south of the capital Hanoi, is nearing the end of silk production season.
According to AFP, dozens of workers, mostly women, in the bustling workshops stir the vats, gently unwinding the fibre from the cocoons through clouds of rising steam.
Silkworms mature and weave silk fiber to form cocoons. Around 20 to 25 days later the cocoons are harvested to be reeled and spun into raw silk. @ VNExpress
Once the yellow and white fibers are spun onto wooden reels, workers hang them in the sun to dry.
“Production from the silkworm cocoons depends 90 percent on the weather,” says workshop owner Pham Van Ba, whose family has been spinning thread for three generations.
“Our products will be ruined” if it’s not dried under the sun, he tells AFP, explaining that even good quality thread can be marred by inclement weather.
Silkworm cocoons are put into boiling water before silk fibre is unwound from them. After collecting this in reels, it is washed and rid of impurities and thrown, which means to twist or wind, into threads. @ VNExpress
Around 30 kilograms of cocoons are processed by each worker every day, and the final threads are sold to traders exporting to Laos and Thailand.
While a few households have invested in modern silk-reeling machines, the majority choose to unwind the cocoons using chopsticks, even if it means sweating through the summer heat in stuffy workshops.
Doing it manually makes it easier to salvage usable silk thread from cocoons even if they are not good, Ba says.
Each labor earns around $10 a day, but worker Tran Thi Hien describes the work as “precarious”.
Silk production begins around March and April, and ends around October every year. At the end of the season, white silk can be found hanging everywhere on bamboo sticks in local markets. @VNExpress
“If the market price goes up, then we make some profit. Otherwise, it’s only enough to cover our expenses,” the 37-year-old says, sitting next to baskets of yellow cocoons, waiting to be sorted.
“My kids tell me this job is too hard,” she says.
“They will find other jobs instead.”