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By DIANA BIRD Rappahannock V%» Special 11 rilcr
The Australian group I have joined to take the Silk Road tour into western China as far as Urumogi got off to a dramatic start today with a visit to Sho Chiao commune, an hour and a half's drive from Canton.
Sho Chiao covers a large area with 68,000 miles ot farm land. Seventy-two thousand people live and work there. The commune specializes in producing silk and fish. Sugar cane is also grown. A tributary of the Pearl River runs through it, linking it readily by boat to Canton.
Mulberry trees grow everywhere, young ones, replaced every seven or ten years. They are kept small to facilitate harvesting the leaves to feed the silk worms. The leaves are hand-picked and stuffed in an orderly fashion into bushel baskets and carried to the worms which.are kept on the lime covered floors of roofed sheds. The lime sanitizes the worms’ environment. There are 2,400 sheds for the silk worms in this commune.
We saw moths hatching from their cacoons arrayed on flat woven bamboo trays. Immediately they are weighed into two ounce quantities and placed on paper covered sectional flats where they begin laying eggs at once. The eggs adhere tightly to anything they are laid on. After ten days the eggs hatch into worms and on to the leaves in the sheds. After being fed every four
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