Legend says that Leizu, the wife of Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) introduced sericulture (rearing silkworms to produce raw silk) to the Chinese people five thousand years ago. As early as Jiaguwen, where oracles were said to be found on ��dragon bones�� during the Shang Dynasty, samples of silkworm, thread and silk were recognized.

Sericulture is depicted in ��The Book of Songs,�� the first collection of Chinese poetry. The poem, ��Binfeng July�� describes sericulture: ��Sunshine in spring, the birds singing, girls carry brackets, on the path walking, to pluck the rich soft leaves.�� It can be safely concluded that as early as in the remote antiquity, the Chinese have grasped the concepts of sericulture.

Thanks to the journey of Zhangqian, who traveled to West Asia and Europe by the Silk Road, Chinese silk was transported to Europe. Upon seeing this kind of soft and bright silk, the Europeans greatly valued it, and fervently rushed to have it. It is said that Augustus Caesar of the Roman Empire made an entire theatre stir while going to a play dressed in a robe made of silk.

Christopher Columbus even promised to give a silk frock as a prize to the shipmates who found the New World first.

However, at the same time, the price of silk in Europe was so outrageous that even the Roman Empire went into economic deficit because of its vast imports of expensive silk.

Hence, the Curia, a department within the Roman Empire, imposed a ban on the sale and exchange of silk clothes. Nevertheless, because the silk-addicted nobles were strongly against the ban, the ban was lifted.

In the beginning, the Europeans did not know how the silk was produced. They guessed the thread was taken from trees and then moistened by water. When they learned that the thread was twined by the silk obtained from the cocoon of a silkworm, they determined they would at all costs learn the skill from China.

In the 6th century AD, the Emperor of Rome summoned a missionary who once traveled to China. He was ordered to return to China, learn sericulture, make the necessary measurements, and bring the sericulture skill back to Rome.

He arrived in Yunnan, a province in the south of China, and learned that the young silkworms should be carefully nourished with mulberry leaves, and, in this way, the thread and the cocoon could be obtained.

This missionary wasted no time finding some silkworm eggs and mulberry seeds, and he could not wait to go back for his reward. Unfortunately, he mixed up the eggs with the seeds, so he could not properly bury the eggs in the soil and warm the seeds on his chest as he had been instructed.

Afterwards, two other smart missionaries were dispatched to China to learn the skill. These two, after learning about sericulture, quickly memorized the methods and recipes. They brought the eggs and the seeds back to Rome by hiding them in their hollow walking sticks.

The book ��To the West of Tang Dynasty,�� written by Xuanzang, depicts another theory about the spread of sericulture. It is said that there was a small country called Qusadanna, located in West Asia, which was eager to grasp the skill of sericulture. Dongguo, which some scholars believe to be actually the North Wei, let down their request, and strict inspections were carried out in case the eggs and the seeds were smuggled.

The King of Qusadanna would not give up, so he proposed intermarriage to the Princess of Dongguo, in the name of ��solidarity and peace.�� On receiving the consent, the King sent an envoy to the Princess, who begged the Princess to take some seeds with her. The Princess managed to get some seeds as well as some eggs, and hid them in her hat. At the custom house, the officials dared not to touch the hat of the Princess, and, in this way, the seeds and the eggs were brought back to Qusadanna, and later, to Europe.

An ancient print discovered in Xinjiang (Northwestern China), by Stein, a Hungarian of British nationality, has proved this valuable record written by Xuanzang. In the middle of this print, there is one full-dressed noblewoman, with a hat on her head and two maidens on her side. The maiden on the left is pointing to the hat of the noblewoman with her right hand. The noblewoman is none other than the Princess who aided the spread of sericulture to the Western World.