Chapter 155: Hatching

However, the villagers did not understand this. In their view, saving their own seeds was a matter of course. Few farmers bought silkworm eggs from outside.

At this time, another boat brought “silkworm egg sheets” to the Shen family. When the boat was unloaded, everyone noticed that the number of egg sheets was very large. An ordinary family would only raise two or three sheets, and at most five or ten. If the silkworm harvest was good, the silkworm eggs from one sheet would require about ten shi of mulberry leaves to sustain them until they were ready to spin their cocoons. This was a great risk for sericulturists who had no or little mulberry land of their own.

Although the “silkworm egg sheets” unloaded from the Shen family’s boat were completely different in size and shape from what everyone else used, just by looking at the quantity, it was clear that it was far more than what an ordinary farmer would have—at least several dozen sheets.

This master of the Shen family was really generous! How many mulberry leaves would it take to feed all these “babies”? While everyone was clicking their tongues in amazement, they heard from Duoduo Niang that these egg sheets were transported from Guangdong, a thousand miles away. They were said to be of the “Guangdong breed,” better than the local Yuhang and Huzhou breeds. Most people didn’t believe this. Better than the local Yuhang breed, perhaps; but better than the Huzhou breed, which was known as the best in the world, that was a fantasy. Who didn’t know that the raw silk from Huzhou was the best in the world? The silk used in the palace was woven from Huzhou silk.

Although Wang Siniang also said that if anyone wanted to raise the Guangdong breed, they could get a few sheets of silkworm eggs on credit from her family and repay them after the cocoons were harvested, most of the sericulturists in the village saved their own seeds and naturally did not approve of this new thing. Not a single sheet of Wang Siniang’s Guangdong breed was wanted. When Shen Da heard this, he felt he had gotten his own back.

Because Duoduo Niang’s family had many women and was not short of hands, she simply became a “seasonal worker” at Wang Siniang’s house. She didn’t dare to haggle over the wages. The treatment of getting a full meal every day and being able to bring back some cold rice was enough to make many families envious. Daqing’s wife was even more resentful and would often quarrel with her father-in-law.

Duoduo Niang seemed very proud of her job. After returning home every day, she would act as Wang Siniang’s mouthpiece, boasting about the process of preparing for sericulture in her family. Therefore, everyone knew about the various novel methods of raising silkworms in the Shen family’s house. For example, recently, not only had they whitewashed the silkworm rooms with lime, but they had also sealed the doors and windows and burned sulfur to fumigate the rooms—this was called “disinfection.”

This was not the newest novelty. The newest novelty was that the Shen family’s silkworm eggs had already begun to hatch as soon as they arrived, and the hatching was done entirely by fire, not manually.

In the process of raising silkworms, the hatching work is especially important. The so-called hatching is to use artificial heating to make the silkworm eggs hatch. In a natural environment, silkworm eggs can also hatch on their own after winter, but under natural conditions, the temperature and humidity are not uniform, the silkworms’ response to temperature is not uniform, the hatching is not uniform, their constitution is weak, there are many sick and weak silkworms, and the cocoon harvest is small and of poor quality. Therefore, China realized very early on that artificial heating should be used to hatch the silkworms uniformly.

Traditional sericulture relied entirely on manual hatching. As soon as the Guyu solar term passed, the “silkworm egg sheets” saved for breeding would gradually show green. This was a sign that the silkworm eggs were developing and about to hatch. At this time, the hatching work had to begin.

The traditional method of manual hatching relied entirely on “incubation.” In the countryside, this was women’s work. They would press the egg sheets against their skin and use their body heat to hatch the eggs.

Hatching with fire was unheard of. Shen Kaibao said privately to Daqing and Sanqing, “Forcing the silkworms with fire, they’re not chickens or ducks. I’ve lived for more than fifty years and have never heard of such a thing. Silkworms are such delicate things. If you roast them with fire, won’t you just dry out the silkworm eggs?”

Even if they weren’t dried out, and the newly hatched silkworms emerged, from his years of experience, in years when the rainfall was particularly scarce and dry around the Guyu solar term, the number of newly hatched silkworms would be much smaller, and there would be a large number of “dried-out seeds.” Of course, if it was too humid, it wouldn’t work either. The resulting silkworms would be bloated, have a weak constitution, and the quality of the cocoons would be poor.

Shen Kaibao once again made a judgment. When the Shen family borrowed money to buy extra leaves, he had said something similar: “The Shen couple love to make trouble. This time they’re going to make trouble for themselves again.”

“What he does is his business,” Daqing didn’t care what the Shen family did. “It’s just that this time, with five sheets of eggs, the mulberry leaves from our eight-fen land probably won’t be enough.”

The Shen family’s mulberry land, which had already been mortgaged, could only produce less than ten shi of leaves. The silkworm eggs from one sheet required about eleven or twelve shi of mulberry leaves. Five sheets of eggs would require at least fifty or sixty shi of mulberry leaves. The shortfall was too great, which meant they would have to buy from the leaf market.

The time when silkworms consume the most leaves is after their third instar. At this time, the price of mulberry leaves skyrockets. A dan of leaves can be sold for four or five mace of silver, with an average of three mace. At this rate, Shen Kaibao’s family would have to spend twelve taels of silver on mulberry leaves.

Twelve taels of silver was the annual expenditure of a middle-class family in the city. For a family like Shen Kaibao’s, it was an extremely considerable sum. But if the silkworm harvest was decent that year, one sheet of eggs could yield one shi of cocoons, which could be reeled into about ten dan of silk. Five sheets of eggs would be fifty dan. In a normal year, they could earn thirty or forty taels of silver. After deducting taxes, loan principal and interest, and various expenses, they could still have about ten taels of silver left over, which was several times the income from simply farming.

“We must buy mulberry leaves…” Shen Kaibao said.

This was as good as saying nothing, because Daqing was asking where the money would come from. The few mace of silver left at home could not buy much mulberry leaves.

“If it really comes to it, we can only borrow from Master Cao,” Shen Kaibao said reluctantly, something he did not want to say.

“Master Cao may not be willing.”

“Why are you saying such discouraging things?” Shen Kaibao finally lost his temper. “When the time comes, we will go and beg him. We are fellow villagers, he will surely sympathize with us farmers…” In fact, he himself was not very confident that Master Cao would be willing to lend him the money. His land had already been mortgaged to Master Cao. Although there would be income after the cocoons were harvested, it was hard to say whether the other party would be willing. Although the sericulture period was not long, like farming, there might be some natural disaster, and it was not uncommon to have no harvest at all.

Daqing did not argue further, but his face showed a look of disapproval.

Shen Kaibao’s family passed the days in this state of uncertainty about the future. Fortunately, it was the busy farming season in spring, and everyone was so busy that they didn’t have much time to think. As the Guyu solar term passed, the silkworm eggs in each family began to turn green, and the women in each family began to hatch them.

Every year at this time, every household would close its doors and not receive guests. Neighbors and relatives would not visit. Even the fierce yamen runners from the county yamen disappeared. At night, married women would never sleep with their husbands. Not only at this time, but during the entire sericulture period, husbands and wives would sleep in separate rooms—it was said that silkworms loved cleanliness, and conjugal affairs would be an offense.

Duoduo Niang was still working as a seasonal worker at Wang Siniang’s house. Wang Siniang also wanted to win her over, so she let her move into her house to help, promising her one tael of silver for a month’s work, on the condition that she could not go home before the silkworms had spun their cocoons. Duoduo Niang readily agreed: her family had two unmarried younger sisters, and her eldest daughter was also about ten years old and could help. Her family had many people, and she was not indispensable.

Raising silkworms at Wang Siniang’s house was a real eye-opener for her. She had been helping her family raise silkworms since she was a child, and for almost thirty years, she had never seen hatching done this way!

The hatching room was both large and bright, with the four walls and the ceiling painted white. During hatching, the requirements for light were very high. It had to be alternately light and dark, neither constantly bright nor constantly dark, otherwise the hatching would be uneven. Therefore, the windows were very large to let in enough light. At night, they were equipped with straw curtains to avoid interference from natural light. The hatching room had a “ground fire dragon” against the wall—she only learned about this after asking Wang Siniang. During hatching, someone would light a fire outside at regular intervals every day to gradually increase the room temperature.

Although there was a ground fire dragon, the room was not dry at all. On the ground fire dragon were shallow copper basins of water, and wet cloths were hung along the walls. One of Duoduo Niang’s main chores was to add water to the copper basins and re-soak the dry cloths.

On the wall of the room hung a glass object slightly thicker and longer than a chopstick, with many horizontal lines carved on it, and a symbol every few lines. In the middle of the glass tube was a red line, which was very strange. It would sometimes get longer and sometimes shorter. Besides this thing, there was another glass instrument, inlaid on a wooden board, also hanging on the wall. Inside it was a cotton-like thing, and there was also a line that moved up and down by itself, pointing to some symbols she couldn’t understand.

In Wang Siniang’s house, a maid would come to look at these things every one or two hours, write something on a notebook, and then instruct Duoduo Niang to add water, soak the cloth, or add firewood. Sometimes it was the other way around: remove the water basins, put out the fire. She was tireless.

Every morning, this maid would also come to the hatching room, carefully take a few silkworm eggs on a piece of paper, and take them to a small room in the backyard. An hour later, Duoduo Niang would have to do this set of tasks again according to her instructions. In the afternoon, she would also have to open the windows for ventilation according to her instructions.

This kind of hatching was very mysterious. Duoduo Niang never knew what it was all about. In fact, the hatching at the Jixian Village Sericulture Cooperative used the “gradual temperature method.”

This maid was actually a student from the Hangzhou station personally trained by Li Yo’er, named Lizheng. Every morning at eight o’clock, she would come to take the silkworm eggs, and after removing the shells, she would use a microscope made in Lingao to observe the development of the embryos inside the eggs to adjust the daily temperature and humidity.

Compared to the farmers’ method of letting the eggs turn green on their own and then hatching them manually, this hatching method was not only faster, but also ensured uniform hatching, a high hatching rate, good constitution of the newly hatched silkworms, and strong resistance. Therefore, before the silkworm eggs in the entire village had even turned green, the silkworm eggs at Wang Siniang’s house had already been moved from the hatching room to the silkworm room, waiting for the final hatching.