National Geographic January-December 1984. I-II. [antikvár]

OF THE DOZEN PLATTERS I artfully arranged on the luncheon table, only one commanded my attention—and apprehension: a dish of silkworms. Minutes before at the Liaoning Province Sericulture Scientific Research Institute near Dandong, China, I had watched a golden yellow wild silkworm crawl across the back of my hand. Now it was on my plate for lunch. "Very good for you. Very full of protein," said a silk specialist, his broad smile anchored with gold molars. "Good for high blood pressure too." I had developed a taste for silk as a little girl wearing a silk robe my grandfather had brought from China. But a taste for the taste of silk? The eyes of my luncheon companions shifted between me and the shiny Nina Hyde, fashion editor of the Washington Post, literally covered the world of silk for this article. Free-lance Gary Wolinsky has photographed eight articles for the Geographic. brown beast, the size of a medium shrimp, on the plate in front of me. I temporized by asking the recipe, and learned the pupae were stir-fried in garlic, ginger, pepper, soy sauce, and oil. I had to eat it. Clutching it with my chopsticks, I took a crunchy bite. A smooth warm custard with a nutty flavor spilled over my tongue. I noticed my dinner partners spitting shells of the silkworm pupae on the tablecloth and the floor. I swallowed the thing whole. Silk. The word is luxury itself: sleek, synonymous with splendor, sibUant with luster. The touch of silk on the fingertip evokes the very thread of history, a shimmering fabric of far places. Chinese emperors guarded its secrets and displayed its beauty to foreign visitors. Over the centuries it has reigned undisputed as the queen of textiles. Yet even in this age of high technology, to produce it we must rely on a carefully coddled caterpillar, and therein lies the miracle of silk. In the past year I have woven silk into