012 我的丝绸工人生涯

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My name is Zhang Mei Jin, and I am a 22-year-old silk

worker living in Guangdong Province, China.

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The year is 1880 and China trades many goods worldwide, especially silk

现在是1880年，中国与世界各地进行许多商品贸易，特别是丝绸。

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Part of the Pearl River Delta is located here, which makes this area

one of China's most important sources of silk.

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The river is rich with sand and mud, and this material

fertilizes the mulberry trees.

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We use mulberry leaves to feed the silkworms that produce the silk

我们用桑叶来喂养产丝的蚕。

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Most of the women in my village work in the silk industry

including my grandmother and mother,

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and our expertise has given us more power and independence

我们的专业技能给了我们更多力量和独立。

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After all, without the women silk workers, how can our village survive?

毕竟，没有这些女性丝绸工人，我们的村庄怎么可能生存下去？

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Chinese silk has been regarded as the best in the world

for many centuries and is in high demand.

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Perhaps you know of the Silk Road?

也许你知道丝绸之路吧？

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The Silk Road allowed our ancestors to trade many different types of goods

with foreign merchants, but silk was always China's main commodity.

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So China guarded the secret of its silk carefully

所以中国小心翼翼地守护着丝绸的秘密。

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Taking a silkworm out of China was forbidden, but many foreigners still

tried to obtain our precious Chinese silkworms.

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Long ago the ones who tried to smuggle silkworms

out of the country were executed,

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so it was many centuries before anyone learned the secret of Chinese silk

所以过了许多世纪，才有人学到中国丝绸的秘密。

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A silkworm is a caterpillar, and when this caterpillar becomes an adult

moth, the female lays three hundred to five hundred eggs.

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These eggs are so tiny that 35,000 of them weigh only 28 grams

这些卵非常小，三万五千颗加起来只重二十八克。

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As soon as the eggs hatch, the young silkworms are placed on wooden trays

and these trays are stacked on top of each other inside a dry farmhouse.

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Fresh, shredded mulberry leaves are sprinkled on top of

the young worms, and they eat and eat.

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When I was seven years old, my job was to help pick leaves from the

mulberry trees and fill many baskets with them.

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My mother and the other women feed the silkworms every two hours, day and

night, and all you hear are worms crunching on the leaves.

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The farm is quite noisy!

蚕场里相当吵！

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The work is very hard because each worm has to be put on a new

这项工作非常辛苦，因为每条蚕每天都要被换到新的、

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clean tray every day and needs to be protected from bright

light, loud noises, and strong smells.

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The worms don't like to be disturbed or they don't grow well, and when I was

a young girl, my mother never let me even speak inside the farmhouse.

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This was difficult because I had so many questions to ask!

这很难做到，因为我有那么多问题想问！

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After about a month of eating, resting, and shedding their skin four

times, the silkworms are ready to spin their cocoons.

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This is when the workers put them on spinning racks, and the silkworm

builds its cocoon by making a long fiber and surrounding itself with it.

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In about three days, the silkworms look like white balls

大约三天后，蚕就变成一个个白球似的。

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Then, eight to ten days later, the cocoons are ready to

be unwound, a process called reeling.

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Right now I am still being trained by one of my aunts to unwind the cocoons

现在，我还在由一位阿姨训练怎么给茧抽丝。

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My job is to reel the silk threads onto a large spinning wheel

but we have a machine that helps us to do this.

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Our reeling machine is built directly over a large pot of very hot water

and I put the cocoons in the pot to kill the worms inside.

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A long wooden plank, placed across the pot, has two poles that have two

small rollers attached, and a bamboo tube hangs from each roller.

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As I stir the cocoons in the hot water, the ends

of the silk fibers float free.

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I grab the ends of the threads, gently pull and twist them together

and feed these fibers through the bamboo tube.

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Then the fibers wind around the rollers and onto a large reeling wheel

接着，丝纤维就绕在滚轮上，再卷到大缫丝轮上。

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When the fiber of the cocoon is completely unwound

only the dead insect is left.

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Silk reeling is very tricky, and it takes years of

experience to learn how to do it just right.

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One silkworm can make a strand of silk about one thousand meters

long—the longer the strand, the better the silk.

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If a strand is too short, the quality of the silk suffers

如果一根丝太短，丝的品质就会打折扣。

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Remember, the best-quality silk thread is one that is

reeled continuously in one long strand,

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which means I cannot break the fragile thread as I am handling it

这就是说，操作时我不能把这根脆弱的丝弄断。

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I have heard that automatic machines powered by steam are being used now

我听说，现在已经有蒸汽驱动的自动机器在用了，

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because they can reel many cocoons at a time

and unwind the silk more quickly.

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Businessmen are building large factories near cities and

employing hundreds of women to work in them.

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But these factories are very noisy and some silk workers

have gotten injured using the machines.

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Many of our friends and neighbors have left our

village to find work in the factories.

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We miss them, but my family is content to stay here and stick to the older

traditions because we take pride in quality more than quantity.

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In my village silk making is so much more than just making a profit;

we view our work as a spiritual exercise.

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Whether it is collecting the cocoons, unwinding the threads, or even

spinning the silk, each movement is done precisely and slowly.

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This is why the Chinese martial art tai chi chuan includes

exercises from silk-reeling techniques.

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Practicing tai chi silk-reeling exercises helps a person to move

slowly, smoothly, evenly, and continuously,

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and prepares the body to make gentle yet accurate movements

并让身体做好准备，做出柔和而精准的动作。

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We are totally dedicated to our art, so it is not surprising that the

silk from Guangdong is considered to be superior.

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Making silk is a unique tradition of my village, my people, and my country

制丝是我家乡、我的人民和我的国家的一项独特传统。

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I am proud it is part of my heritage and hope that one day I can learn all

the skills needed to become a proficient silk worker.

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Sadly the way silk is being made is changing

遗憾的是，制丝的方式正在改变，

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but I hope that silk making will always be considered a noble art

and that one day my children will learn it too.