Silk Market:
China's farming is done on small single family farms. Farmers contract or sell to the state but plant other cash crops. The farmers harvest their crops, keep some and sell the rest. They bring them to local markets or a town or city if close by where they are sold to local consumers (better price). Otherwise they are sold to a consolidator. The bulk crop is hand carried (literally) out to a road and usually walked with a two wheeled cart to the market consolidator.
Below the crop is silk. Each farmer has two to six bags of cocoons. They have walked to the market pulling hand carts or taken small motorized vehicles but mostly hand carts. Their hand carts are out of the picture off to the right.
The big door is the drop off point. The government runs this market and probably most others. They also, like rice, probably set the price. There is a tilted table there onto which they dump a bag of cocoons. The cocoons get processed and the farmer goes to open window shutters at the left and gets a pay receipt.
A farmer about to unload a bag of cocoons. A sample of cocoons are taken from his bag and put in a woven straw bowl to the left for a quick examination for suitability of the product.
The girls at the table further check the samples for weight per 10 cocoons, color, and cleanliness.
The cocoons are made from a single thread the worm spins. They are soft and the worm inside (dead). Just before they metamorphoses the cocoons are heated to kill the moth, otherwise they eat their way out ruining the cocoon.
If the cocoons are acceptable, a large woven basket is placed (lower left) to catch the farmers cocoons. When the large basket is filled it gets weighed.
The middle lady at the table cuts open several cocoons and empties the dried worm onto a dish for examination. She probably is checking for correct worm stage and condition. The guy at the right has an electric hydrometer he stuck into the farmers bag before unloading onto the table. The moisture of the cocoons must be at a specific level to be accepted. The farmer center checks the weight of his crop.
A lady just before this guy had her load rejected because it was not clean enough. She was allowed to spread he load on the floor inside and do a few hours of cleaning to get her load accepted.
The consolidator (the state) brings the cocoons to a factory for processing. The cocoons are softened in a liquid and the single silk fiber unwound; a little less than a kilometer long. Eight are put together to make a thread for weaving.
