The only sericulturist in Taiwan, China, Tu Quanming, fights to keep the island's silk industry alive
Recently, low-priced silk quilts have been circulating on the market, with rumors claiming that "Taiwan's only silkworm farmer, Tu Chuan-ming, has unsold silk quilts" being sold at a low price. Tu Chuan-ming and his wife clarified that this is absolutely not true. "In three days I received nearly 30,000 calls from customers asking whether this was true - I went crazy answering them." Tu Chuan-ming stated that currently silk quilt orders cannot even be completed, so there is no such thing as unsold stock. However, while others casually use the slogan "Taiwan's only silkworm farmer Tu Chuan-ming" to commit fraud, behind Tu Chuan-ming lies the entire story of the silk industry's prosperity and decline.
Establishing an ecological education sericulture farm, optimistically continuing to promote
Because Tu Chuan-ming's silk quilts are all purely handmade, using genuine Taiwan silk, silk quilt sales are stable. "At peak times, we can raise over 200,000 silkworms in a month," and one kilogram of silk quilt requires 5,000 silkworms; if raised healthily, about 40-plus kilograms of silk can be produced in a month.
Besides silk quilts, Tu Chuan-ming and his wife have also developed other products, such as mulberry leaf tea, silkworm droppings tea, pillows, etc. "In life, you earn a little here and a little there." Now there is also a biotech company researching the water boiled out during processing, which can be made into silk collagen protein, face masks, essence serum, etc. Tu Chuan-ming emphasized, "If the culture is broken and this industry is not preserved, Taiwanese people won't know what silkworms can do, and for the entire economy there would also be great loss."
"I am very optimistic about the silk industry; it is still an industry with great prospects." Based on this belief, Tu Chuan-ming not only works hard himself but also constantly promotes and encourages more people to get involved, establishing Quanming Ecological Education Sericulture Farm, educating the public about silkworm knowledge, and also cooperating with the Miaoli Improvement Station to hold classes, letting more interested people understand and then get involved. However, at the current stage, across all of Taiwan, only Tu Chuan-ming alone is engaged in the silk industry. Tu Chuan-ming stated that the biggest difficulty now is that the government has not analyzed the costs, so everyone dares not rashly invest in this industry, since from the very beginning there must be a lot of capital investment, such as silkworm rooms, mulberry fields, etc.
Japan is interested in using Taiwan silk, but unfortunately production is insufficient
In addition, regarding whether Taiwan silk can have more diverse uses, Tu Chuan-ming explained that Japan is interested in holding an exhibition in Yilan, hoping to use Taiwan's local silk, so he would provide flat silk for the exhibition venue arrangement. But for other uses such as making clothes, Tu Chuan-ming stated that his own silk production is simply not enough. "We are still working on September silk quilt orders because raw materials are insufficient." He hopes the government can continue to guide more people into the silk industry, so that each region's silk products can have someone to supply them. "Otherwise we simply cannot develop every type; raw materials, manpower, and financial resources are all insufficient."