The sericulture museum on Pingyao Ancient Street showcases ancient silkworm raising techniques. [Photo by Li Jianping/cyol.com]

The sericulture museum on Pingyao Ancient Street embodies the local sericulture history that dates back over 5,000 years. It is located in the core area of the Liangzhu City Archaeological Ruins, which was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List last year.

The two-story museum was renovated from a cocoon recycling station in the 1950s, with the 1,500-square-meter ground floor to open to visitors on May 30 and the second floor reserved for embroidery studios.

The museum brings the ancient local silk culture to the modern to the tightly-knit cities of Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou and offers information about the species, structure, and planting techniques of mulberry trees. It also shows how a silkworm undergoes four stages of transformation in just 50 days before becoming a butterfly.

A special room will offer visitors hands-on experience raising silkworms, drying cocoons at high temperatures and boiling them to reel silk, and embroidering silk using a variety of techniques. Clay cats in the corner of the room are meant to scare away hungry rats in the same way that cats were used 800 years ago.

The museum also showcases the local silk wadding technique known as Qingshui Simian, in which people would make spotless-white fabric from waste silk, with their quality equaling that of imperial silk.

The museum is located at the entrance of Pingyao Ancient Street and is open for free from Tuesdays to Sundays.