#silk

The Silk I Didn’t Know I Came For
Shangcheng District

The Silk I Didn’t Know I Came For

Aug 8, 2026 11 min read

I arrived in Hangzhou knowing almost nothing about its most famous craft. By the time I left, silk had followed me from museums and markets all the way into my suitcase. The old man and I had no language in common. My Chinese was nonexistent, his English was no better, and whatever conversation we were having depended on a translation app, a calc