According to legend, China people began to raise silkworms as early as 4,600 years ago, so Lei Zu, the wife of the Yellow Emperor, invented silkworms. Lei Zu is an outstanding representative of our ancestors. Under the advocacy of Lei Zu, the history of mulberry planting and sericulture in the Central Plains began. In order to commemorate this achievement, Lei Zu was honored as the "First Silkworm Queen". The Virgin Mary, regarded as the "first silkworm" by later generations, lived in the same era as Emperor Yan and Huangdi, and were both ancestors of human beings.

The recorded history of sericulture was in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, with a history of more than 3,000 years.

There are not only words such as silkworm, mulberry, silk and silks in the book of Yin Renjia, but also some complete Oracle Bone Inscriptions related to silk production.

It is not the first time that archaeologists have found lifelike jade silkworms in tombs of Yin Ruins, such as the tombs in Anyang, Henan Province and the Shang Dynasty jade silkworms unearthed in Subutun, Shandong Province.

There are many poems in The Book of Songs that mention sericulture. For example, "The Book of Songs, Wind and July": "The spring is beautiful, and Amin is ploughing. The woman took the basket and followed it. She likes to beg Sang Rou. " Beautiful spring, orioles singing. Women are walking along the path with laundry baskets, picking tender mulberry for silkworms. This depicts the scene of women picking mulberry and raising silkworms.

Mulberry was planted on a large scale in the Zhou Dynasty. There is a poem in the Book of Songs between Feng Wei and Ten Mu, which says that "between ten mu, mulberry leaves are idle", which means: among the green trees in ten mu mulberry garden, how leisurely it is to pick mulberry leaves.