It seems that trying to find thrown raw silk in China is not so straight forward a process. It is partially an issue of terminology in Chinese and partially because people think they know what you are talking about.
It took me a while to find out, but Chinese hass a few different ways to say thrown raw silk. Just plain "raw silk" was easy, but when I tried to make it "thrown," confusion abounded.
Every seller I found online seemed to use slightly different Chinese words for the 'thrown' part. When I started calling some local silk producers, the first guy actually said X silk is the same as Y silk, which the next person I called completely contradicted. Does anybody know? Solid research was the only thing that solved my problem.
Trying to solve my problem over the phone only met limited success. Everybody told me something slightly different. So, I did the only thing I could think to do so I could get to the bottom of my thrown versus raw silk problem: I had to visit the factories and find out first hand.
Seeing the factories and how the silk is made is quite hard to misunderstand. Words on a page or text on a website can be vague and accidentally convey the wrong meaning, especially when more than one language is involved. Adding the physical dimension into things cleared up all problems of terminology.
One problem is that most of the factories in Guangxi Province, at least in the Liuzhou area, produce raw silk. It seems, the bulk of the silk bought out of China is raw silk, with only a few factories which also produce thrown raw silk.
If nothing else, I can now easily clarify the difference between the two on the phone, which evidentally was not possible before the factory visits. And I learned a valuable lesson: just go to the factory and find out the answer first hand. That is always more trustworthy than phone or e-mail where communication so easily breaks down.
