Recently, my colleague asked me if I had any mulberry leaves, as his son was raising silkworm. A few decades ago, raising silkworm was one of my hobbies. I had kept a small tortoise, a parrot, an owl, a hedgehog - all of them had come from the wilderness and returned to mother nature as they grew up.

As I remember, mulberries stood guarding our house in the farm field. There were plenty of mulberry leaves, though getting silkworm was not always so easy.

I don't remember how I got the first silkworm eggs. I collected many paper boxes that used to contain injection tubes. The best-looking ones also became my pencil boxes. But only the short pencils could fit in the finger-sized vacancies.

The pencils were naughty - and rolled around as I carried the boxes in my schoolbag. The rubber and ruler were often pushed aside and the paper box would crack.

The tiny ova proved to be better resident than the sharp pencils. The black dots were so little that each time I changed the mulberry leaf, I did not dare to breathe, lest they would be blown out of sight.

Although we lived in the countryside, our parents did not allow my sister, or I, to venture beyond their sight. Getting new mulberry leaves became a good excuse to play among the grasses. But, it also meant a lot of meticulous work.

The leaves must be cleaned with a soft towel before being dried in the shade. Then, I would cut them into thin strips and lay them in the box. We did all the work by ourselves. Our parents were already busy with farm work. They only gave us brief instructions when necessary.

The tiny dots soon hatched and grew into chubby white meaty worms. I had to relocate them into a shoebox, which I placed by my pillow at night. As I slowly fell asleep, the sound of silkworms chewing on the leaves was the best lullaby.

When our parents had harvested rape seeds in the field, the larvae had molted several times and were ready for making cocoons. We gathered rape stalks and bundled them together like a broom. At a corner of the house, we stuck paper on the wall and put the broom there.

Carefully, we moved the silkworms onto their new home. They soon started wrapping themselves with silk and became lovely snow-white balls that scattered on the golden broom.

In less than a week, holes appeared on the cocoons and white moths emerged. I was very curious about the metamorphosis process, but held back from peeking into the cocoons. When the moths laid ova on the paper, they flapped their wings and flew out of sight forever.

When the next spring came, we sent most of the ova to our pals. They were just like us, treating the tiny dots like crowned jewelry. They kept the pieces of paper with the ova in their pockets and took them out whenever possible to breathe warm air on the ova, as they believed this would help them hatch faster.

As for my colleague and his son, I'm glad to hear they have spent weekends in the countryside looking for mulberry leaves, which I'm sure will become part of the boy's fondest childhood memories.

(China Daily 06/17/2008 page20)