A mother in Wuhan has gone viral online after revealing how her six-year-old son turned their home into a giant silkworm farm while attempting to make his own silk blanket.
According to Chinese media reports, the young boy became fascinated with the idea of producing a handmade silk quilt and convinced his family to buy silkworm eggs online for a DIY project.
The family eventually hatched around 12,000 silkworms inside their apartment, transforming the living room into a makeshift silkworm breeding centre.
The boy’s mother, identified online as “Milk Instant Noodles”, shared videos documenting the chaotic experience, joking that she had become so overwhelmed she “wanted to call the police”.
She revealed the silkworms consumed massive amounts of mulberry leaves daily, with peak feeding reaching around 15 to 20 kilograms a day.
The exhausted mother said she spent her days travelling around nearby areas searching for mulberry trees just to keep the hungry silkworms alive.
“Our living room is completely filled with handmade silkworm houses,” she said online.
“I carry huge bags of mulberry leaves home every day like a vegetable supplier while the silkworms just keep eating and pooping non-stop.”
According to the mother, the project was not related to school homework but simply a hobby she encouraged for her son.
Last year, the child had already experimented with raising silkworms and even made handmade silk fans.
This year, however, he wanted to go bigger by creating an entire silk blanket.
Using leftover eggs from the previous year together with newly purchased ones, the family successfully hatched around 12,000 silkworms.
Inside their roughly 900-square-foot apartment, the family reportedly built multi-layer silkworm shelves using discarded cardboard boxes, with some structures reaching heights of 1.2 metres.
Since May 14, more than 5,000 cocoons have already formed, with the boy eagerly feeding the worms, cleaning their spaces and counting cocoons after returning home from school each day.
The mother explained that fresh cocoons must first be boiled to remove the pupae and natural glue before the silk can be stretched and processed by hand.
Online users were both amused and shocked by the family’s dedication.
One commenter joked: “Parents these days really support their children’s dreams.”
Another laughed: “Thankfully my son never said he wanted to build his own EUV chip-making machine.”
