Yanshanliansizhi Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
The place of origin of Liansi paper is Qianshan County; Gao Lian's "Eight Treatises on the Nurturing of Life" (Zunsheng Bajian) of the Ming dynasty listed "Qianshan paper" among the fine products of the Yuan dynasty as "exquisite, luminous, and universally praised." Song Yingxing's "Tiangong Kaiwu" (Exploitation of the Works of Nature) of the Ming dynasty recorded the paper-making situation in Qianshan in several places, explained the Qianshan paper varieties Liansi and Jian paper, and gave them high praise.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Qianshan County lies in the northeast of Jiangxi Province and now belongs to Shangrao City. Within its territory, peaks and ridges rise and fall, the water system is well developed, vegetation is luxuriant, soil and water are well conserved, and moso bamboo is abundantly produced. "A single sheet is not easily obtained; it takes seventy-two handling steps"—the Liansi paper-making process is extremely exacting. The raw material is the tender culm of moso bamboo, felled and taken when, around the time of the Beginning of Summer, the tender bamboo is about to put forth two pairs of bud-leaves. The paper stock must undergo several months of sun and rain to bleach naturally, and the production cycle lasts as long as a year. Liansi paper is made entirely by hand operation, with no physicochemical indices, governed wholly by experience. Liansi paper is pure white and lustrous, fine, tender, dense, and even, supple and resilient, with a faint laid-line pattern; it resists insects and heat, never changes color, and is known as "paper of a thousand-year life." In old times, precious books, rubbing copies of stone inscriptions, contracts, calligraphy and paintings, and fan paintings were mostly made on it. Calligraphers, painters, and connoisseur-collectors appreciate its unique quality and charm, and many paintings, calligraphy, seal-impression albums, and rubbing copies have been passed down through the ages thanks to it. The Liansi paper-making craft is the crystallization of the wisdom of paper-workers through the ages; its transmission forms its own system, containing rich scientific content yet difficult to fully replace with modern technology, and thus is exceedingly precious.
Cutting the young bamboo
The young bamboo culms are cut around the beginning of summer, just as two pairs of leaves are about to appear.
Bleaching by sun and rain
The bamboo is bleached by several months of sun and rain, which is why the production cycle runs to a year.
Pulp making in the bleaching pond
The pond is the first stage, where bamboo is soaked and beaten into pulp; a preparation made from water-flea tree is added to protect the fibres.
Working with spring water
Every drop that soaks, steams, bleaches or washes the sheet must be uncontaminated local spring water, the first of the two technical keys.
Scooping by the water method
Zhang Shikang's water method and his single-operator suspended-curtain scooping keep the depth and the wave under the hand; the old method has no laboratory index to rely on.
Drying and sorting the sheets
Wet sheets are dried on the heated wall and inspected one by one; the faint laid lines and the lustre of the surface decide whether a sheet passes.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The producing areas of Qianshan Liansi paper are distributed on the southern and northern foothills of the Wuyi Mountains, and at its peak there were over two thousand paper vats. The technical keys of the manufacturing process: first, water quality—any water that contacts the material in rinsing, soaking, bleaching, and washing must be free of any pollution and must be local spring water; second, the preparation of the agent, which is made from the shui-luan-chong tree.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
However, the production of Liansi paper imposes very high demands on raw material, time, and craft, and its cost is also great; the craft is transmitted only by word of mouth and personal instruction, and is not easily promoted quickly. Therefore, the Liansi paper-making craft now faces the danger of being lost and urgently needs rescue and protection. Zhang Shikang (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born May 1971, a native of Qianshan County, Jiangxi Province. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the Qianshan Liansi paper-making craft, an Intangible Cultural Heritage project. A Qianshan Liansi paper-making technician and the thirteenth-generation inheritor of Qianshan Liansi paper. Born into a traditional paper-making family. At age ten he learned from elders the craft of preparing raw materials such as the bleaching pond. At fifteen he began learning key techniques such as sheet-forming (copying paper), and became familiar with every stage of paper-making. After junior-middle-school graduation he has continuously engaged in hand-made paper in his hometown, and now serves as a paper-making master at the Qianshan Liansi Paper Transmission Institute. Through long practice he summarized the "three-character method" for Liansi pulping and originated the unique water-method sheet-forming skill; he actively participates in research on combining traditional paper-making technology with modern craft, explored a single-person suspended-screen sheet-forming technique, and integrated modern mechanical processes that preserve the quality of the ancient-method craft into the production procedure. During his work at the transmission institute he successively trained fifteen apprentices, and since 2008 has voluntarily given over a hundred practical-operation lessons for neighboring schools.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhang Shikang 05-2763
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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