Sangpizhi Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
According to the Qianshan County Gazetteer, mulberry bark paper was already produced in Qianshan County, Anhui, as early as the Han dynasty, giving it a history of more than 1,700 years. Because this paper originated in the Han dynasty, it is also called "Hanpi paper" (Han bark paper). During the major renovation of the Forbidden City in 2004-2005, handmade mulberry bark paper from Qianshan and Yuexi counties was widely used in the project as a specially selected material.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Mulberry bark paper comes in three sizes - dahan (large), zhonghan (medium), and xiaohan (small) - and is produced entirely by hand. The full production process consists of material selection, steaming and boiling, bark sorting, pulp making, forming the sheets on a screen, and baking. The finished paper is soft and flexible, strong in tensile strength, and resistant to tearing, fading, and moths; it is non-toxic and highly absorbent. It is used mainly for calligraphy and painting, mounting, restoration of classical texts, packaging, and umbrella making.
Archival Record of Process Steps
Mulberry bark paper comes in three sizes - dahan (large), zhonghan (medium), and xiaohan (small) - all produced by hand; the entire production process consists of material selection, steaming and boiling, bark sorting, pulp making, forming the sheets on a screen, and baking.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The mulberry bark paper making craft is centered on Qianshan County, Anhui Province, and extends to the Anqing area. The local mountain slopes are suitable for mulberry cultivation; sericulture and papermaking proceed side by side, so a single household often both grows mulberry and makes paper. The Qianshan City Cultural Center is the project's protecting institution.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Uyghur Sangpizhi Making Craftsmanship · Sangpizhi Making Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The mulberry bark paper currently produced in Guanzhuang Town, Qianshan County, and Maojianshan Township, Yuexi County, is of excellent quality; tested by the China Paper Research Institute, it has basically reached the craft level of the Qianlong period of the Qing dynasty. Mulberry bark paper making is an ancient handicraft with high craft, historical, and cultural value. Handed down through generations, meticulously improved and carefully protected, it is still being continuously transmitted and refined today. Qianshan and Yuexi counties have formulated protection plans and intend to take further concrete measures to protect and transmit this ancient handicraft well. Liu Tongyan (from the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in November 1964, from Qianshan County, Anhui Province. Representative inheritor of the mulberry bark paper making craft, a fourth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project. Mulberry bark paper making technician. He was born into a mulberry bark paper making family in Guanzhuang Town, Qianshan County, and learned the craft from his father and elder brother after graduating from junior middle school. In 2001, he went to Jing County to study xuan paper technique. In 2002, using the ancient single-person sheet-forming method, he made extra-thin mulberry bark paper from pure mulberry bark, which became the paper used for restoring old books at the Beijing Archives and Library. In 2004, the mulberry bark paper he made was selected by the Palace Museum as the specialty paper for the restoration project of the Juanqinzhai. He focuses on making pure mulberry bark paper; the raw-material processing system is complete, and the manual methods - drying, washing, boiling, bleaching, hammering, and baking - have no specific physical or chemical parameters but rely entirely on experience. Teaching apprentices is likewise by oral instruction and tacit understanding, learned through intuition. In recent years, he has done a great deal of work in transmission, training a group of inheritors of the mulberry bark paper making craft.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Tuohuti Tuerdi 01-0182
- Wangbolin 03-1333
- Liu Tongyan 04-1857
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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