Zhuzhi Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
By the 1950s, Leiyang still had 335 handmade papermaking workshops, with more than ten thousand people professionally engaged in handmade papermaking and distribution; the craft has been transmitted to the present through guild and master-apprentice systems.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Cai Lun ancient papermaking craft is a traditional craft that uses bamboo as the raw material to form plant-fiber paper through a series of manual process steps. The Cai Lun ancient papermaking craft is found throughout Leiyang, with its main distribution area covering more than ten townships that abound in nan bamboo, including Huangshi, Dahetan, Shangbao, Taozhou, Yansha, and Sandu. The finished products of the Cai Lun ancient papermaking technique include calligraphy and painting paper, five-color paper, packaging paper, bark paper for making lanterns, paper umbrellas, and window screens, as well as printing paper. The Cai Lun ancient papermaking technique is identical to the process recorded in the Tiangong Kaiwu (Exploitation of the Works of Nature) by Song Yingxing of the Ming dynasty; its process steps are detailed and elaborate, and the paper screen making technique has also been completely preserved. First comes the paper medicine preparation step, which includes selecting materials, collecting them, steaming and boiling them (with lime water), and filtering out the residue. Then comes the ingredient blending step: the paper medicine is mixed into the paper material and stirred evenly. After that comes the papermaking step: forming the sheets, stacking them, pressing, separating the sheets, baking dry (or air-drying), selecting the paper, trimming the edges, and packaging into finished products. The paper screen making step includes selecting bamboo, splitting bamboo, making the slips, weaving the screen, applying lacquer, and completing the screen. From raw material processing to finished paper, many key techniques - such as the amount of paper medicine to add, the concentration of the pulp, and even the making of the paper screen - have no specific quantitative parameters and rely entirely on experience. Leiyang is the hometown of Cai Lun, the "Paper Sage." At the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, Leiyang built the tomb of Cai Lun and the Temple of Marquis Cai. For a thousand years, spring and autumn sacrifices to Marquis Cai have been established by regulation; craftsmen also worship Cai Lun when starting and emptying paper vats. Luo Han of the Western Jin records in the Xiang Zhong Ji: "North of Leiyang County is the residence of Cai Lun, Gentleman of the Palace Door of the Han dynasty. West of the residence there is a stone mortar, said to be the mortar in which Cai Lun pounded paper." The stone mortar still exists today. The Leiyang County Local Gazetteer of the Qing dynasty records: "Native paper sells in this territory at over three thousand piculs per year; transported by land out of the region it sells at Lianzhou, Chenzhou, Guiyangzhou, Pingshi, and other places at over seven thousand piculs per year; transported by water out of the region it sells at Hengzhou, Xiangtan, Changsha, Hankou, and other places at over ten thousand piculs per year." The raw materials of the Cai Lun ancient papermaking craft are all plants or minerals in their purely natural growing state; it emphasizes the protection of ecology, and it is an important technical contribution of the Chinese nation to world civilization.
Archival Record of Process Steps
The Cai Lun ancient papermaking craft is a traditional craft that uses bamboo as the raw material to form plant-fiber paper through a series of manual process steps.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Cai Lun ancient papermaking craft is found throughout Leiyang, with its main distribution area covering more than ten townships that abound in nan bamboo, including Huangshi, Dahetan, Shangbao, Taozhou, Yansha, and Sandu. Since Cai Lun's papermaking in the Eastern Han dynasty, Leiyang has been the center of the paper industry in southern Hunan; the paper vats of each township are mostly established along rivers, and papermaking households and bamboo farmers are combined into one. The Leiyang Cai Lun Memorial Hall is the project's protecting institution.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Zhuzhi Making Craftsmanship · Zhuzhi Making Craftsmanship · Zhuzhi Making Craftsmanship · Zhuzhi Making Craftsmanship · Zhuzhi Making Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The transmission of this craft relies basically on the oral instruction and personal demonstration of the older generation to the younger, and on master-apprentice instruction to ensure that the Cai Lun ancient papermaking technique benefits the people generation after generation. In recent years, the establishment of transmission bases has enabled the ancient papermaking craft to be protected and transmitted more effectively. Faced with the historical trends of industrial paper and electronic paperlessness, protecting the ancient papermaking craft is a fine testimony that inscribes the historical memory of Chinese civilization and marks the course of the history of human scientific and technological development.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yang Zhanyao 01-0183
- Zhuang Fuquan 01-0184
- Li Faer 04-1858
- Lin Zhiwen 05-2766
- Liu Yanggen 05-2767
- Li Zhijun 05-2768
- Chen Xiujun
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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