Chupizhi Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
From the 1970s onward, the primitive papermaking craft of Beizhang Village drew high attention from scholars in China and abroad. In 2002, the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage specially invited Zhang Fengxue, the papermaking inheritor of Beizhang Village, to participate in the 36th Folklife Festival; nearly one hundred thousand visitors watched Master Zhang's superb sheet-forming and sheet-lifting demonstrations.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The paper mulberry bark papermaking craft is one of the important techniques of traditional handmade paper production; Beizhang Village in Chang'an District, Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province still preserves this primitive folk handicraft to this day. Beizhang Village is one of the birthplaces of papermaking; the famous Western Han Dynasty Baoqiao paper was unearthed here. Before the Reform and Opening-up, basically every household here had a papermaking workshop. The traditional paper mulberry bark paper production of Beizhang Village has high craft value: the entire production process uses no modern machinery whatsoever, and moreover uses no paper-sizing agent (paper medicine), yet can still separate the sheets. This production process is extremely rare within China's handmade paper industry and is a 'living fossil' for studying the evolution of handmade paper craft. With social change, the traditional paper mulberry bark papermaking craft has gradually declined. At present only a little over ten papermaking workshops in Beizhang Village still maintain production; the situation is not optimistic, and the ancient folk handicraft of paper mulberry bark papermaking must be protected as soon as possible.
Gathering bark in the hills
The first stage at Beizhang village: paper-makers go into the Qinling hills themselves for the paper mulberry bark that sets how long the workshop can run.
Steaming, crushing and washing
The bark is steamed, crushed to release the gum and washed clean — the most labour-intensive stretch of handmade papermaking and where village practice diverges from machine paper.
Treading, cutting and beating the pulp
The beaten and cut bark is trodden and pulped entirely without sizing additive, an anomaly in Chinese handmade papermaking that leaves the sheet with a coarse laid texture.
Lifting the sheet from the vat
Being able to separate sheets without sizing is the mark of a master at the vat, and the reason the process is called a living fossil of hand papermaking.
Drying the large sheet
Sheets are sun-dried to finished form; through repeated experiment the inheritor Zhang Fengxue produced large sheets of 44 by 92 centimetres.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Beizhang Village sits at the foot of the Qinling Mountains; because of its large population and little land, the local people have since ancient times relied on the paper mulberry (commonly called the 'gou tree') resources of the mountains to make a living by producing paper mulberry bark paper.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Zhang Fengxue (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): male, Han ethnicity, born September 1939, from Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province. Representative inheritor of the paper mulberry bark papermaking craft, a national-level intangible cultural heritage project, in the third batch. Paper mulberry bark papermaking technician. From age thirteen he studied the paper mulberry bark papermaking craft with his family, and could proficiently master the entire routine from entering the mountains to gather material through steaming the bark, rolling and crushing, rinsing, treadle-pounding, cutting and turning, pulping, sheet-forming, and drying the paper. On the basis of inheriting predecessors' experience, he continuously improved the craft, and after many experiments finally produced a large sheet of bark paper measuring 44 cm × 92 cm. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he went to the capital to demonstrate the papermaking craft for over eighty days, drawing attention from numerous domestic and foreign media and scholars. He has demonstrated and taught the papermaking craft in many places across China, and was invited to demonstrate in the United States. He was engaged by the Xi'an Municipal Mass Art Center as a folk artist.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhang Fengxue 03-1393
- Ma Songsheng
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。