Gansu Xihe County still retains ancient papermaking techniques

As one of the four major inventions in ancient China, papermaking is generally believed to have begun in 105 AD and Cai Lun was the ancestor of papermaking.

Thousands of years have passed, and in Zhuliuhe Village, Xishan Township, which is more than 60 kilometers away from Xihe County, Gansu Province, the traditional folk crafts of ancient papermaking have been preserved. They produced this ancient form according to the most primitive technological process. paper. This traditional craft that has nothing to do with the industrial civilization has preserved an ancient cultural message for us, and it has also passed on to the world a civilization that has never passed.

The southwestern part of the village is surrounded by the waters of the Western Han Dynasty, and the northwest is the high clouded Cuntai Mountain. This small village of more than 700 people is surrounded by a pile of eucalyptus trees and is sandwiched between two valleys. The riverside stream is clear. The sound is loud, the cattle grazing on the hillside, the chickens grazing between the hustle and bustle ... ... everything is so quiet, like the paradise of Tao Yuanming era.

When Zhu Liuhe made eucalyptus hemp papers came from no time, according to locals, the history of papermaking in the village was at least 1,000 years. There are now dozens of families doing it, and most of them are old. Seniors and middle-aged people. The reporter saw bushes growing here, and eucalyptus trees can be seen everywhere. It has become an inexhaustible raw material for papermaking. Hanxi Water in the west of the village and the brook in front of the village are not dying in the four seasons and the winter is not frozen. The eucalyptus bark is soaked, fermented and rinsed. , Beating provides convenient conditions.

For a long time, the villagers of Zhuliuhe Village have been using primitive, simple tools for generations of natural, hand-made eucalyptus bark paper in accordance with primitive, complex, and complete processes. This process can be broadly divided into stock preparation, raw material processing, picking, steaming, grinding, cutting, hand-rolling, picking, picking, salvaging, mahjong counting, pressing water, on the wall, tearing off the bundle, There are dozens of procedures such as knife-cutting and cutting. There are slang phrases called “papermaking with 72 hands and a wall with a sip”, and the records in Tiangong Kaiwu are exactly the same.

The name of hemp paper is just a popular name from ancient times to the present. It is not because the raw material used to make this kind of paper is hemp. The raw material for papermaking is made from the bark of eucalyptus. Eucalyptus is a perennial deciduous tree, an ancient name, and also known as a cereal tree. Bark has been a good raw material for papermaking since ancient times and is distributed in the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Pearl River basin regions in China.

The villagers collected the bark for preliminary screening, soaking, and added lime foam to restrict the day (lime can play a role in corrosion and easy steaming), and then put it into a large pot to steam and soften it further by high temperature. The pot of steamed banyan bark is a pot with a caliber of two feet and a depth of about 8 kilos of water. Inside the eucalyptus bark, the top of the bark is put into an umbrella-shaped circle with mud. Then steam for about 8 hours to be cooked, and then boring for 2 days to make the bark ripe. After this process, the raw material becomes clinker. At this point, the fiber in the bark is fully softened to meet the requirements for pulp production. However, it cannot be used directly in papermaking. It must be taken to the place where there is live water. Lime and other impurities are removed, and the foot is constantly stamped in the process to make it more loose and soft.

After washing, continue to soak in the water for 3 days. After the fibers are softened, put them on the stone cocoons and chop them. Then chop them with a file and press the cocoons into a loose shape under the foot of a large wooden coffin. After that, it is put into a stone trough, and the rough round wood is crushed as much as possible to make the plant fibers softer and finer. Finally, they are put into the stone trough to make a uniform pulp.

The final shaped hemp paper was "fished" from a large pool 1.5 meters deep. In the pool full of pulp, there is a rectangular wooden shelf on which a bamboo curtain is placed and two bamboo sticks are used to hold the bamboo screen. This is the main tool for making paper—a model. Here, on the walls of each paper-making workshop, the tablets of the father-in-law of the father-of-pearl are enshrined, and the paper-makers must worship before they begin to make papermaking. The papermaker holds both ends of the wooden frame with both hands, first slightly inserts one end of the bamboo curtain into the pulp tank, picks it up, and then slowly sinks the other end slowly, and quickly removes the bamboo curtain in about 5 or 6 seconds. Up, a piece of paper “flyed out” on the bamboo screen. When the bamboo curtains were gently snapped, a piece of original paper was made, so that the layers of paper were built together and did not stick together. The papermaker remembered the number of papers by flipping it over with two bronze coins. Outsiders simply couldn't read it, making people feel mysterious and incredible.

The Dadi wet paper that is “fished out” should be continuously pressed for ten hours or more with wooden planks and large stones to squeeze out the water. Next, it is the wet paper that is wetted on the wall one by one. After the paper is completely dry, it can be cut and bundled and sold as finished paper.

It is understood that this pure hand-made eucalyptus bark paper has the advantages of good durability, long life, no brittleness, high strength, no pollution, and good water absorption, and it has a large market in the art field.