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Paper is one of the four great inventions of ancient China. The rice paper made by the ancient method is delicate and flexible, and the paper quality is excellent, and the "Upper Balcony Post" written by the great Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai is still well preserved in the Palace Museum in Beijing. You can imagine how powerful the papermaking technology was at that time.
In contrast, today's paper companies are numerous, and industrial paper is flying all over the street. The production efficiency is fast, but the quality is not satisfactory.
Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai's original "On the Balcony"
In a small frontier town in China, the ancient method of papermaking is still stubbornly struggling before industrialization, and the paper produced there can remain unchanged for thousands of years. They call it the "Paper Life Millennium".
This place is located in Longshang Village, Xinzhuang Village, Tengchong City, Yunnan Province, and the rice paper produced in it is extremely delicate and tender. Once the annual output, quality, export volume are ranked second in the country, selling well in the country.
After the advent of industrialization, like other traditional handicrafts, they were buried by the tide of the times.
Longshang Village, Xinzhuang Village, Yunnan
Everything should start from the ancient papermaking technique that has been passed down in Xinzhuang Village for nearly five or six hundred years.
According to the genealogical records, many years ago, the ancestors of the handmade papermakers in Longshangzhai moved in from Hunan and brought their skills from the Central Plains into Tengchong, although the exact time can no longer be traced.
However, the "Tengchong County Chronicle" wrote: "In the early Qing Dynasty, Jiangxi people came to Tengchong to make white paper, Xiaoxi people learned this art, and Fengming also learned this because of the production of skins." ”
Fengming refers to the area around Longshangzhai in Xinzhuang Village. There is also another theory that in the Ming Dynasty, merchants had brought technology from Hunan to handle official affairs for military and political personnel.
After that, Tengchong papermaking originated around the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, using the prolific bark of the trees around Longshangzhai to create a white and delicate, water-absorbing paper with good water absorption and can be kept unchanged for thousands of years.
This kind of paper is widely respected by the calligraphy and painting circles, and the sale of Teng paper has since flourished, and the supply has exceeded demand.
In 1980, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce officially approved the naming of the calligraphy and painting paper produced by Tengchong Rice Paper Factory as "Snowflake Card" rice paper, which was marketed throughout the country and exported abroad.
Tengchong papermaking reached its peak for a while, and some domestic literati marveled at the flexibility and simplicity of paper, and became famous for going to Tengchong, just to see the skills of Tengchong papermaking, and struck a "paper wind".
The "snowflake brand" Teng Xuan approved by the Administration for Industry and Commerce
At that time, the entire village of Xinzhuang was made a living by making paper, an ancient technology that improved the living standards of the small mountain village. There is a saying in the village, "If you want to be rich, make paper and weave white cloth."
After the arrival of industrialization in the 1990s, the turbulent wave of reform completely washed away this sentence. The impact of machine printing paper, the reduction of raw materials, the scarcity of craftsmen and the aging of papermakers have led to a worsening trade in papermaking.
Villagers without business
The paper-making villagers, who make a living, spend their days worrying about it, and they put their hopes in a papermaker named Long Zhanxian, who is recognized as the person who knows the market best.
The villagers hoped that he could get Teng Paper back to the top, so Long Zhanxian began to look for a way from the papermaking method.
Papermakers are in the ascendant
There are nine large processes and more than 30 small processes in the production of Teng paper. The raw material for making Teng paper is a kind of plant skin "Dianjiexiang" that grows in Yunnan.
Every year from March to May, when the leather is the best, the villagers go up the mountain to cut down the branches and take the layer of fiber between the outer bark and the trunk, which is the best raw material "skin".
"Skinning"
First of all, the villagers repeatedly rubbed their hands in the near-zero river, and stepped on the skin with their feet, in order to remove impurities, until the skin was kicked out of the clear water, and it was considered clean.
"Wash the skin"
Then put the clean skin into the high temperature and cook, reduce the firmness of the fibers, and you can pick up the texture and beat the pulp. In order to ensure the purity of the skin, the cooked fibers also need to be carefully selected by hand.
"Skinning"
The old woman in the village can only pick out about five pounds of skin a day. These skins have to be pounded under 1440 times to separate the pectin and impurities in the skin.
Pound the skin to remove impurities
After the fibers are pounded, they lose the bond of the pectin and can be poured into water and stirred. When the two are mixed evenly, the floating fibers are picked up with a bamboo curtain so that they are interwoven into the prototype of the paper.
This step is very challenging, a little attention to the fiber will be clumped, to grasp the thickness of the paper does not require strength but requires skill, so it is generally operated by women.
"Copy paper"
Since the papermaking process is completed in water, the paper at this time is still soaked with water. So when the paper is formed, the papermaker will stack the paper and squeeze out the water from the paper with stone or wood.
Long Zhan first got inspiration from the car repair tools and used the jack to improve it into a pressing tool to speed up the work process.
"Pressed Paper"
The final step is to dry the paper, which the craftsmen call back paper. Long Zhanxian used steam to replace firewood baking, making the backed paper smoother and smoother, and improving the yield.
As Long Zhanxian tore the paper from the steam plate, a complete piece of teng paper was born.
"Back Paper"
Papermaking tools have changed, efficiency has increased, and the quality of paper is still perfect. Smooth as silk, not smudged in the face of ink, this is the world-renowned characteristics of Teng paper.
At the end of 1941, when the famous painter Xu Beihong returned to China from Southeast Asia via Tengchong, he specially bought three rolls of Tengchong rice paper.
He praised another painter: "Tengchong rice paper not only has the advantages of The Head Xuan (Anhui Rice Paper), but also has the advantage that the Head Xuan does not have, that is, after painting, others cannot secretly reveal it." ”
Xu Beihong
There is a saying in Longshangzhai that "paper lives for a thousand years". Paper made by ancient methods has a full ten times longer lifespan than industrial paper. But industrial paper is cheap and easy to make.
The raw materials for the production of the ancient method are expensive, and now the labor cost is also expensive, and no one wants to do thankless work. Even though more than one village in China is using ancient methods to make paper, many of them have surrendered to industrialization and become performative skills.
Long Zhanxian shouldered the expectations of the villagers and went to Anhui by chance to investigate. Saw the local flower paper. He came up with the idea of using his hometown rape flowers to make paper and open up the market.
The petals of the rape flower are soft, and they do not affect the texture when placed in the paper, and they have become a representative paper pattern in the local area. In 2008, Kunming held the Expo Park to vigorously promote Yunnan tea, which made Long Zhan, who had been a salesman, smell the market.
The texture of flower paper is breathable, and the tea leaves will not be moldy, which is very suitable for tea merchants. Long Zhanxian left his phone in the paper, and the person who used the paper would call to inquire when he saw the contact information.
This opened up the market and found a way for the villagers of Longshang Village to survive.
Flower paper
In 2013, this border town, which is swaying in survival and inheritance, attracted a group of people who are enthusiastic about traditional crafts, in order to change the quality of life of the villagers of Longshangzhai and to bring this skill back to society.
They built a handmade paper museum in Xinzhuang Village.
Museum of Handmade Paper
The museum documents the town's ancient papermaking technology and culture, and even the entire building is built using local low-consumption materials such as fir, bamboo, and handmade paper, catering to the natural production concept of Tengchong papermaking.
There is a working space inside the building, and there are tea rooms and guest rooms.
A studio inside the museum
This building is not only a source of economic benefits for the small village, but also a protection and inheritance of culture.
Perhaps for many craftsmen, passing on the craft is their purpose in life and does not care whether they can make money.
But for the people of Longzhan and Longshangzhai, ancient papermaking is their life and the skill they rely on for survival, and they need to use the ancient papermaking skill to make money to support themselves.
In fact, they are all inheritors of traditional craftsmanship, but they pursue different things.
But in the end, they all need to keep pace with the times, so that the traditional handicrafts of China for thousands of years can adapt to the rapid changes in today's society.
Source:
The Great Craftsman Season 2 Tengchong God's Way to Survival
Tengchong ancient method of papermaking - a paper context passed down
You don't know yunnan - mysterious papermaking
The content is original and debuted on the WeChat id of "Hand Looking at Sowarm"