Do you still need bamboo slips in Tang Dynasty?

Watch an old TV series "Li Shimin of Emperor Taizong", in which there is a clip of Li Shimin watching bamboo slips. He felt suspicious, so he went to check if there were any bamboo slips from the Tang Dynasty. Many results are positive, and even show that relevant cultural relics have been unearthed. One answer is more reliable, reproduced. (PS: The previous TV series was more rigorous, and it is estimated that the director has also checked this issue. )

Bamboo slips were widely used as books during the Spring and Autumn Period, Warring States Period, Qin and Han Dynasties. Before and after the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there appeared a kind of book written on silk-silk book. Silk books are lighter and easier to write than bamboo slips. But silk fabrics are expensive, so silk books are not as common as bamboo slips. Books copied with paper appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Paper is light and easy to write, and the price is relatively cheap, so it is gradually popularized. In the Jin Dynasty, paper books completely replaced bamboo slips and silk books.

In the Eastern Jin Dynasty, it was stipulated that all official documents should be written in paper. So at that time, it had become a tool for information dissemination, but in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, paper was not popular, because the general public, especially farmers, had little demand for paper, and they would not spend money to buy those beautiful but expensive literati papers except inferior paper for wiping their bottoms. Paper did not become a mass consumer product until the Song Dynasty. See General History of Printing in China (Revised Edition).