China is the first country in the world to raise silkworms and weave silk. The working people of the Han nationality spun silk from the first-class cocoons, and the rest of the evil cocoons and sick cocoons were bleached to make silk floss. After floating, some residual flocs will be left on the mat. When the flossing frequency is high, the residual flossing on the pad will accumulate into fiber sheets, which can be peeled off after drying and can be used for writing. This kind of floc is called "He Qi" or "square floc" in ancient books because of its small number of by-products. This shows that the origin of papermaking of Han nationality in China is related to silk floss.
105, Cai Lun summarized the experience of his predecessors in Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and reformed papermaking. He made paper from bark, hemp head, rags and old fishing nets. It greatly improves the quality and production efficiency of paper, expands the source of raw materials for paper, reduces the cost of paper, opens up new prospects for paper to replace bamboo and silk, and creates favorable conditions for the spread of culture. Regarding the ancient records of Cai Lun's invention of papermaking, The Biography of Cai Lun in the Later Han Dynasty said: "Since ancient times, books and deeds have been compiled with bamboo tubes; People who use it are called paper. Expensive and simple, inconvenient for people. Lun intends to use bark, hemp head, cloth and fishing net as paper. " Later generations revered him as the inventor of China's papermaking.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xu Shen talked about the origin of "paper" in his first well-organized and systematic dictionary Shuo Wen Jie Zi in China. He said: "Paper comes from the side, that is, from the side of silk." At that time, the paper was mainly spun silk, which was completely different from the paper in the modern sense. The invention, development and spread of paper also went through a tortuous process.
/kloc-after the invention of papermaking in 0/05, papermaking spread from Henan to other economically and culturally developed areas. Cai Lun sealed the Dragon Pavilion in Yangxian County, Shaanxi Province, and papermaking spread to Hanzhong area, and gradually spread to Sichuan. According to the folklore of Han nationality in Leiyang, Hunan, Cai Lun's hometown, Cai Lunsheng also taught papermaking to his hometown before his death. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Shandong's papermaking was also relatively developed, and it was an expert in papermaking in Donglai County (now Yexian County) of Zuo Bo. In addition, paper and decorative books first spread to the northern minority areas through the Silk Road.
Since the Jin Dynasty, many famous painters and calligraphers have appeared in China, which greatly promoted the development of calligraphy and painting paper. For example, Wang Xizhi, a calligrapher in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, greatly improved the paper used for painting and calligraphy during the father-son period. The writing paper in the Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties was made of hemp and bamboo bark, coated with starch and white mineral paint, and polished.
After the Sui Dynasty unified the north and south, the Tang and Song Dynasties inherited and developed the achievements of papermaking for hundreds of years, which opened the heyday of China's manual papermaking in the Tang and Song Dynasties: the popularity of calligraphy and painting and Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty increased the demand for paper sharply, and the raw materials for papermaking expanded to rattan and mulberry bark. Painting and calligraphy paper is also coated with nitrate starch before waxing, and finally polished with coarse cloth or stone. Warp writing paper is also dyed yellow with phellodendron to avoid smoking.
In the Northern Song Dynasty, Anhui has adopted the method of bleaching bast fiber to make paper. The base paper is smooth, white and durable.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, bamboo paper was abundant in southern China. Both Wang Anshi and Su Dongpo like to write with bamboo paper. They think that bamboo paper has bright ink color and bright brushwork, which was imitated by many literati at that time, thus promoting the development of bamboo paper. In the Song Dynasty, bamboo paper was not only abundant, but also rice and wheat straw was used to make paper. Su Yijian in the Northern Song Dynasty recorded that people in Zhejiang made paper pulp from wheat and rice stalks, and made paper with oil vines.
By the Ming Dynasty, the technology of making paper from bamboo in China had been perfected. At that time, Song's Tiangong systematically described the production process of making paper with bamboo, with illustrations of production equipment and operation process. This book has been translated into Japanese, French and English and spread to Japan and Europe. It is the earliest book in China that systematically describes papermaking technology.
After hundreds of years in Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, by the middle of Qing Dynasty, China's hand-made paper was quite developed, with advanced quality and various varieties, which became the material conditions for the development and spread of China culture for thousands of years.
Paper industry is a processing industry that mainly provides commodity materials such as packaging, printing and information industry, and it is also a general competitive processing industry with a high degree of marketization and nationalization. The development of China's paper industry is closely related to the national economy and social development, and the economic development provides a strong support for the development of the paper industry.