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 present 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 Cai Lun's hometown Leiyang, Hunan, Cai Lunsheng had taught papermaking to his hometown before. 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. Writing paper in the Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties was made of hemp and bamboo bark, coated with starch and white mineral pigments, and polished.
After the Sui Dynasty unified the north and south, the Tang and Song Dynasties inherited and developed hundreds of years of papermaking achievements, which opened the heyday of 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, 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 used the method of night drying and late harvest to bleach bast fiber to make paper. The base paper was 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.
[Edit this paragraph] The spread of papermaking
After China invented papermaking, paper books were first taken abroad, and then papermaking gradually spread abroad.
Papermaking began to spread eastward to Korea and Japan in the early 7th century (late Sui and early Tang Dynasties). In the 8th century, it was introduced to Samarkand, later Arabia and then Baghdad. 10 century to Damascus and Cairo; 1 1 century was introduced to Morocco; /kloc-was introduced to India in the 0/3rd century; From14th century to Italy, many cities in Italy built paper mills, which became an important base for the spread of papermaking in Europe, and then spread to Germany and Britain. /kloc-was introduced to Russia and Holland in the 6th century; /kloc-spread to Britain in the 0/7th century; It was introduced to Canada in the19th century. The invention and spread of papermaking greatly reduced the carrier cost of words and realized the popularization of knowledge among the common people, thus greatly promoting the development of science, technology and economy in the world.
In view of the unhealthy trend of trying to deny that Cai Lun was the inventor of papermaking and People's Republic of China (PRC) was the inventor of papermaking,1The 20th Congress of the International Paper History Association held in Malmedi, Belgium from August 65438 to August 22, 1990 unanimously recognized that Cai Lun was the great inventor of papermaking and People's Republic of China (PRC) was the inventor of papermaking. According to the textual research of Comrade Shi of the Editorial Committee of Luoyang Local Records. Paper House is located in the suburb of Luoyang, the ancient city of Han and Wei Dynasties. It was called Paper House in ancient times. The ancient Majian River passed through a section of the Paper River, and the original paper river inscription along the coast has been lost.
Related literature
According to historical records, Han and Emperor visited Gou Jian's home, and Gou Jian probably visited the paper mill here. Hezhizhuang (now divided into Qianzhizhuang and Houzhizhuang, located about 2000 meters east of Luoyang, the ancient city of Han and Wei Dynasties, facing Luohe) is probably the location of the paper mill in Han Dynasty. These two places have superior geographical environment for papermaking, and there are abundant papermaking resources (such as hemp and bamboo forest) nearby.
Ancient papermaking methods
Taking the method of making bamboo paper recorded in the ancient China classic "Tiangong Kaiwu" as an example, this paper introduces it. In ancient times, the steps of bamboo papermaking were as follows: 1. Chop bamboo, float it in the pond, chop it, put it in the pond, soak it for more than 100 days, decompose it with natural microorganisms, and wash off the green skin of bamboo.
2. Cook the bamboo obtained above, put it in a "pot" and cook it with lime for eight days and eight nights.
3. Take the treated bamboo out of the mortar, put it in the mortar and beat it with the mortar until the bamboo is smashed and looks like mud.
4. Throw the cloth into the curtain. Pour the mashed bamboo material into the sink and swing the bamboo material in the water with a bamboo curtain. The bamboo material becomes a thin layer and sticks to the bamboo curtain, and the remaining water flows down the water tank from the four sides of the bamboo curtain.
5. Cover the curtain to press the paper, and then repeat the curtain to make the wet paper fall on the board, thus making a piece of paper. In this way, the steps of placing materials and covering curtains are repeated, so that thousands of wet papers are stacked, and the boards are added to squeeze out most of the water.
6. Bake the wet paper over the fire. The equipment for baking paper is to build an alley with adobe bricks and make a fire in the alley. After the temperature of adobe brick rises, wet paper is pasted one by one and baked. After drying, the paper is obtained by uncovering the cover.
[Edit this paragraph] Modern papermaking methods
Modern papermaking procedures can be divided into pulping, preparation, papermaking, processing and other major steps.
1. Pulping is the first step in papermaking. Generally speaking, there are three ways to convert wood into pulp: mechanical pulping, chemical pulping and semi-chemical pulping.
2. The modulation of paper materials in the modulation process is another key point in papermaking, and the strength, color tone, printability and shelf life of the finished paper are directly related to it.
The common brewing process can be roughly divided into the following three steps: a. beating B. beating C. adding glue and filling.
3. The main work of the papermaking department in the papermaking process is to evenly interweave and dehydrate the tissue paper, and then dry, calender, roll paper, cut, sort and package, so the general process is as follows:
A screening of paper: the prepared paper is diluted to a lower concentration, and impurities and undissociated fiber bundles are screened again with the aid of screening equipment, so as to maintain the quality and protect the equipment.
B, the wire part makes the paper material flow out of the headbox on the circulating copper wire net or plastic net and evenly distribute and interweave.
C, the press department introduces the wet paper with the net surface removed between two rollers with felt cloth attached, and further dehydrates the wet paper through the extrusion of the rollers and the water absorption of the felt cloth, so that the paper is more compact, thereby improving the paper surface and increasing the strength.
D. Because the moisture content of the wet paper squeezed out by the dryer is still as high as 52-70%, it can no longer be squeezed out by mechanical force, so the wet paper passes through the surfaces of many dryers with hot steam inside to dry the paper.
E, roll paper, wherein the paper web is rolled into a roll paper by a roll paper machine.
F. Cutting, sorting and packaging: take a plurality of rolls of paper whose front faces have been rolled into a tube shape, cut them into thin slices with a paper cutter, then manually or mechanically sort out the damaged or soiled papers, and finally pack every 500 sheets into a package (usually called a ream).