The invention of papermaking 105 AD, Cai Lun summed up the previous experience in Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and improved papermaking, using bark, hemp head, rags and old fishing nets as raw materials. It greatly improves the production efficiency of paper quality, 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 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.