By CGTN's Chai Haoran, Tianran He
Would you spend 300 dollars on a stack of paper? It sounds incredulous, but in China, people readily fork over their hard-earned cash to buy Xuan paper, a variety invented during the Tang dynasty almost a thousand years ago.
Famed for its great tensile strength, flawless texture, and fantastic longevity, it’s long been the medium of choice for painters and calligraphers, and has helped preserve some of China’s best masterpieces of art.
Sun-drying the paper. / CGTN Photo
Crucially, the ‘King of Paper’ can only be produced in Jing County, Anhui Province.
In the past, foreign spies supposedly tried to steal the formula for making Xuan paper, only to discover it can only be made using ingredients native to the mountains of Jing County.
Specifically, Xuan paper is made from the branches of the ‘Qing Tan’ tree, a local species of elm also known as blue sandalwood. It takes ten years for the tree to fully mature, and three more for its branches to grow.
Checking for imperfections./ CGTN Photo
Once the bark is stripped from the branches, it’s laid out to dry for 8-10 months. After being screened for imperfections, the bark is then pulverized, shredded, mashed, soaked, and then after some secret steps, ‘fished’ out from its watery cocktail.
As if panning for gold, craftsmen use a screen to sieve out the water and from the resulting fibers, form a single sheet of paper that must weigh exactly 30 grams.
Instinct is the only measuring device used. Afterwards, the sheets are dried by being plastered onto walls heated to 60-70°C.
Xuan Paper Scissors. / CGTN Photo
All in all, there are some 100 steps in the paper-making process, taking three years to complete from start to finish -- the longest amount of time in the world to make paper.
It’s no surprise then, that Xuan paper is a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, and a single sheet of 100-year old Xuan paper can sell for more than 10,000 yuan (1,450 US dollars).
Despite the cost, difficulty, and sheer effort required to craft it, Xuan paper has withstood the test of time, and remains one of the four must-have ‘treasures’ for Chinese literati and artists past and present.
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