Hemp Paper

Hemp Paper

　　Upon entering Heyang Town, most people who know about hemp paper are villagers from Yangpai Village in the town. The elderly here told reporters that in the old society, due to poverty and the need to survive, a small number of villagers began to learn a craft—making hemp paper, which became a livelihood for the villagers.　

　　“Hemp paper has a history of several hundred years,” said an elderly villager. “In ancient times, memorials submitted to the emperor by high-ranking officials, petitions filed by commoners to government offices to appeal injustices, as well as paper used for making shoe soles, pasting windows, wallpapering houses, or binding account books—all often came from paper made by the villagers here. Even before liberation, it was used to make currency for the liberated areas.”

　　18 Processes Showcase a Brilliant Culture

　　Yang Huizhang, an elderly man in his 80s, still remembers vividly the process of making hemp paper back in the day. “The requirements for the procedure were very strict—there were 18 steps.” These included “spreading ropes,” “soaking in the dragon vat,” “clarifying the ropes,” “chopping the ropes,” “stringing hemp,” “pinching the hemp,” “steaming the pulp,” “dragon vat peeling,” “washing fine hemp,” “pinching hemp beans,” and more. First, the knots in the old hemp ropes were undone, then the ropes were soaked in a specially made trough and washed clean. Then, axes and knives were used to cut the ropes short, after which they were pressed into pulp on a specially designed stone mill. The pulp was cleaned with lime water, then steamed in a pot and washed again with lime water. Finally, the paper pulp was poured into a vat, well beaten, and then scooped using a special bamboo screen that was two-and-a-half feet long and one-and-a-quarter feet wide. When “silver flowers appear in the water and white clouds rise on the screen,” pure white hemp paper was created.

　　The elderly in the village said that, in order to earn more money, villagers would often carry large quantities of hemp paper and walk all the way to Shanxi and Henan to sell it, at one point accounting for more than half of the national market share.