The Only Village You Can See the Oldest Way Of Paper-Making

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Dengcun: The Only Village You Can See the Oldest Way Of Paper-Making

iWalk 1 October 2008 10 Comments

Starting from the Ming dynasty, the village of Dengcun (邓村 in Chinese) is famous for its Sihui Paper (会纸 in Chinese), a kind of bamboo paper manufactured With the traditional approach developed by Cai Lun (蔡伦), the inventor of paper-making in early A.D.105. It is the only village in this world you can still see this 2000-year-old paper-making process.
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Dengcu, A traditional Guangdong Village

These bamboo will be cracked into sections on a wooden or stone block with a hammer or the back of an axe, three to five sections at a time.

Cracked bamboo will be spread with quicklime and put into a trough; later infuse the trough with water – soak for three months. The villagers will not pollute the environment as they seldom drain the processing water into the river, but recycle it.

Almost every household here has a paper mill.

The process of turn the thin layer of pulp into a piece of paper. I don’t know why all this kind of heavy jobs are done by women.

Airing the paper under the sunshine.

Dengcun is not faraway from Sihui, a city in the middle of Guangdong.

It’s a small village surrounded by Suijiang River and small hills. There are many bamboo grow on the hill. These bamboo is good material of Sihui paper. Bundles of fresh bamboo are piled up almost everywhere. And you can also see many pool to process these bamboo.

Sihui paper is a kind of paper which can absorb moisture very well. It is made to resemble money and burned as an offering to the dead. It is only used from the Pearl River Delta through out other Southeast Asian countries.

The villagers only make paper when they are not too busy with farming. Their techniques of make paper from bamboo mainly by hand are passed down from generation to generation.

Dengcu Travel Guide:
How to get there:
Sihui is a county-level city of Guangdong Province, it locates in the middle of Guangdong. Dengcu is situated 10 kilometers from downtown Sihui.
There is no traffic service directly to Dengcun, You’d better visit there by self-drive.

Other tips:
There is no restaurant or big shop there, You’d better prepare all the food you need before you start off.

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Tags: China Travel, Chinese Tradition, Dengcu, GuangDong, paper-making

10 Comments »

JH (Who am I?) said:

Great to see and learn more about Chinese history and inventions ! Proud of it !

The paper is one of the best and key inventions for human race !

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no image iWalk (Who am I?) reply on October 12th, 2008 11:48 pm:

Yeah, paper is really important to the civilization of human society.

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# 2 October 2008 at 2:31 am

Jagad Guru (Who am I?) said:

Wow this is very interesting, and your pictures are beautiful too. I love handmade paper, and it’s nice that these kind of skills are still being passed throughout the generations.

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no image iWalk (Who am I?) reply on October 12th, 2008 11:37 pm:

Yeah, It’s great to see such traditional things in this business day.

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# 2 October 2008 at 7:30 pm

Doug (Who am I?) said:

Great article! Good content and wonderful photos. I was really fascinated by the entire story of this process and those people who continue this tradition.

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no image iWalk (Who am I?) reply on October 12th, 2008 11:53 pm:

Thanks Doug, I also think from the bamboo to the paper in such a process is fantastic .