Jade Button Paper: A Study of the Social History of the Handmade Paper Industry in Western Fujian
|Chen Yao|
Xiamen University Press, August 2024
ISBN：9787561590874
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Editor's Choice
· For the jade button paper to stand up, a comprehensive display of the "jade buckle aesthetics"
Warm as jade, long-lasting Fujian jade button paper has been full of nostalgia of overseas Chinese sold well in Southeast Asian countries, and once became the designated paper for printing Mao Zedong's works, this book through more than 100 exquisite color pictures, 200,000 words for the jade button paper to pass on, a comprehensive display of "jade buckle aesthetics" to people shock and regret, as well as the romance and hardship of traditional handicrafts.
· A masterpiece of regional social history research
Taking the development, prosperity, decline and inheritance of jade button paper as the starting point, combined with field investigation and historical data analysis, and using the research methods of historical philology, cultural anthropology and oral ethnography, this paper comprehensively presents a section of the social history of western Fujian over the past few hundred years.
· The compassionate mind and thunderbolt of the historian
Crafts also have their own life history, from prosperity to decline, and this book is a faithful record of this process without criticism; Pay attention to jade button paper, and care more about the lives of ordinary people who make a living from paper. All kinds of jade button paper, by no means people follow the clouds, follow the stereotype, with the spirit of questioning and research methods of historians, trace the source of legends, and clear the fog of history.
· Ingenious book design
A soft book, a book with warmth, a book where you can feel the ingenuity. With bamboo as the main color, through the unique paper, the soft and simple feel of handmade paper is presented; The ingenious binding method realizes both thinness and flat reading.
· The book comes with a jade button paper handmade by the provincial intangible cultural heritage inheritor
It is attached with a piece of jade button paper handmade by Hu Cheng, the provincial inheritor of the jade button paper production process, so that the ethereal text about the jade button paper falls to the world, which can be seen and felt.
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Introduction
The jade button paper production technique was selected into the Fujian Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2019. This book collects, sorts out and uses local archives, investigation reports, newspapers and magazines, as well as folk documents such as genealogy, contracts, ritual observations, and oral interviews, to discuss issues related to the history of paper, the history of the paper industry, and the history of social and economic development in paper producing areas.
The uniqueness of the jade button paper making technique lies in the fact that the papermaking artisans use the simplest raw material production method, but they can produce high-quality bamboo paper through fine quality control. The honing of jade button paper making skills cannot be understood in isolation from the socio-economic conditions and humanistic institutional environment in which skilled workers live. The pursuit of the continuation of the uniqueness of jade button paper and the creation of a "jade button beauty" should generate, cultivate and maintain the common knowledge and common feelings of jade button paper among producers, distributors and consumers.
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About the Author
Chen Yao is an associate professor at the School of History and Cultural Heritage at Xiamen University, with a bachelor's and master's degree in history from Xiamen University and a Ph.D. in history from the University Chinese University of Hong Japan Hong Kong S.A.R.Chinese Kong. He has long been committed to the study of regional social and economic history since the Ming and Qing dynasties, and is the author of "The Situation of Bianguang: Rice Valley Trade and Local Society in Xiangtan in the Qing Dynasty" (Xiamen University Press, 2017 edition) and "River Travel: Boat People and Wooden Sailing Shipping Industry in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in Modern Times" (Commercial Press, 2023 edition).
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directory
Preface 1 Tang Shukun
Preface 2 Ning Yuan (Ghost Uncle)
The life history of a jade button paper
1. Jade buckle in paper
2. The name of the jade buckle is released
3. History of the paper industry
II. Jade button paper manufacturing technology
1. Papermaking process
2. Inheritance of skills
3. Site tools
Sanzhi Pingxiang papermaking was in its infancy
1. A small history of peace
2. Ten Towns and Wandering Gods
3. The boom of papermaking
Turmoil in the western Fujian paper industry
1. Production and marketing application
2. Soviet District Paper
3. Failure of control
The rise and fall of Wu Yukou paper industry
1. Unified purchase and sales
2. Printing wool
3. The jade buckle disappears
The future of Lu Yu button paper can be expected
1. Intangible cultural heritage protection
2. Jade buckle aesthetics
appendix
1. Hu Lanshan's self-report
2. Zeng Shaoteng's own statement
3. Hu Lanshan: "Introduction to the Process of Jade Button Paper"
4. Zhang Fapeng: "The Production of Jade Button Paper and Its Related Terminology Explanation"
bibliography
postscript
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Trial
Jade buckle aesthetics
From birth to death, our lives
It should not be soaked in the sweat of toil
The mind is as hungry as the body
We crave bread and we crave roses
The cries echoed in our songs
It is an ancient thirst for bread
The long trek of the soul is equally needed
Art, love, and beauty are even small comforts
Yes, we are for the bread
Fight for roses too
As early as the beginning of the 20th century, a series of international socialist women's movements put forward the slogan "Bread for all, and Roses too", a "bread and roses" slogan, to express women's demand for their legitimate rights in both material and spiritual life. This slogan inspired the United States poet James Oppenheim to write the poem "Bread and Roses." Bread and Roses has not only been translated into many languages, but has also been adapted into numerous musical compositions, making a wide impact around the world. The jade button paper craftsmen described in this book not only make bread for people's daily needs, but also bring rose-like beauty to the world.
Jade button paper, as a regional famous paper in Fujian, belongs to the more common bamboo paper category in the south from the perspective of papermaking raw materials, its uniqueness lies in the use of raw material production methods, but through the papermaking craftsmen carefully and meticulously on the quality control of bamboo material selection, material preparation, papermaking and other links, to avoid the disadvantages of bamboo fiber is generally short and easy to break, in a difficult and difficult working environment, with the simplest raw materials and processes, to produce high-quality paper that can be called a work of art. The production practice of high-quality jade button paper will help define the unique position of bamboo paper production technology in the history of world papermaking science and technology, and the additive-free characteristics also provide a more diverse and broad application space for raw jade button paper products.
Since the manufacturing site of jade button paper, especially the jade button paper in the inner mountains, is located in the deep mountains and dense forests, from the end of the 19th century to the eighties and nineties of the 20th century, except for the investigators and administrative personnel who implemented the unified purchase and sales system of jade button paper after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, very few academic researchers have the opportunity to personally go deep into the mountainous paper liao, observe the jade button paper and its production skills on the spot, and communicate directly with paper mill managers and paper workers, not to mention Song Yingxing, Guo Baicang, Yang Lan and other Ming and Qing dynasty sages. This is an important limiting factor for the reputation of jade button paper to stop at the production area and consumption area.
The author was fortunate to go to the papermaking site in the deep mountains many times with the help of local cultural and historical experts such as Uncle Gui and local governments, and exchanged and studied with Hu Lanshan and other seniors who had participated in the production of jade button paper and the management of paper mills since childhood, and obtained a large number of historical documents and oral materials of the handmade paper industry in western Fujian. Most of the local men over the age of 50 in Zhiping have participated in the production and distribution of jade button paper to a greater or lesser extent, and their life history echoes with folk documents and archival materials, intuitively showing the impact and tribulation of the jade button paper manufacturing industry and the workers and peasants in the production area in the process of modernization. Careful readers may have already noticed that the author has always paid attention to the income of paper troughers and papermakers in the diverse historical materials, in fact, at this point, some seemingly simple questions still linger in my mind: why do you need to make paper if it is so hard, the income is so meager, and there is even a risk of losing money? Why can you still make No. 1 jade button paper?
The author expects readers to feel from the historical process of the handmade paper industry from prosperity to decline, handmade paper, paper products, and paper prints provide various conveniences and rich colors for people's daily life in the traditional era, and experience the natural and deep complex and pride of papermakers for local famous products such as jade button paper. In contradiction with this, the author does not want to simply summarize the complex of papermaking master as the familiar "craftsman spirit" and "unique ingenuity". The spirit is ethereal and unsustainable. Like any kind of manual/non-manual manufacturing skills, the production of jade button paper, from the acquisition of technology to the honing of skills, cannot be separated from the socio-economic conditions and humanistic institutional environment in which skilled workers live, and is told in a romantic way.
The jade button paper making skills and the way of making a living from the paper trade paper were the first to rise in the deep mountain villages such as Laijiashan, Tianshe, and Highland in Zhiping, and then spread to other villages in Zhiping, which did benefit from the abundant bamboo forests in the mountainous areas of western Fujian, but the fundamental reason is that the genealogy of each surname reveals the "four walls of the family", and the residents in the mountainous areas have expanded their family business by operating the paper industry "for more than ten years" and "endure diligence and thrift", and then become well-off. People born in the mountains do not have many ways to change their poverty except for hard work, and the use of mountain resources for cottage industry is the choice to supplement their families. Paper trough households, which are difficult to grasp the bargaining power in the paper market, if they want to get rid of the usury and pre-purchase model of paper dealers, the only way is to "be diligent and thrifty", and seek a certain amount of bargaining power with high-quality paper. From the perspective of social history, the so-called "craftsman spirit" is the core of the humanistic quality of the people in the mountainous areas who bear hardships and stand hard work, be diligent and thrifty, and pursue high-quality paper products in order to improve their living standards.
It is undeniable that this consciousness of excellence, in addition to echoing the gravitational force of market demand and the pressure of the special economic system, has indeed given birth to an internal motivation for the "continuation of uniqueness". In fact, this feeling can not be limited to a corner of the producer, but should be extended to distributors and consumers, around the jade button paper, forming a common emotion for its "continuation of uniqueness", which the author calls "jade button aesthetics (sense)".
The so-called "jade button aesthetics" is actually a reference to the concept of "paper consciousness" in 18th-century Europe summarized by Darnton to describe the common knowledge and common emotions of something created between producers, distributors and consumers. There is still a first-line opportunity to recover in the decline of jade button paper, first of all, it is necessary to awaken the "beauty of jade buttons" of the last generation of ancient papermaking masters of jade button paper, without adding chemical preparations, handmade in the whole process, and strive for perfection to complete each process, create the most beautiful jade buckle again, and meticulously teach apprentices and skills to the core of perfection; The second is to cultivate the "beauty of jade buttons" of a new generation of ancient papermaking apprentices of jade button paper, stubbornly pursue the internalization of the production process and the understanding of quality, proudly inherit and carry forward a unique production technique that has been exerted to the extreme in the long-term labor practice of the sages, and obtain a feeling of beauty; At the same time, cultivate the "beauty of jade buttons" of groups of users, love the color and bamboo fragrance of jade button paper, and fully develop the talent of jade button paper in ancient book restoration and printing books, or focus on special forms of calligraphy and painting creation. Papermakers and paper users work together to give full play to the "beauty of jade buttons", so that a beautiful paper can remain in the world, accompany the aesthetic nurturing of the next generation, and share diversified experiences and unique aesthetics.
"Jade buckle aesthetics" is not limited to jade button paper, but is suitable for all categories of traditional craft aesthetics, craftsmen who specialize in a craft, can pursue the perfection of exclusive skills, people who love an object, can also enjoy and appreciate the unique beauty of things, each loves its love, each is beautiful, so that the beauty of the beauty, the realm of beauty and beauty.
1. Song Dynasty History Research Information 1
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