In my collection of paper history books I have several versions of the Chinese story of the invention of paper by Ts'ai Lun in 105 CE, during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220 CE). He was the inspector in charge of the imperial workshops. It is highly likely that he, like the mailman, found the writing media of the time—carved stones, animal scapula, wooden sticks, bamboo sticks—to be cumbersome and inconvenient. It makes sense that he became aware of a lighter alternative and promoted and oversaw the establishment of the official production of paper for the court. Once the new material was officially accepted, its use was adopted quickly throughout China. Along with papermaking, the compass, gunpowder, and printmaking comprise the legacy of four Han cultural innovations that continue today to be very important to the Chinese identity and a great source of national pride. What If? jane m. farmer A map of present-day China. Luoyang was the capital of the Eastern Han Dynasty where it is said that Ts'ai Lun invented paper. There are paper specimens from the Xi'an area of Shaanxi province that have been dated at least a hundred years before Ts'ai Lun's time. Further west in Khotan, in Xinjiang province, very early papers have been found. Map drawn by Zina Castanuela. The unification of China under the Han Dynasty (206 BCE– 220 CE) established what is still today the predominant culture of the country; and the Han ethnic group continues to dominate as well. During Ts'ai Lun's tenure, administrative Han China stretched far to the west. The western areas were primarily under Chinese military control in order to protect the important Silk Road trade routes, supply of goods, and, more importantly, sources of knowledge. It is now widely accepted that Ts'ai Lun did not invent papermaking. Chinese archaeologists and scholars such as Pan Jixing have dated paper specimens found in the Xi'an area of Shaanxi province to as early as the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE). In Hand Papermaking's Winter 1995 issue (vol. 10, no. 2), Elaine Koretsky contributed an article about Li Fang, a descendent of papermakers from the village of Beizhang in Chang'an county, Shaanxi province, southwest of Xi'an. Li Fang argues that the papermaking process originated in Western China. He suggests a logical theory, based on a local folksong, that frequent flooding of the Feng River provided the conditions for storm-beaten fibers from trees on nearby Mount Olin to dry into a light but strong and flexible sheet. Fang suggests that papermaking developed in Chang'an and spread west along the Silk Road to Xinjiang and east to Central China where Ts'ai Lun recognized papermaking's importance and made its use official. In March 2002 I sat with Pan Jixing in the Beizhang yard of papermaker Zhang Fengxue. I was in China to invite papermakers to participate in the "Paper Garden," a part of The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust, the thirty-sixth annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in the summer of 2002. I invited Zhang to represent Western Chinese papermaking. Zhang's physical appearance is hardly typical of the Han people. When I asked Pan to describe Zhang's ethnicity for the Smithsonian's standard interview form, he said rather crisply, "Han will do." During this trip, I traveled further west to Khotan in Xinjiang province to select a papermaker to represent the Uyghur papermaking tradition along the Silk Road. I met the remarkable Uyghur papermaker Tohtu Baqi and his family. In the Khotan museum I saw early papers made by Uyghur papermakers, some very ancient. I was surprised to consider: if we keep finding papers that move the development of paper earlier and further west, what if we learn that the first papermakers were not Chinese at all?
