The culture & art industry is an emerging industry that promotes sustained economic growth. It is one of the businesses that Hantec Group attaches great importance to. Tsi Ya Chai is an affiliated company of Hantec Group, mainly engaged in modern Chinese painting and calligraphy and four treasures of the study. In artistic creations such as calligraphy and painting, 'paper' is necessary. Choosing a good piece of paper is even more important. Today we are going to share about the story of “Paper”.

Cai Lun of the Eastern Han Dynasty was a man of great learning, and he has a hobby of writing. At that time, silk was expensive and ordinary people could not afford it. Bamboo slips were inexpensive but heavy. Cai Lun was well aware of the difficulties of scholars and the need for paper, so he wanted to use cheap materials instead of silk papermaking. He constantly summarized papermaking experience, improved the papermaking process, and invented papermaking technology.

Later, papermaking spread through the Silk Road. As one of China's four great inventions, how can paper replace papyrus and parchment that are widely used in the West? Due to the lack of sedge plants in the West, they could only be imported from Egypt. The parchment rolls were made from lamb skins, and the cost was extremely high. On the contrary, Cai Lun's papermaking technology used bark, hemp heads, old fishing nets and other raw materials that can be found everywhere in human life, allowing the papermaking technology to spread around the world.

Later, Cai Lun passed away in the first year of Jianguang in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It is reported that Kong Dan, Cai Lun's successor, intended to make fine white paper to compose portraits of his teacher to express his memory. One day, Kong Dan passed by Xuanzhou and accidentally saw an ancient green sandalwood tree lying in the stream. After a long time of baptism by the stream, the bark rotted and turned white, revealing a wisp of white fiber. Kong Dan used it to make paper. After continuous attempts, he finally succeeded. Rice paper, known as the ‘king of paper’ was born. As rice paper is produced in Xuanzhou, Anhui Province, it is named rice paper.

Tsi Ya Cha organizes Chinese calligraphy and painting exhibitions all year round. Earlier, it exhibited works such as "The First Mountain in the South China Sea" by the famous Chinese painter Ren Zhenhan. Traditional Chinese painting mainly uses rice paper. Why is this? Since rice paper has unique ink moisturizing and bleeding effects, it can better display and maintain different ink colors and shades, and fully reflect the brushwork in traditional Chinese painting.

Today, whether it is the collection of ink calligraphy and painting in Tsi Ya Chai, a subsidiary of Hantec Group, daily necessities like tissue, or banknotes that play an important role in economic activities, all use paper as raw materials. From governance to art, from civilization to economy, paper always plays an important role. It seems like an insignificant material, but in fact it is a medium for transmitting.