The Shocking and Extraordinary Romance of the Great Sage

Zhang Guo stood up, walked back and forth, thinking about Guangyu, and said:"Hey, then I have to go. Speaking of paper, this is a great invention and a miracle in the world. It spreads far and wide, and even overseas people Everyone who picked it up admired the wonderful art of papermaking, it is really clever. You young girls are so skillful in running a paper mill, do you know who invented papermaking?" The third daughter replied in unison:"Cai Lun." Guo Lao said:"Yes, it is a great invention of Cai Lun. Do you know how he invented it? Where is he from?" The third daughter was speechless and stunned.

Guo Lao said with a smile:"You are just here to work hard and don't understand the origin of things deeply. Cai Lun was a native of Leiyang by the Lei River in the Eastern Han Dynasty. In order to save his relatives, he entered the palace as a castrated boy. Later he became an official and worked as a craftsman for the palace. Fang Shang Fang Ling. At that time, the silk used for writing was too expensive. One piece of silk was equivalent to the price of 720 kilograms of rice. The cheap bamboo slips were too heavy, so the words were written on bamboo boards and piled up like a hill. It can only hold a few articles, and it is inconvenient to use."

The third daughter listened with great interest, and Guo Lao continued:"During the Warring States Period, there was a saying of 'learning to enrich oneself'. Do you know what it means?" The third daughter only shook her head. , claiming"I don't know! I don't know." Guo Lao said:"In the ancient times, there was a great philosophical scholar in the Song Dynasty named Hui Shi. He had novel ideas and many writings. He loaded them with five cars. People envied him as a learned man and praised him." Five carts of learned slips. In fact, those five carts of slips are only worth a few books today."

Zhang Guolao looked far away and said:"Shang Fang Ling Cai Lun saw that the bamboo slips were heavy and the writer was tired, so he had to move the bamboo slips. The writer was even more tired. He sympathized with the suffering of the world and decided to make thin paper to replace the heavy and inconvenient slips. Cai Lun inspected hard and searched for skills from all directions. He exhausted his brains and tried every means to use waste hemp, tree bark, and waste fishing nets. , these raw materials were broken up, cut into pieces, soaked in water, steamed, rolled and other processes, but the output paper was rough."

Deng Shiying asked urgently:"What happened next?" Guo Lao said:"Later, one day, Cai Lun went to the river for leisure. On the side, he saw a farmer's daughter dexterously pounding millet in a stone mortar with a pestle... This revelation made Cai Lun particularly surprised. He thought of pounding tree bark, twine, and waste fishing nets with a stone mortar. After returning, he ordered The craftsmen in the workshop used a large stone mortar to imitate the mortar to pound the pulp, and it was indeed effective. But troubles followed one after another. When the craftsmen poured the paper pulp on the curtain to form it, it was too wet and torn a lot. Still could not make today's paper pulp. Such good paper comes from……"

Deng Shiying asked anxiously:"Oh, what are we going to do?" Guo Lao said:"Many things in the world are God's will! Everything is fate! It's strange to say. Once, when the sun was drying in the courtyard, a little pig suddenly appeared. He ran over and turned over the curtain frame with his beak. The craftsman was angry and when he was chasing the piglet, he misbehaved and frightened the chicken into flying around. The frightened chicken flapped its wings and ran around on the curtain frame. When Cai Lun saw it, he hurriedly The same craftsman drove the chicken away. At this moment, Cai Lun stared at the wet sheet and was surprised. While he was thinking about it, he accidentally discovered that the wet sheet that was tightly attached to the knocked over curtain frame had completely separated from the curtain frame.. Cai Lun then ordered the craftsmen:"After the pulp becomes thin sheets on the curtain, turn the curtain frame over. In this way, as long as you tap lightly on the back of the curtain frame, the wet sheet will completely separate from the curtain, so that it will no longer tear. After this operation, sheets of paper with uniform thickness, toughness, durability, and low price were born."