Image 01 Remnants of the oldest known Daoist texts; a silk book from 179 BCE. |
Image 02 Ming dynasty woodcut illustrating the preparation of paper. Pounded bamboo shoots were mixed with lime and boiled for several days to make a soup from which the fibers were extracted using a bamboo screen. Excess water was then pressed out and the sheets of paper dried against a heated wall. |
Image 03 This hemp paper found in a Western Han tomb near Xi'an in 1957 is the earliest known example of paper in the world. |
Image 04 Fragment of paper from 2nd century CE, discovered by Aural Stein in the Gobi desert. |
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