Handmade paper has been through the wringer in the
last 30 years, but the craft keeps on unfolding in Puli.
Appreciating Chinese ink painting depends very much on individual taste. Some focus on the way space is arranged, some on the idea expressed and others on the artist's skill and style. Few people, however, are like Hwang Huann-jang--he is much more interested in the sheet of paper than whatever is on it. The second-generation owner of Goang Horng Shing Handmade Paper, Hwang has spent more than four decades producing handmade paper for ink painting and calligraphy, or "cultural paper" as it is known in the industry. Just by touching a piece of paper, Hwang can tell what fiber it is made of and whether it was done by hand.
In 1965, Hwang Yao-dong founded Goang Horng Shing in Puli, a small town in central Nantou County. He had worked at another paper mill for 14 years before starting his own business. While the history of handmade paper in Puli is relatively short compared with China, the small township was once the center of Taiwan's cultural paper manufacturing. Chinese immigrants brought the basics of papermaking to Puli in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), turning bamboo and straw fibers into paper for religious and daily use.
For centuries, cultural paper was shipped to Taiwan from China, until 1935 when the Japanese set up Taiwan's first paper mill in Puli. "What makes Puli an ideal place for the trade is its water," Hwang Huann-jang explains. "The manufacturing process requires large quantities of water, and the mineral content of the water is critical to the final product." Too much iron, for example, and the paper turns yellow. Too much lime, and the paper becomes brittle.
Paper used for Chinese ink painting and calligraphy comes from the bark of paper mulberry and sandalwood trees. Paper made from paper mulberry is known as cotton paper, whereas the sandalwood-based stuff is known as xuan paper, due to its origin in Xuancheng in China's Anhui province. Painters and calligraphers have their own preferences, since the two types absorb ink differently. The Japanese brought cotton papermaking during their occupation of the island, while the postwar flow of Chinese Nationalist immigrants brought the formula for xuan, so the happy contribution of both cultures more than satisfied varying artistic demand.
While Puli manufacturers were honing their skills, demand for their wares started to grow in the 1970s as the economies of Taiwan, Japan and Korea prospered. With low manpower costs and a reputation for high quality, Puli soon became Asia's largest paper manufacturing center, bristling with more than 50 factories.
The heyday of the business lasted for about 10 years, until some manufacturers started to cut corners by shipping substandard products. Puli's hard-earned reputation was undermined, and consequently the market slumped. Factories closed or moved offshore in search of lower labor costs. Goang Horng Shing, exporting mainly to Japan, faced the same difficulty but had little choice. "We couldn't change trades because making paper was all we knew," Hwang Huann-jang says. "We couldn't move offshore because we didn't have the money." In the end, Goang Horng Shing decided to focus on the domestic market. "We were like a supermarket where you could get all shapes and sizes of paper," Hwang says.
With strict quality control and high flexibility to demand, the small mill soon became one of the largest suppliers to the local market. During its busiest period, Goang Horng Shing pumped out paper from three in the morning until eight at night to fill orders. Quality and variety, however, were only able to hold market share for another decade before the local company was shunted out by imported paper from Taiwanese factories abroad. "People can buy a piece of imported cultural paper for NT$3 [US$0.9], while our manpower cost alone is between NT$7 and $9," says Hwang's wife Wu Shu-li. "Since local consumers care more about price than quality, we're totally out of the game pricewise."
The scenario unfolded just as it had done in Japan--cheap imports undercut local manufacturers. The responses of the colonized and colonizing manufacturers, however, could not have differed more. "The Taiwanese relocated and 'exported' the cheaper paper home, thereby gutting the struggling industry," Hwang says. "The Japanese downsized their operations and improved their products." Hwang often cites the example of a Japanese handmade paper mill that has operated for 14 generations, though being downsized gradually from a large factory with dozens of workers to a husband-and-wife operation. "They keep making paper because they don't want the craft to end in their hands," Hwang says. "For them it's not just a way to make a living, but a cultural heritage that should be passed on."
Having shared the sweet and the sour years with his father, Hwang Huann-jang took over the paper mill from his father in 1996. "Business then was at the lowest of low--I honestly couldn't see a future," he says. He took up the family trade nonetheless, thinking that it could not get any worse than it already was. Fortunately, opportunity knocked. Local restaurants and hotels were working with industries to promote tourism together. The alliance packaged tours to visit a winery, a stone-carving park, a lacquer maker, a flower farm and two paper mills. (The other mill was later destroyed in a powerful earthquake that struck on September 21, 1999.) "Every industry has its own culture, but this aspect is often ignored," says Wang Hao, a Puli artist who instigated the idea. "The purpose of industrial tourism is to dig up and rebuild Puli's culture and help the declining businesses survive."
For most of the traditional industries, however, tourism was something totally different from what they were used to. "Making paper by hand was a very closed business--each mill considered its manufacturing formula confidential and had an 'authorized personnel only' sign on its door," Hwang says. "We only had to deal with suppliers. We had no idea how to talk to tourists and there was no one to learn from." Wondering where the next meal would come from for him and his workers, Hwang had no choice but to give it a try. Without funds to hire any extra staff, Hwang and Wu became tour guides, while Hwang senior received the occasional Japanese tourists.
Visitors are greeted at the mill entrance by several plants commonly used to make paper, though most of the raw material used these days is imported. Theoretically, any fibrous material can be made into paper, but some are better suited. In addition to cotton and xuan paper, Goang Horng Shing has developed paper from water bamboo skin and betel nut palm fiber--plants widely grown in Puli. Hwang Huann-jang explains that the paper was not so popular because of the small white dots, which do not absorb ink, on their surfaces. Some local artists, however, like it for the same reason.
Visitors are shown how a sheet of paper is actually made. Bark is washed, boiled, bleached and then pulped. The pulp is added to a vat of water. A worker lowers a bamboo screen into the vat and "dips" the paper, shaking a screen to and fro until a thin, flat layer of pulp forms on its surface. A stack of newly formed wet paper is then pressed to remove most of the moisture. Then each individual sheet is baked on a flat dryer. The seemingly simple craft is in fact not that easy. There is nothing more than experience to tell a papermaker how much pulp in how much water after how many shakes of the screen make how thick a sheet. And making hundreds of sheets of paper the same thickness takes a lot of skill with the bamboo screens.
Currently, there are 12 workers in the mill, making about 3,000 sheets of paper a day for the Japanese and Korean markets. "What we have for visitors is a handmade paper mill in operation instead of a show room where there are only demonstrations when tourists arrive," Hwang says. "We're a mill that makes paper for a living, so we always remind visitors not to waste any piece of paper after discovering the resources and manpower involved."
After the free tour, visitors can then make their own sheets in a wide range of personalized styles--from individual handprints to arranging flowers between two layers of thin paper. Depending on the materials needed, visitors are charged between NT$50 and $250 (US$1.5 and $7.5) for the do-it-yourself programs. They can visit a small museum where the raw materials, tools and works of paper art are exhibited and, before they leave, choose from a ream of unique paper products including handbags, hats and handkerchiefs.
On a busy weekend, Goang Horng Shing may have as many as 30 buses of visitors, but Hwang has never counted how many visitors they actually have had, or if they are making money. "This is a cultural industry where you don't exactly calculate every penny of investment and return," he says. But his wife has a keener eye on the purse strings. According to Wu Shu-li's count, the do-it-yourself programs and the small shop are their main sources of income and provide about 20 job opportunities for mill guides.
The tourism program seems to have brought the paper mill back to life, but Hwang has no idea how long it will last. Craftsmen--or the lack of them--are the main problem. He estimates that there are less than 200 craftsmen, with an average age of nearly 60, working in Puli's seven operating mills. Although they are highly skilled, they are no longer highly productive in the physically and mentally demanding job. Hwang says that workers who used to make 600 sheets a day in their prime only make 300 now. What is even more worrisome is that there are no newcomers. In fact, Hwang does not remember seeing a new worker entering the profession for 15 years.
All worries aside, Hwang gets up early every morning, sets things in order and warmly greets visitors. "People said handmade paper was a sunset industry 30 years ago, but we're still here," he says. "Who knows? Maybe we'll have another 30."