Manzhao is a small village surrounded by tropical rainforest, widely known as the “Dai paper” mill in the Dai Autonomous Prefecture of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province. “We’ve been making Dai paper in the village of Manzhao for over 800 years,” said Yan Kan, an inheritor of the papermaking craft. From the age of five, he saw his family using iron pots to make Dai paper. When he was 16 years old, he was taught by his grandparents to be a papermaker and was quickly able to complete the production process independently.
According to Yan Kan, the origin of the paper is related to the Buddhism in the area. In the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279), after the Central Plain’s paper-making technique was introduced into the village of Manzhao, the Buddhist Dai king asked the villagers to produce the paper for the Buddhist scriptures. Due to its high quality, Dai paper gradually replaced the Indian palm-leaf manuscripts and became the carrier of Dai people’s beliefs and cultural heritage.
Following Yan Kan through the village of Manzhao, we came across the rainforest. Yan Kan told us that the production of Dai paper starts from here. "Unlike ordinary papermaking that requires the cutting of trees, Dai paper is environmentally friendly because its raw material is the recyclable bark of these trees.”
Although Dai paper carries the culture and beliefs of the Dai people, it faced problems. So Yan Kan improved Dai’s papermaking technology, saving on production time and reducing labor costs, and then he started teaching his new papermaking process to the villagers for free. Due to the continuous development in papermaking technology, Dai paper is now widely used. People use it for Buddhist scriptures, tea wrapping, paper umbrellas, lanterns, hats, and even temporary rooftops. Starting from a small village in Xishuangbanna, Dai paper has now traveled to the United States, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and other parts of the world.
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