Chapter 355: Weeding Out the Old to Bring Forth the New

Today, the First Emperor had set aside his busy work for once. The two to three hundred jin of bamboo slips piled into a small mountain in the hall were also cleared from the desk and moved to one side. Neatly trimmed, light-yellow hemp paper replaced them, arranged tidily on the imperial desk.

The Emperor picked up a sheet of hemp paper two chi two cun wide and one chi long. As Heifu had said, it was light as silk, yet finer, denser, and tougher than silk. Because the materials had been carefully selected, the paper looked even in texture, felt smooth to the touch, and its edges were cut very neatly.

He looked at another sheet filled with densely packed seal-script characters. The First Emperor found the handwriting familiar and asked:

"Is this Meng Tian's writing?"

Meng Tian, the Junior Supervisor of the Privy Treasury, bowed with clasped hands and said, "The paper was newly made, and we did not know if it could be written on. None of us dared to present it rashly, so I tested the brush on it…"

The writing brush was certainly not invented by Meng Tian. Heifu had known this years ago, when he saw every minor clerk in the Anlu county office holding a brush. This object appeared very early; Confucius was already saying "when the brush writes, it writes; when the knife scrapes, it scrapes." By the Warring States period, it was even more widespread. Names varied by region: the Qin lands called it bi, the Chu lands called it yu, Jiangdong called it bulü, and Yan and Zhao called it fu…

However, these "writing brushes" were still very different from later eras. The hair of the brush tip was wrapped around the outside of the shaft and secured with lacquer — the exact opposite of later brushes.

In both his past and present lives, Heifu was clumsy at calligraphy; his handwriting was barely passable. And with years of constant warfare, he had never thought to improve it.

When he arrived in Xianyang, he was surprised to discover that a new type of writing brush, quite similar to those of later eras, was already popular in the palace and government offices. It used withered wood for the shaft, deer hair for the core, and goat wool for the outer layer, and was called "grey hair."

Upon asking, he learned that this brush was also known as the "Meng Tian brush." Meng Tian had made it during the years he was demoted to defend the borders in Shang Prefecture and Yanmen after his defeat in the Chu campaign…

So Meng Tian had only improved the writing brush. Later generations passed down the error, and it turned into an invention.

From this, one could see that although Meng Tian was famous for his martial prowess, in private he was also a man who enjoyed literary pursuits. He did not decline, and on the spot, he ground ink and wrote out a memorial.

This proved that the paper could indeed hold ink for writing.

The Emperor silently approved. This single thin sheet of paper, light as a goose feather and weighing no more than ten zhu, could hold as much written content as a roll of bamboo slips weighing two jin…

Qin had always emphasized "administration by documents." Replacing bamboo slips with paper would greatly increase the efficiency of Qin officials. Even the First Emperor himself, leaning on his couch and holding a light paper document to read every day, would find it far easier than lifting heavy bamboo slips.

With the unification of the realm, the government affairs he had to handle daily increased rapidly. Even though the Emperor was diligent, seeing the mountain of slip-documents every day and wearing himself out over official paperwork truly brought him no joy.

As a writing medium, hemp paper was unquestionably qualified. The only problem was the cost.

"How much money and cloth does making hemp paper cost?" the Emperor asked. Heifu then presented the ledger that Zhang Cang had recorded on paper.

"Reporting to Your Majesty, we collected rags and hemp scraps from the Privy Treasury and the markets and neighborhoods of Xianyang. One dan costs 120 coins. Adding the cost of cart transport, firewood, labor, and processing, the total cost is no more than 500 coins."

"One dan of worn cloth and hemp scraps can produce one thousand sheets of hemp paper, each two chi two cun wide and one chi long! This is also the workshop's daily output."

In other words, the cost of a single sheet of hemp paper was only half a coin!

"Director of Artisans." The Emperor called out to the Director of Artisans of the Privy Treasury, whose expression was shifting uneasily at the back of the hall.

"What is the price of one volume of bamboo slips that can hold three to four hundred characters?"

The Director of Artisans had originally wanted to see Heifu make a fool of himself. He never expected Heifu to truly turn the rotten into the miraculous, using tattered cloth scraps and ragged edges to make paper that could be written on.

Had Meng Tian not personally inspected every step of the process and vouched for Heifu, the Director of Artisans would even have suspected that Heifu was merely presenting some relatively fine cloth…

Faced with the ironclad facts, he could only honestly answer the Emperor's question: "Depending on the material used, a bamboo volume costs between two and three coins, while a willow-wood slip costs one coin."

The bamboo itself was not expensive, but the processing was very time-consuming. Adding the price of the ox-hide binding straps, it was not as cheap as one might imagine.

If one switched to silk, a bolt of plain silk two chi two cun wide and four zhang long cost 500 coins. Cut to a length of one chi, it would cost around 10 coins.

Everything became clear. For the same width and the same amount of writing, the price of one sheet of hemp paper was half that of a wooden slip, one-fifth that of a bamboo volume, and one-twentieth that of plain silk… It was not without reason that paper could replace bamboo slips and silk books.

Heifu could finally breathe a sigh of relief. The idea for papermaking was indeed his, but during the process, they encountered minor troubles every day. Fortunately, this craft did not surpass the era; every step could be solved with existing methods. Besides, with the help of Cheng Shang and other Qin Mohists, all problems were readily resolved.

At this moment, Meng Tian raised a sharp question: "Currently, the Privy Treasury collects several hundred dan of worn cloth and hemp scraps in Xianyang, producing over a thousand sheets of hemp paper daily. This can continue for one year. But after one year, when the worn cloth and hemp scraps are exhausted, what then?"

"The Junior Supervisor of the Privy Treasury's concern is reasonable." Heifu did not evade it and took up the question.

This was not groundless worry. In his past life, Heifu had heard an interesting anecdote: after papermaking spread to Europe via the Middle East, what Europeans initially learned was only how to make paper from old linen rags.

Relying solely on old linen rags as raw material led to supply shortages. Europeans sent almost every collectible piece of old cloth, fragment, and tattered hemp scrap into the paper mills, to the point that cloth became scarce. Eventually, the English government even issued a decree forbidding the burial of bodies wrapped in shrouds, in order to save cloth.

The nations of continental Europe also bid high prices to snatch rags from each other, even leading to rag smuggling. At that time, many countries forbade individuals from collecting "old clothes, old banners, rags and cloth, scraps of fur and parchment, and other similar materials used for papermaking," and strictly prohibited their export, with severe penalties for violators…

Heifu did not know if this story was true or false, but relying solely on rag scraps for papermaking was certainly not viable. Even with Xianyang's large population, if it truly reached the point where "clothes are fresh in the morning and worn by evening," rags would still be limited. Moreover, poor households recycled their rags; the children in a family wore them in turns. Even when torn, they could still be used to pad shoe soles and such. And the wealthy, extravagant households that consumed large amounts of clothing did not care at all about the small sum rags could fetch and simply threw them away.

There were two solutions. One was to have neighborhood heads enforce the collection of rags, as in later times. The other, which he had long been planning, was to expand the sources of raw materials…

Thus Heifu said: "Your Majesty, besides using worn cloth and hemp scraps, paper can also be made from rattan, mulberry, and paper-mulberry bark. The process is the same as for hemp paper. It can be produced by the end of the ninth month, and the cost may be even lower than hemp paper…"

The Director of Artisans suddenly understood. He also realized why, last month, Heifu had seemingly done nothing but first ask the Privy Treasury's Park Overseer for a large amount of paper-mulberry wood and rattan bark to soak in Hao Pool!

These words also resolved the doubts of Meng Tian, the Junior Supervisor of the Privy Treasury. He thought to himself that this young man Heifu could see three steps ahead while taking one, truly formidable. He nodded, indicating he had no further questions.

"When Heifu requested to make paper, he promised Us that what he produced would be excellent in quality and cheap in price."

The First Emperor tapped the hemp paper and said with satisfaction: "Truly spoken!"

He walked before Heifu and encouraged him: "Since last month, many in and out of court have called you the 'Rag Minister.' This is merely the ignorant from remote alleys finding something strange, the shallow-minded slandering a worthy man. The laughter of fools is the sorrow of the wise; the joy of madmen is the loss of the virtuous! Pay no heed to those comments and discussions constrained by worldly prejudice!"

"Thank you, Your Majesty, for your trust and esteem." Heifu bowed, feigning a choked voice. The Director of Artisans of the Privy Treasury and others nearby showed expressions of shame; they were the very ones who had coined this nickname for Heifu, and now they dared not even breathe loudly.

The First Emperor then had Meng Tian step forward to help grind ink, and also had Cheng Miao, who had already been promoted to Imperial Censor, take up the "grey hair" brush made by Meng Tian and write an edict on a spread-out sheet of hemp paper.

The Emperor also specifically instructed Cheng Miao: "Use clerical script, not seal script!"

Although this went against the rule set days earlier that "edicts shall use seal script," the Emperor was above the law, and Cheng Miao could only nod and obey.

The First Emperor indeed had his intention.

As the poem says: Though Zhou was an old state, its mandate was to renew. So too was Qin!

There is no single fixed way to govern the world; a state's benefit lies in not blindly imitating the ancients. Daring to advance and constantly weeding out the old to bring forth the new — this was the reason Qin grew ever stronger, annexed the other states, and unified the realm.

The First Emperor could almost see it: document after document written in clerical script with grey-hair brushes on hemp paper, constantly passing between the commanderies and counties. The commoners east of the mountains would also have to learn seal and clerical scripts from Qin officials, throw away their heavy bamboo slips filled with the Odes and Documents, and use fresh new paper to copy the Qin laws…

This was the new governance and new atmosphere he was bringing to the realm!

"Heifu paper, Meng Tian brush, Cheng Miao clerical script — new brush, new paper, new script, all serving the new governance. This is quite a fine tale. With these three things, unifying the realm's writing can be accelerated by a few more degrees!"

Hearing this, Heifu thought to himself that the paper's name did not sound very good and might later be distorted into "black paper," creating the strange idiom "in black paper and black characters." But since the Emperor's words were golden, he could only exclaim: "Thank you, Your Majesty, for the name!"

The First Emperor paced back up to the hall and dictated the edict: "The ancients said: Among the hundred crafts, some smelt metal to make blades, solidify earth to make vessels, build carts to travel on land, and build boats to travel on water. These are all the works of worthy men. Heaven has its seasons, earth has its energies, materials have their beauty, and craftsmanship has its skill. Only when these four are combined can something excellent be made."

"Since antiquity, documents and records have mostly been compiled on bamboo slips; those using plain silk are called silk books. Silk is expensive and slips are heavy, both being inconvenient for people. Now there is the Acting Privy Treasury Minister Heifu, who, receiving Our intent, though newly supervising the hundred crafts, possesses the heart of a fine artisan. He purchased hemp scraps, worn cloth, and fishnets to make paper. Excellent in quality and cheap in price, it can replace slips and silk and be spread throughout the realm. We commend his ability and reward his merit. Now We bestow upon Heifu one mansion and elevate his rank to Right Chief of the Masses!"

PS: Regarding Qin-Han cloth prices, the *Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art*, Volume 3, records: "Now there is one bolt and one zhang of plain silk, valued at 625. Now with 500 coins, how much plain silk is obtained? Answer: one bolt of plain silk is obtained."

The earliest record of paper prices in ancient times can only be traced to the early Tang Dynasty. *A Grove of Pearls in the Garden of the Law* states: "Ordered to use 60 coins to buy 100 sheets of white paper as money." Also, the *Extensive Records of the Taiping Era* records that a Tang Dynasty hired laborer "was around forty years old, and his monthly wage was 500." Considering that a hired laborer in the Qin Dynasty earned 2500 annually, the purchasing power of the Qin banliang coin was roughly twice that of Tang Dynasty copper coins, so a cost of half a coin per sheet of hemp paper is still logical.

(End of Chapter)