Last Day in Taiwan: Hand-made Paper and Fan Making

 June 15, 2024

While breakfast is usually not a topic of blogging, I wanted to start by appreciating the waitress at the Puli Ease Hotel where we were staying. This incredibly kind and caring lady saw how rushed our breakfast was, and put in the extra effort to ensure we could take our food to-go, and then gave us more food from the buffet to-go. This was a level of helpfulness I had never seen before, and she was truly incredibly kind and helpful. But moving on from breakfast, we left the hotel (to the goodbye waves of the waitstaff) and headed towards a paper-making factory. This factory still made paper the traditional way, and gave us a new perspective on how such a frequently-used daily item is made. We learned how the inner bark of the tree is harvested, soaked, boiled, bleached, and shredded to make pulp, and then we got to actually make the paper from there. Using traditional trays and bamboo mats, we scooped up wood pulp and water, then shook it to distribute evenly. After achieving a desirable constitution, we placed the sheets of pulp on boards to be pressed. Using a manual press, we all took turns twisting it to squeeze out the water and compress the sheets of pulp into sheets of paper. Once we did that, we had damp sheets of traditional handmade paper, which we brought to a hot plate in order to boil off the water. Once these sheets had dried, we had bona-fide handmade paper which we then could bring to hand-carved molds to stamp them with a design of our choice, which ranged from the Chinese Zodiac to coins to Pokemons. Once those were complete, they then brought us to make our own fans from higher-quality paper made by the professionals. They stamped out a pattern for us to cut and gave us the wood for the fans, but we made everything else under their instruction. We made creases in and folded the paper for the fans, glued them to the wooden structure, and most importantly, we painted them. We were given the option to either use the traditional method of blowing the liquid ink to paint tree branches or take the safe route and paint them. Most chose the blowing, which would prove to be extremely tricky, although some of us saw the challenges of blowing and happily painted our fans. All of us, however, left with beautiful handmade fans and a new understanding of the method of hand making paper. 

We are back! What a great trip! 

Cooner