When it comes to Tibet, everyone thinks of clear lakes, clear blue skies, holy snow-capped mountains, and delicious barley wine and butter tea. But there is a special craft that records the thousand-year-old history of Tibet, and you can't know it! That is the Nimu Tibetan paper, which inherits the thousand-year-old history of Tibet.

The raw materials used in Nimuzang papermaking are different from the bamboo, rice, and fishing nets of the Central Plains, and are replaced by the herbaceous plant that is widely grown in Tibet, the wolf poison grass.

Every July, the wolf poison weed produces beautiful flowers. And behind this beauty, it is full of toxicity, and cattle and sheep will bypass it when they see it. But it is precisely because of this that the Nimuzang paper made of wolf poison grass has become a natural guarantee for scriptures.

In Tibetan areas, the main use of Nimu Tibetan paper is to print scriptures. Most of the papers used in the collection of various classics in the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, Sakya Temple and other places are Tibetan paper. Nimu Tibetan paper is not afraid of insect bites, not afraid of rat devour, coupled with the dry and oxygen-deficient plateau climate of Tibet, the scriptures can be preserved for more than a thousand years.

In 1988, Nimu Tibetan paper was rated as an intangible cultural heritage of Tibet Autonomous Region;

In 1989, Nimu Tibetan paper was rated as a national intangible cultural heritage.

Tsering Dorje, a 67-year-old Tibetan elder, is the representative inheritor of Nimu Tibetan paper. The Tibetan paper he made will not break even if it is soaked in water, the handwriting on the paper is still clear, and the ink will not fade.

Grown for more than 12 years, fresh wolf venom grass roots are the best raw material for making Tibetan paper, but now Dorje can only use grass roots for more than 6 years, and most of them need to be purchased from others. A piece of Tibetan paper with a size of centimeters requires about 25 catties of fresh grass roots, and a person can only make 4 pieces of 100 catties a day.

It takes three hours to cook the roots, stirring them constantly and checking how ripe they are. The boiled grass roots are watered, beaten for half an hour until they are fluffy, then torn into tiny pieces and put into clay pots, added with snowy mountain water from an altitude of 7,048 meters, and quickly stirred the pulp.

The paper curtain is placed in a small pond filled with snowy landscape, and the mixed pulp is evenly poured into the paper curtain. The paper curtain is placed in the sun, and the blazing sun of the plateau will dry the pure snowy landscape in the paper.

After more than three hours of drying, the water in the Tibetan paper has evaporated. Under the blazing plateau sun, Dorje carefully inspected the "spoils of war". What seems like a "simple" process is actually very detailed, and every step needs to be accurate.

The birth of a piece of Tibetan paper, from the initial raw materials to the scriptures that carry the thousand-year-old historical memory of the Tibetan people, to complete such a wonderful "journey" without relying on any modern technology, this is the most generous gift of nature, but also the crystallization of the wisdom of the Tibetan ancestors.

Due to the different raw materials, Tibetan paper is mainly divided into three types: one is the papermaking process of dwarf shrub bark such as Ruixiangaceae plants, which is called Jindong Tibetan paper; The second is the papermaking process of plant roots such as wolf poison grass as raw materials, called Nimu Tibetan paper, also known as Xuela Tibetan paper. The third is the recycling paper process with waste paper as raw material.

Among these three types of Tibetan paper, the Nimu Tibetan paper is the most famous, and it is also known as the "Nimu Three Uniques" together with the Nimu Tibetan incense and Pusong carving. Because the raw material used is the root flesh of Ruixiangaceae, and the wolf poison grass is toxic, it is generally called Nimu poison paper. And because its main production area in Nimu is in Xuela Village, this kind of Tibetan paper is also called "Xuela Tibetan paper".

The raw material for making Nimu Tibetan paper is wolf poison grass, which is a poisonous grass, and cattle and sheep have to take a detour when they see it. The locals of Nimu call the wolf poison grass "paper clip", and it grows in grasslands and alpine meadows. The non-flowering wolf poison weed is inconspicuous in the grass, and once it blooms, it is very conspicuous.

The grass grows to half a human height and is topped with cylindrical flower balls that are white on the outside and pink or purple-red in the center. If you don't know the name of such a gorgeous flower, many people will want to touch or smell it. And who would have thought that it was the roots of these wolf poison weeds with venom that created the famous Nimu Tibetan paper.

Some people say that the history of Tibet is recorded on Tibetan paper, the text is recorded on paper, and the history is passed down from the written word. It is precisely with Tibetan paper that there is a place where Tibetan writing can be preserved, and it is precisely with Tibetan paper that the vast volumes of scriptures and classics have been able to avoid the invasion of time and frost, and quietly but completely preserved.

Looking at these words recorded on Tibetan paper now, the vividness of the years is still preserved between the lines, which presents a complete and glorious history of Tibet to the world.

Carrying the vast bits and pieces of the snowy plateau, pieces of Tibetan paper have traveled through thousands of years, presenting the history of Tibet in front of us. Among the three types of Tibetan paper, the most famous is the Nimu Tibetan paper, which is made from the poisonous wolf poison weed, like a life blooming on venom.

Although he once stopped, although he thought about giving up, now, in Xuela Village, Nimu County, Lhasa City, Tsering Dorje's family, a representative inheritor of national intangible cultural heritage, is still sticking to this papermaking skill.

In the Tibetan paper factory in the Poverty Alleviation and Development Ethnic Handicraft Park in Nimu County, Lan Eucalyptus met the family of Tsering Dorje, the representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage. As he grew older, Tsering Dorje, who was nearly seventy years old, was no longer in charge of the production and operation of the Tibetan paper factory, and the affairs of the factory were basically handed over to his two sons, Gesang Tenzin and Pu Poor.

Walking into the Tibetan paper factory, Lan Yu saw Tsering Dorje's eldest son, Gesang Tenzin, and his wife crushing wolf poison weeds while listening to a Tibetan radio. Seeing someone visiting, Gesang Tenzin put down the work in his hand and got up to receive him.

Gesang Tenzin introduced that the papermaking process of Nimu Tibetan paper is divided into 12 steps, namely picking, soaking, mashing, peeling, tearing, cooking, beating, pulping, pouring, drying, unwrapping and calendering.

"The best time of year to harvest the root system of the wolf poison grass is from July to September in the Tibetan calendar. There are a lot of wolf poison weeds near our village (Shera Village), and now we mainly dig them up by others, and we buy them. Gesang Tenzin said.

The harvested wolf poison weed is first soaked and washed to remove soil and impurities. The soaked rhizomes are placed on a stone tray and mashed with a hammer to separate the outer skin from the inner core. The crushed outer skin is then peeled off with a knife, leaving only the clean bast in the rhizome. Then the clean bast is torn by hand in the direction of the fibers.

The clean bast torn into thin wires is boiled in a pot, and the timing, degree and heat of the cooking are all based on experience. The boiled paper is placed on a stone tray and beaten repeatedly with a round cake-shaped stone until it is beaten into a pancake shape. The next step is beating, in which the beaten slurry is poured into a container and stirred back and forth with the help of a wooden vessel with an impeller (called "jia" in Tibetan) to make the fibers in the container pulp.

Introducing the operation steps, Gesang Tenzin either pointed to the operating equipment with his finger or demonstrated the operation himself. Whenever he talked about the next step of pouring, his younger brother Pu Qi was just that step.

The rectangular paper curtain is gently lowered into a flowing pool, and the evenly mixed pulp is poured into the paper curtain with a scoop. After the pulp is uniform and flat, both hands smoothly hold the paper curtain in the water to make paper, and the water slowly seeps down from the curtain.

Putting down the paper curtain, pouring the pulp, and picking up the paper curtain are seemingly simple steps, but the general poor are extremely slow. Every step of the operation must be meticulously detailed. Both hands are required to balance and exert force when placing and holding the paper curtain, otherwise the pulp is very likely to be uneven.

The picked up paper and the paper curtain are placed in a spacious area to dry. When the sun shines, the paper curtains glowing with white light are particularly dazzling. "To a certain extent, it needs to be turned up and down to prevent pulp accumulation and slipflow." Gesang Tenzin said.

When the paper curtain is dried to ninety percent, you can start to remove the paper from one corner. With the back of your hand facing the paper and your palm facing the curtain, insert it between the cords to slowly uncover the paper. Finally, according to the different uses of the paper, it can be calendered.

Gesang Tenzin said, "I started learning this skill from my father in 1996. To be honest, I thought about giving up at first. Because at that time, as long as I touched the wolf poisonous weed, my face and hands were full of red bumps, and now I have long been used to it. ”

"Although many people know about Nimuzang paper, they also know that we are basically the only ones who are still doing it here. However, because the production process is very cumbersome, coupled with the toxicity of wolf poison grass itself, many young people are unwilling to learn. Talking about the future development of Nimuzang paper, Gesang Tenzin, who is not good at words, seems to be a little helpless.

"However, after all, this skill has been passed down from ancestors, whether it is my father, myself and my younger brother, or my son, we all have the responsibility and obligation to pass it on."

Under the warm winter sun, Gesang Tenzin and an old man are sitting outside the door of the house, using a special knife to peel and core the roots of the raw material wolf poison weed. This is the first basic step in making Tibetan paper.

Gesang Tenzin was born in the famous Shera Village, Tarong Town, Nimu County, where the famous Shela Tibetan paper is produced, and his father Tsering Dorje is a national inheritor of intangible culture. "Grandpa passed it on to my father, and my father passed it on to me, and I want to pass it on to my son, and the Tibetan paper craft must be passed on." As the heir of the family's Tibetan paper craft, Gesang Tenzin has a particularly strong sense of responsibility.

Driving from Lhasa to Nimu County on the banks of the Brahmaputra River, I came to a hometown of folk art. The most famous here is the "Nimu Three Uniques", namely Tibetan incense, Tibetan paper and carving. The Tibetan paper here refers to the Xuela Tibetan paper in Xuela Village, Tarong Town, Nimu County.

"The history of Tibet is recorded on Tibetan paper." Nimshela Tibetan paper is one of the three traditional Tibetan papers in Tibet, because the raw material is wolf poison grass, not afraid of rat bites, insect eaters, no decay, no discoloration, so it is widely used in the writing and printing of religious texts, official documents and contracts. Many of the scriptures in the Potala Palace and some temples are made of Nimu Tibetan paper.

With a history of more than 1,300 years, Nimu Tibetan paper was once well-known in the region and abroad, and is still famous. As the main production area of Nimu Tibetan paper, there used to be many families in Xuela Village, Tarong Town, who made Tibetan paper for a living. In the 80s of the last century, with the impact of new paper and the scarcity of raw materials and rising costs, many people in Xuela Village chose to go out to work and no longer make Tibetan paper.

Today, there is still a family in Xuela Village who is still making Tibetan paper, that is, a Tibetan paper family, his father Tsering Dorje and his two sons Gesang Tenzin and Luo Qiong.

Born into a family of Tibetan paper, Gesang Tenzin watched his grandfather and father make Tibetan paper since he was a child. His father, Tsering Dorje, worked as a carpenter and a storekeeper, but eventually inherited the family's skills and chose to keep the craft alive.

Gesang Tenzin has been familiar with some basic processes since he was a child, but he really began to systematically learn the Tibetan paper making process from the second year of junior high school.

While learning Tibetan paper making from his father, Gesang Tenzin was also learning carpentry. He and his father made ghee drums and sold them to Shigatse to solve their livelihood problems. After about five or six years, in the end, "Tibetan paper defeated carpentry in my heart", and Gesang Tenzin and his father made the same choice.

Behind the perseverance are difficulties that need to be overcome, first of all, the scarcity of raw materials. Although it is very common in the snowy plateau, only the wolf poison grass that has grown for more than 20 years can be used to make Tibetan paper, and there is a fixed collection period every year.

If it is acquired, first, the cost is high, and second, there are very few people who collect it now. As a result, the production of Tibetan paper is extremely low, and the income is naturally affected.

What was a headache for Gesang Tenzin and his father was the hiring of personnel. "We need people who are particularly able to endure hardship. Although making Tibetan paper is not a physical task, it requires a long process. Gesang Tenzin said.

Because the wolf poison weed is poisonous, at the beginning, the people who make Tibetan paper will have allergies, acne on their faces, and their eyes will be uncomfortable, and few people can suffer such hardships. More importantly, despite the high cost and therefore high selling price, Tibetan paper has low sales and low returns. It's hard and you can't make any money, so naturally not many people do it.

Now, there are only 3 people in the Tibetan paper factory in winter, Gesang Tenzin and his younger brother Luo Qiong, and an old grandfather. In the summer, they will invite more people, but there are not many people who can endure hardships for a long time.

Even so, Gesang Tenzin and his father and younger brother persevered. In their opinion, first, because of the family inheritance, this craft cannot be lost; Second, because a lot of external encouragement makes them feel a deep sense of mission; The third is because they want to pass on the national crafts and Tibet's characteristic crafts.

In 2010, Nimu County set up a special poverty alleviation and development handicraft park. As the only family workshop, Gesang Tenzin moved here with his father and younger brother. With a space of more than 200 square meters, Gesang Tenzin and his father used it to open up an exhibition room, a workshop and a living room, and the open space outside was used to dry Tibetan paper.

In 2006, the Tibetan paper production process was listed as the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage. In 2009, Tsering Dorje was awarded the title of representative inheritor of national intangible cultural heritage by the Ministry of Culture, and received a certain amount of financial subsidies.

Under these favorable conditions, Gesang Tenzin and his father and younger brother became more motivated. His father, Tsering Dorje, began to try to develop new products a few years ago, such as paper with real flowers inside, made of two layers of paper. Gesang Tenzin said that these new products are very popular with tourists; Some people who like to draw and write calligraphy prefer traditional white paper; The temple uses slightly thicker paper. In response to the needs of different customers, Gesang Tenzin has developed a lot of new products, and the market is gradually diversifying.

The 37-year-old Gesang Tenzin is already a father of four children, two sons and two daughters, and he hopes that his son will inherit his father's business in the future and pass on the family's papermaking technology. He is pleased that both sons have shown considerable interest in papermaking. When he is working, his two sons also like to come together to watch, and sometimes even practice it.