Museum of Handcraft Paper in a Yunnan village

2015-11-16  Source: chinaculture.org

Handcraft Paper Museum

Located in a field next to Xinzhuang village at the foot of Gaoligong Mountain in Northwestern Yunnan province, the Museum of Handcraft Paper looks different from any other construction in the village, but in accord with the local environment and landscape.

Designed by Beijing Trace Architecture Office (TAO) and completed in early 2012, the museum is conceived as a micro-village, a cluster of several small buildings. All the buildings are designed with the traditional Chinese wood structural system featuring nail-less Sun Mao (tenon) connections, which can be skillfully built by local builders. Local materials such as fir wood, bamboo, volcano stone and handcrafted paper were used for the exterior finish - the roof, floor and interior finish, respectively. As time passed, these materials became worn and faded into a more harmonious color with the landscape, suggesting a time worn feel to the buildings.

The museum functions like a window into the village, in the sense that the whole village functions as a big museum, because each open building shows an aspect of the papermaking process.

The village has a history of 700 years of handcrafted paper making. More than 10 years ago, almost every family ran a papermaking workshop after completing farm work. Along with the development of the modern paper industry, handcrafted paper withdrew from the main paper market gradually because of its high material and labor costs. Now, only seven to eight families still insist on making handmade paper. Most of the paper made is low cost and of general quality. It is used for packing Puer tea or burning as an offering to the dead during religious ceremonies or sacrificial activities.

This project was launched by Long Wen, an editor at Intellectual Property Publishing House and an expert in traditional culture protection, graphic designer Yi An and architect Hua Li. It is a part of the plan for preservation and development of traditional resources, in which papermaking can be preserved as a cultural heritage and contribute to community growth. To exhibit the history, technique and product of paper making, this museum consists of exhibition space, a bookstore, work space and guest rooms for artist and visitors.

New changes have come to the village with their arrival. The most obvious one is more children prefer to stay in the museum when they return home from boarding schools in the town on weekends. On the ground floor of the museum, there's a rural library with hundreds of books. More important, Wi-Fi was connected to the village this June. Like a window to the broad world, children learned more about the outside world from the museum.

Definitely, rural life is not as idyllic in outsiders' eyes and imaginations, especially for people who lived in the city for a long time. Although they visited all 53 households in the village, and kept a good relationship with several villagers, due to the lack of spiritual connection, they can not be fully integrated into the village.