Miaoli County resident Chen Shih-yi (陳世毅) is attempting to keep the traditional Hakka art of handcrafted papermaking alive by creating dishes, planters and other items using the process.
Chen studied industrial design at university, and after attending a youth creative design workshop held by the Miaoli County Government in 2017 he decided to put his degree to use by making creative products from Hakka paper, he said in an interview on Monday last week.
However, concerned that the art was slowly being forgotten, he went to the county’s Dahu Township (大湖) to study the technique with an experienced teacher, he said.
Photo: Cheng Ming-hsiang, Taipei Times
After honing his skills, Chen opened a workshop to teach the art to children, as well as producing his own work.
His first idea was to make small planters that would be sold in vending machines in the style of the “gachapon” capsule toys that are popular in Japan, he said.
When the planters proved successful, he started making paper lanterns, lampshades and bookmarks, which give commercial value to the traditional art, he said.
Hakka papermaking involves manually refining the fibers from the leaves of certain plants, and was once an important industry in the area along Provincial Highway No. 3, Chen said.
Hakka communities used the process to make much of the joss paper used in Taiwan’s temples, but since the process is very time consuming and labor intensive, more modern processes became popular, he said.
To make the paper, Chen and fellow enthusiasts collect discarded leaves from county farms growing jujubes, tangerines, peaches and other crops, he said.
The leaves are separated according to whether they come from grasses or grass-like flowering plants such as sedges or rushes and then soaked in water to soften so their fibers can be extracted, he said.
The fibers are then woven into papers and left in the sun to dry, he said.
Chen hopes that through teaching the process to children in his community the art can be preserved for the next generation, he said.
He also hopes that one day the Hakka papermaking tradition will find its way to other countries.
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