"Miss Xue Xue, what methods do you use to make paper now? Why is it so expensive?" Jing Wen asked.

Jing Wen wanted to figure out how to make paper, which was different from the papermaking method he learned when he was reading books in later generations. Jing Wen was a little surprised, why the price of books is so high. Even if the price of carved paper is higher, it would not make the whole book so expensive! Therefore, Jing Wen probably has the cost of making paper too high, so the price of books has increased.

Xue Xue replied: "My father liked to collect books very much back then, and a lot of profits were used to buy books. The rice paper used to print books had to be soaked, covered with ash, steamed, bleached, pulping, pulping, water fishing, glue adding, and patching. It took one year to make it, so the price was very expensive. If you said, we would make a version every day, then our diet would be closed every day."

After hearing this, Jing Wen almost vomited blood. A piece of paper not to mention the price of making raw materials, but the cost of time. Raw materials are things like bark, which were not valuable in ancient times, which was well protected by resources. However, the cost of time was very deceptive. It took one year to produce it, which was definitely a deceptive thing. In this era, no assembly line was developed, so it was produced by one person from beginning to end. Only a little rice paper was obtained in a year. But everyone had to live, so naturally they could only sell it expensive, and only high-ranking officials could afford it.

"It's really a scam. This paper is so expensive, and it's not enough to make some newspapers. Fortunately, I read a lot of books in later generations and I have initially recognized traditional Chinese characters. However, until now, I'm so bad about writing." Jing Wen thought to himself.

"Miss Xue Xue, you said that if I could invent a cheap paper and greatly reduce the printing price, how about it for printing our newspapers like this?" Jing Wen asked.

"What? Can you make cheap paper? Can you also reduce printing costs and increase printing speed? If so, we might as well open another paper workshop and a printing workshop. Moreover, paper printing is a good business that has gained fame. Not only will it not be called a odor of copper, but it is an elegant person!" Xue Xue said.

Jing Wen first found a papermaking workshop near Chang'an, and wanted to experiment with his papermaking technology. Chang'an was a big city in the Sui Dynasty before the founding of the Tang Dynasty, and there were sufficient facilities, so Jing Wen easily found a papermaking workshop. However, this workshop did not produce rice paper, but made hard yellow paper. Jing Wen wrapped the papermaking workshop for a day and gave the boss enough "contracting fee", and then the boss left happily. Jing Wen and the people in the papermaking workshop were studying new papermaking technology.

"How long does it take for your usual papermaking cycle?" Jing Wen asked.

The paper foreman asked, "What is a cycle?"

"The cycle is how long it takes for you to make a batch of paper? It's really hard to talk to the ancients!" Jing Wen complained.

The foreman replied: "Every time we produce a batch of paper, it takes several months. Especially the soaking materials, it takes more than a hundred days."

"Then what do you do when you soak bamboo?" Jing Wen asked.

"We are doing other part-time jobs!" the foreman replied.

Jing Wen almost fainted, and the foreman's answer was very good and powerful. Jing Wen finally knew why paper in this era was so expensive. I'm afraid there was something wrong with the ancients' thoughts.

In ancient times, people did not have any idea of ​​any process as production work. They were all responsible for one person from beginning to end, and from soaking bamboo to final production was the responsibility of one person. The process that took the longest time to make paper was to soak raw materials to allow those raw materials to ferment fully. This process took at least 100 days, so it took a long time. But when you really started making paper, it didn't take much time, at least a few days.

By doing this, the real cost of paper is actually because it takes too much time to soak, and it is not that the so-called papermaking is too complicated. This is entirely because of problems with the management methods in ancient times, so this reason was caused. If there were so-called production plans in ancient times, there would be no such problem at all. As long as the production plan is formulated, work can start work every day, and then throw raw materials into water every day for fermentation, so that the work can be maintained.

However, the ancients' thinking made Jing Wen unable to understand. They simply ignored it when they soaked and asked the employees to do something else. And let the bamboos be soaked, and time was spent for no reason. Only after the bamboos were soaked enough will the employees be summoned to produce together. This was the ancient production process.

"The pit! It's really a huge pit! Even the production process is not arranged, so production started like this? This is the so-called workshop in ancient times? Isn't this increasing the cost? If it were me, I could design an assembly line. Isn't the speed of papermaking greatly increased?" Jing Wen said to the lazy workers.

Jing Wen understood that the so-called high papermaking cost in ancient times was completely self-invested. If the papermaking process could be properly arranged, there would be no such thing. As long as the process of soaking raw materials was used to produce things and properly formulate production plans, there would be no problem at all.

In fact, it was a bit difficult for Jing Wen to ask the ancients to properly arrange the production process flow. The so-called production process flow is that it is necessary for a certain level of industry to be studied. In this era, industry has not developed at all. More than 90% of the country's population is an agricultural population, and they will not think about industrial matters at all. Only a small number of merchants invest, but they rarely invest in large quantities in industry. This kind of paper is a luxury product, and because it is expensive, it causes little market demand. However, the market demand is not large, so the production scale is small, which is even more a vicious cycle. No one thinks about how to improve efficiency, which leads to a misunderstanding of thinking.

There is another problem with the quality of paper, that is, the reason for the material. Paper made from different materials has different effects and different quality. The best rice paper is made of bark from the green sandalwood tree, which is expensive. If you want to make good quality and low-priced paper, you need special materials.
Chapter completed!