纸是蔡伦发明的吗？
Who invented paper? Cai Lun and the older paper
Name: ________________ Date: ________
两千多年前，有个叫东方朔的人想去长安做官。他给汉武帝写了一封信，介绍自己。这封信写在三千片木片上，要两个人一起才抬得动。汉武帝一点一点地读，读了两个月才读完。
那时候还没有纸。人们一般把字写在竹片或者木片上，又重又占地方。也有人写在丝绸上，可是丝绸太贵了，普通人用不起。
那么，纸是谁发明的呢？很多中国人从小在课本里读到的答案是：蔡伦。
蔡伦是东汉时在皇宫里工作的一个官员，负责给皇帝做各种用品。公元一零五年，他把一种新的造纸方法献给了皇帝。他用的东西都很便宜：树皮、旧麻、破布，还有旧的渔网。把这些东西放进水里煮烂，打碎，变成纸浆，再薄薄地铺开，晒干以后，就成了纸。皇帝很满意，后来人们就把这种纸叫作“蔡侯纸”。
可是，故事到这里还没有结束。上个世纪八十年代，考古学家在甘肃天水的放马滩发现了一小块很薄的纸，上面还画着地图。专家认为，它是西汉时期的，比蔡伦早了两百多年。后来，在别的地方也发现过比蔡伦更早的纸。
这么说，课本错了吗？也不完全是。现在很多学者认为，在蔡伦以前，中国已经有了纸，可是这种纸比较粗糙，做的人也不多，还不太适合写字。蔡伦做的事情，是把造纸的方法改进了：用的东西更便宜，做出来的纸更好用，而且可以大量生产。从那以后，纸才慢慢走进了普通人的生活。
所以，如果有人问你“纸是谁发明的”，你可以这样回答：纸不是蔡伦一个人发明的，可是没有他，纸可能还要再等很多年，才能变成人人都用得起的东西。
想一想，如果东方朔生在三百年以后，他的那封信写在纸上，一个人就能拿走。汉武帝呢，大概也不用读两个月了。
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 片 | piàn | film; movie (as in 影片) |
| 重 | zhòng | layer (as in 万重山) |
| 答案 | dá’àn | answer; solution |
| 负责 | fùzé | to be in charge of; to be responsible for |
| 各种 | gèzhǒng | all kinds of; various |
| 叫作 | jiàozuò | to be called; to be known as |
| 世纪 | shìjì | century |
| 完全 | wánquán | completely; entirely; totally; complete; whole |
| 适合 | shìhé | to suit; to fit; to be right for |
| 大量 | dàliàng | large amount; large quantity; in large quantities; heavily |
| 生 | shēng | to give birth to; to bear |
| 占 | zhàn | to occupy; to take up |
English (for the teacher)
More than two thousand years ago, a man called Dongfang Shuo wanted to go to Chang'an and become an official. He wrote a letter to Emperor Wu of Han introducing himself. The letter was written on three thousand wooden slips, and it took two men to lift it. Emperor Wu read it bit by bit, and it took him two months to finish.
There was no paper yet. People usually wrote on strips of bamboo or wood, which were heavy and took up space. Some wrote on silk, but silk was far too expensive for ordinary people.
So who invented paper? The answer many Chinese people read in their textbooks as children is Cai Lun.
Cai Lun was an official who worked in the palace in the Eastern Han, in charge of making all kinds of things for the emperor. In the year 105 he presented the emperor with a new way of making paper. Everything he used was cheap: tree bark, old hemp, rags and old fishing nets. You put these things in water, boiled them soft, beat them into pulp, then spread it out thin, and once it dried in the sun, it was paper. The emperor was very pleased, and later people called this paper “Marquis Cai paper”.
But the story doesn't end there. In the 1980s, archaeologists at Fangmatan, near Tianshui in Gansu, found a small, very thin piece of paper with a map drawn on it. Experts believe it is from the Western Han, more than two hundred years before Cai Lun. Paper older than Cai Lun has since been found in other places too.
So were the textbooks wrong? Not entirely. Many scholars now think China already had paper before Cai Lun, but it was fairly rough, few people made it, and it wasn't very good for writing on. What Cai Lun did was improve the way paper was made: the materials were cheaper, the paper was better to use, and it could be made in large amounts. Only after that did paper slowly find its way into ordinary people's lives.
So if someone asks you who invented paper, you can answer like this: paper wasn't invented by Cai Lun alone, but without him it might have had to wait many more years to become something everyone could afford.
Just think: if Dongfang Shuo had been born three hundred years later, his letter would have been on paper, and one person could have carried it off. As for Emperor Wu, he probably wouldn't have needed two months to read it.