A public demonstration by An Chi-yong, holder of the National Intangible Heritage title of Hanji Master, will be held in Goesan, North Chungcheong Province. From the first trimming of the mulberry branches to the drying of a single sheet of paper, visitors can watch every step of the process up close and try it with their own hands. In a season lined with spring events for walking beneath cherry trees, this is a day filled with nothing but tree bark, water and human hands.
Hanji begins with steaming cut mulberry and stripping off the bark. Scraping away the black outer skin exposes the wet inner bark, white underneath, and while it boils in lye the yard fills low with steam from the boiling wood and the smell of ash. The sound of beating the boiled bark with a mallet is dull and regular, letting you guess from a distance roughly where the workshop is.
The fibers loosened by the beating spread evenly through water mixed with hibiscus mucilage. Hands holding the screen shake the water back and forth, then side to side, settling the fibers layer upon layer, and only then does the paper take shape. Peeling off the wet sheets one by one, drying them, and beating them to smooth the surface at the end makes up one full round of the process.
A public demonstration is an event where a holder of National Intangible Heritage shows their skill to the general public. It takes place in a real working space rather than behind a glass case, so visitors see the process from close enough to be splashed. It is a rare chance to learn with the body what kind of labor goes into a sheet of handmade paper.
Hanji is a material used in the repair of cultural heritage and the restoration of records, and it is also a product placed on the same shelf as cheap machine-made paper. For the tradition to continue, the makers have to make a living, and for that the paper has to sell. The growing number of hands-on programs is connected to this as well. The distance between consuming the skill of the fingertips as a tourism product and passing that skill on has still not narrowed.
Dates, fees and reservation methods will be announced once confirmed. Goesan is a county set in the foothills between Cheongju and Chungju, so access by car is easier than by public transport, and since the workshop yard is a place where water is handled, shoes that can get wet are better.
In a season when the spring calendar is packed with the names of flowers, steam from boiling wood rises in a yard in Goesan. Within the thin thickness of a single white sheet, the traces of hands passing over it many times are stacked. To see those traces with your own eyes, there is no way around going to Goesan.
Event information
Event: National Intangible Heritage Hanji Master Public Demonstration
Holder: An Chi-yong
Venue: Goesan, North Chungcheong Province
Program: Demonstration of the full process from trimming mulberry to drying paper, with hands-on participation for visitors
