The act of making the paper is described, certainly, but it is shown as only one step in a complex network of events and transactions that provided a livelihood for the practitioners but also defined business and familial ties, supported an activity sympathetic to the terrain, climate, and flora of a given region, and responded to market needs and interests. This study is not so much about papermaking as about the lives of a group of papermakers, seen over time. The book provides one view of enormous shifts in Chinese society from the Republican period to the Reform era. While this part of China's history encompassed many changes documented extensively elsewhere, Eyferth, despite his seemingly narrow focus, touches effectively on the great themes: rural-to-urban migration; shifting attitudes toward rural peoples; the attempt to codify, simplify, and mechanize craft skill; and the efforts of a command economy to assert absolute control. We also see an interesting economic turnaround over time: first, loans were extended from paper traders to papermakers (for materials and hired labor); later, papermakers consigned their paper to the traders, with payment following actual sales. The system in place at the beginning of the period covered was established over many generations, as shown through one family closely studied. Generational kinship (i.e., horizontal vs. vertical) was important and Eyferth writes: To a very large degree, the economy of the Jiajiang hills revolved around intangible assets. The industry as a whole depended on the unimpeded circulation of technical know-how, and the success of individual papermakers depended on their eating rice from bamboo roots: the social history of a community of handicraft papermakers in rural sichuan, 1920–2000 Jacob Eyferth. Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: Harvard University Asia Center and Harvard University Press, 2009. Harvard East Asia Monograph 314. 335 pages. 9.25 x 6.25 x 1 inches (hardcover). Includes 12 black & white photographs, maps, appendices of terms and paper types, endnotes, an index, and a list of works cited. $45.00. ability to establish and maintain a wide range of relations with buyers and sellers, neighbors and wage workers, and on their accumulation of "credit" in the broad sense of trust and reputation. Land and other fixed assets appear to have been far less central to social relations than they were in many agrarian contexts. (67) The delicate interaction of skill sets, specialized or not, family labor versus hired help, individual tools versus shared resources (such as drying walls, steamers, and, later, beaters), seasonal and year-round production, and papermakers' interactions with paper traders were either ignored or inadvertently undermined by government policies. Efforts to simplify and standardize processes sometimes undid long-standing, intricate, trust-based relationships. State control was exerted both through the availability (and withdrawal) of grain subsidies and through efforts to impose factory or other urban models on a network of village contacts and processes that was already working well. In his conclusion, the author notes: Maoist China preferred "bulldozed sites" (or, to use Mao's formulation, "blank sheets of paper") to historically grown structures. Rural craft industries of the type found in Jiajiang were seen as a form of industrial wild growth that needed to be weeded out and replaced by economic forms more closely corresponding to the imagined rational economic order. It is striking how much PRC \[People's Republic of China\] policies in Jiajiang were guided by a desire for symmetry and order, for neat divisions between sectors, for visibility and control, rather than by considerations of productivity, profitability, and efficiency. This desire for pure forms and the concomitant fear of messiness led to deindustrialization and famine in the Jiajiang hills, the loss of untold lives, a precipitous drop in living standards, and the destruction of the social and cultural tissue that had linked papermakers to the state and society at large. (224) Ultimately, the village of Shiyan was able to return to long-standing practices, albeit somewhat differently structured, once the government stopped mandating collectivization in the 1980s and 1990s. Within the text are some interesting details specific to the papermaking process, which we might not otherwise know of. For example, Eyferth describes drying walls plastered with a mixture of chalk and paper pulp that is then polished until as smooth as glass. He also writes that the region's predominantly bamboo papers were sometimes supplemented with "hemp or bark fibers to give the paper extra ‘bone' (strength and texture) or ‘flesh' (softness and volume)." (40) Several sections of the book thoroughly and helpfully document the author's research and supplement the central text: a comprehensive index, detailed endnotes, and a compendium of the many works he cites. In addition, the reader is given a character list for selected Chinese names and terms (i.e., key words in both Romanized pinyin and Chinese characters), a glossary of selected papermaking terms, and a useful table, organized chronologically, of the main twentieth-century paper types made in Jiajiang and their markets. This last reference includes the paper's name, sheet size, use, main production area within the region, and primary market. The village entered the twentieth century producing large-format fine writing papers and smaller ritual papers, then added mediumsize and -grade papers with multiple uses by the 1920s. Duifang 對方, a paper used for writing, packing, fans, umbrellas, ritual uses, and firecrackers, became the main paper produced during the collective period. After 1980, the region produced calligraphy practice and fine calligraphy papers. Eyferth also provides some useful tables, such as the distribution of workshops by class in 1951 (listing, by township, the total number of vats and numbers of papermakers identified, using the standard governmental categories, as landlord, rich peasant, middle peasant, or poor peasant). Two hand-drawn maps, showing geographical and topographical features, further enhance the text, through a visual depiction of the territory and the natural features and barriers experienced by the papermakers. A dozen photographs, taken by the author in the mid- to late-1990s, provide more a sense of the papermaking environment than useful detail, but some images usefully suggest the scale of the enterprises and the relative lack of refinement. For anyone interested in the lives of production papermakers, a glimpse into rural China in the twentieth century, or both, I highly recommend this work. Eyferth's extensive research—through fieldwork, local and regional archives, and secondary sources—and his careful documentation together present a comprehensive view of a craft industry during a period of political change, occupation, revolution, and emerging capitalism. Here is a rare opportunity for contemporary papermakers to see their craft in a broader view and with more historical range than they might have ever imagined. Would that more social histories, in any field, were so allencompassing and thoughtful.
