Cai Lun, the Mountains and Rivers Contained in an Inch of Paper

The palace was filled with bamboo slips and silk pieces were hard to come by, which was an eternal fetter for the literati of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Cai Lun was trapped in the struggle for power in the palace for half his life, but he only cared about writing about the common people. Discarded hemp skins and old fishing nets were turned into soft plain paper in his hands, rewriting thousands of years of written heritage. A piece of paper lasts forever, and the achievements will last forever, but the grievances and resentments in the court are like shackles. After his success, he settled the past and died calmly, leaving only the method of papermaking to spread throughout the world. Rivers and mountains have changed, and bamboo slips and silk have disappeared. Only the paper he created has written down the history of the world and the rise and fall of dynasties from generation to generation.