Riding the wind of rebirth

"Zhuoma is so eager to join the 'Compendium of Materia Medica' restoration team, she must have her own reasons, right? Otherwise, she wouldn't be so confident." Zhou Zhi smiled and said, "Why don't we listen to what she has to say first?"

"Let me first give an overview of the project," Engineer Zhang said from the side.

After receiving Liu Yijie's tacit approval, Engineer Zhang led everyone to a workbench: "The ancient books we need to restore are actually four volumes of the museum's collection of 'Compendium of Materia Medica in 52 Volumes, Illustrated Materia Medica in 4 Volumes, and Collected Works of Jiemaoju'..."

"The Compendium of Materia Medica has so many categories?" Zhou Zhi found it amazing, but since there were many "strange books" in Sichuan, he didn't pay much attention. But when he looked down at the books on the table, he suddenly realized: "Hey! It's a Japanese engraving edition. Now I know the origin of the two problems: difficulty in fixing the color and thin paper."

"Wow, you're really impressive!" Zhuoma, who had been somewhat skeptical of the curator's introduction, was now even more convinced: "You recognized it as a Japanese edition after just one glance? You've seen this edition of the Compendium of Materia Medica before?"

“The Seikado Digital Library project is one of the earlier projects we did. Although most of the books are our ancient books, there are also quite a few books from the Japanese. When we were making the font library for the Asian region of China, Japan and Korea, the Japanese books from Seikado were also an important source of character roots and glyphs for sampling. Therefore, I am quite familiar with the ancient books printed in Japan.” Zhou Zhi answered honestly.

“No wonder…” Zhuoma murmured.

“At a certain stage, it became fashionable for island nations to reprint Chinese classics, which greatly promoted the cultural development of island nations. These reprinted Chinese classics later flowed back to the mainland. The industry refers to these books as ‘Japanese reprints’.”

"There are many such events in history where Chinese classics were exported and then returned and valued again. The most famous of these is the return of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic from Goryeo."

According to the Annals of Emperor Zhezong in the History of Song, in the eighth year of the Yuanyou era, Gao Liguo presented a copy of the "Huangdi Acupuncture Classic" to the Northern Song court. At that time, the "Huangdi Neijing" circulating in China only had the "Suwen" section without distinction, and the "Huangdi Acupuncture Classic" that was once recorded in the "Tang Shu·Yiwen Zhi" had been lost.

"The Yellow Emperor's Acupuncture Classic has two other names. One is the Nine Volumes, which is the same number as the Acupuncture Classic presented by Goryeo. The other name is the Ling Shu, which is more familiar to everyone."

"The return of the Acupuncture Classic has replenished an important medical classic in China. The Northern Song government later used the Acupuncture Classic presented by Goryeo as a blueprint to publish the Ling Shu in twelve volumes, which is how the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic came to be what we see today."

"Therefore, such repatriated materials should also be given full attention. However, due to the printing conditions of other countries in the past, and the fact that most of the printed books were made of paper made from mulberry bark that had been passed down from Ningbo in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the paper was rough and thin, the quality of the woodblocks was also generally poor, and many craftsmen did not know Chinese characters at all, so there were many errors when they were reproduced."

"Yes, that's the problem our team is facing now. We've added over thirty pages, but then we discovered the paper is seriously flawed. The patched areas are very thick, and we can't flatten them with a hammer, so we had to stop immediately. We need to find another solution," Zhang said.

"Sister Zhuoma, you've come up with a solution?" Zhou Zhi asked Zhuoma.

This time, Zhuoma hesitated, her confidence wavering after learning that Zhou Zhi had indeed repaired everyone: "I...I was just imagining things..."

“Whatever the method, I guess you want to make the paper thinner, right?” Zhou Zhi laughed.

“That’s what I think…” Zhuoma said.

“This batch of paper is tough. If we want to make it thinner, it’s not too difficult. Why don’t we each write down our methods on paper and then compare them?”

"They've even imitated 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms'!" Old Gu laughed.

"Just for fun." Yan Zhenwei found it interesting: "Let's see if we're 'great minds think alike'."

Zhang tore two sheets of paper from his notebook and handed them to the two men, along with pens. The surrounding staff were also drawn in and stopped what they were doing to come over.

Zhou Zhi and Zhuoma sat back to back and quickly finished writing on the paper, then handed it to Dean Liu. Engineer Zhang leaned over to take a look and exclaimed with delight, "Hey! It really is similar!"

Everyone passed the paper around to look at it. Zhou Zhi wrote, "Repeat the papermaking process in the damaged area and stack the pulp."

Zhuoma's description was much simpler: "Grind the pulp, drip into the hole!"

The method is the same, but Zhou Zhi's eyes lit up and he clapped his hands: "This is a good name, it should be called 'Grinding and Drip Method'!"

"Zhuoma, show us how it works!" Seeing Zhou Zhi's confidence, Dean Liu became interested. Zhuoma was a promising young woman he had finally found. The reason he didn't let her participate in Lao Zhang's restoration project was because he felt sorry for her. Now that he knew that Zhuoma had such professional skills in restoring ancient Chinese books in addition to Thangkas and murals, he was overjoyed.

A girl from an ethnic minority group can even restore the "Compendium of Materia Medica"—who can you reason with that?!
Unexpectedly, Zhuoma blushed: "It's just an idea, I haven't put it into practice yet..."

"Huh?" Liu Yijie was dumbfounded.

“That’s not a problem,” Zhou Zhi affirmed to Zhuoma. “To use a popular saying these days, it’s all about the right approach. If you can come up with the idea of ​​grinding the pulp into a drip hole, the rest of the operation is just a matter of pure technical skill.”

"Have you ever made braised pork knuckle?" Liu Yijie asked.

“I haven’t done it on ancient books.” Zhou Zhi also shook his head, but just as Liu Yijie was shaking his head, Zhou Zhi added, “I did try this method when restoring a batch of letters from the late Qing Dynasty.”

"Come, come," Engineer Zhang invited Zhou Zhi to the workbench: "You must show us how it works."

On the table were several pages of a book awaiting repair. The insect droppings, eggs, and paper dust had already been removed, revealing insect holes of various sizes.

There was also a faint ring of corrosion around the insect's eye, which was a biological feature.

The medicines and tools on the table were readily available. Zhou Zhi turned on the desk lamp and said in a low voice, "Your repair table needs an upgrade too."

Liu Yijie couldn't help but secretly roll his eyes. "Do you think I don't want to use the adjustable backlighting and precise laser positioning equipment from your Sichuan University Ancient Books Restoration Institute? Do you think I don't want to?!"

However, Zhou Zhi only mentioned it briefly before focusing on restoring the pages.

An expert's skill is immediately apparent. Although the pages had already been cleaned once, they clearly did not meet Zhou Zhi's requirements. So Zhou Zhi poured hot water over the pages again and rolled a towel on them twice. The already thin and delicate pages, except for the text on them, became completely transparent and adhered to the backing.

Having achieved the cleaning requirements, Zhou Zhi then used a cotton swab dipped in the medicine to gently rub and press on the insect holes, and then rinsed with clean water. Although the movements were tedious and fragmented, they were swift and decisive, and very accurate. Soon the paper surface became much cleaner.

Then Zhou Zhi soaked the paper again, attached a backing paper, and flipped the book over so that the pages were on top and the backing paper was on the bottom.

Pour water again onto the backing paper and pages, and use a towel to roll around the backing paper to absorb some of the water, leaving a thin layer of water on the backing paper and pages.

Everyone knew the most crucial moment was coming. (End of Chapter)