The "Bamboo Books" museum lesson took place on February 20. The children themselves created manuscripts from wooden sticks according to ancient Chinese traditions.
Bamboo was one of the main writing materials in China until the spread of paper. The process of making bamboo planks was not easy. The stalk of the bamboo was cut into strips, which were dried to prevent rotting and worms from appearing in them.
The finished planks were tied together. A whole book required several thousand bamboo planks. Due to the nature of the material, the bamboo strips were narrow and only one row of signs could be written on them. The hieroglyphs on the board were placed from top to bottom.
These books had a significant drawback: they were too heavy. And some were so heavy that they had to be transported in carts. But despite their bulkiness and inconvenience to use, bamboo books have played a vital role in education. Burial, medical, educational texts, legislative documents, calendars, and literary works were recorded in them. They were in circulation for a fairly long period, until the paper came to replace bamboo.
During a lesson at the book museum, young participants:
- learned about the handwritten book tradition of China
- saw various materials for writing in the exhibition and compared them
- created "bamboo books" from ice cream sticks
The lesson was organized within the framework of the "The Book Professors Club" project. We invite everyone on February 27 to the next lesson "Belarusian Napoleon".
Bibliology Research Department
