A remarkable excavation in Shaanxi Province has revealed an intact industrial site from the early Han Dynasty dedicated to the production of high-grade paper and bamboo slips for the imperial bureaucracy. The site contains several well-preserved stone-lined soaking pits and a unique set of bamboo molds used to form early sheets of hemp-based paper, a precursor to the more famous Cai Lun process.
Researchers also found a cache of unused bamboo slips already pre-cut and polished, ready for the court scribes. This discovery pushes back the timeline for the large-scale industrialization of writing materials in China, proving that the centralized state had established dedicated "stationery bureaus" to fuel its massive administrative needs as early as the 2nd century BCE.