Four-Unit Water-Powered Paper Mill in Zeya

The Four-Unit Water-Powered Paper Mill is located in Zeya Town, Ouhai District, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China. It is at […]

The Four-Unit Water-Powered Paper Mill is located in Zeya Town, Ouhai District, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China. It is at the middle reaches of Longxi at the foot of Beidou Mountain, covering an area of about 0.28 square kilometers. It is a living fossil of ancient Chinese papermaking. In the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, people from Nanping, Fujian moved to Zeya to avoid the war. As there is abundant water and lush bamboos in Zeya, they resumed their old business of making ‘Nanping paper’. People use water-powered trip hammers to pound water bamboos into paper fluff and pulp to make screen paper. Thousands of people in the Zeya area are engaged in papermaking, so there are water-powered trip hammers and paper mills everywhere. Place names such as Shuichuikeng and Shuiliankeng are also related to papermaking. Therefore, Zeya is also known as ‘Paper Mountain’. In the 1990s, Japanese agricultural folk custom inspection groups and the China Printing Museum and other groups have inspected this place many times. They all believe that Zeya’s Paper Mountain is a ‘living fossil’ of ancient Chinese papermaking, among which the Four-Unit Water-Powered Paper Mill is particularly important. In the mountainous area of Zeya, there is abundant water and lush bamboos. The ancestors in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties built canals, waterwheels and paper mills along the stream here and integrated them with the landscape. At its peak, thousands of people were engaged in papermaking, and there were water-powered trip hammers and paper mills everywhere. So Zeya was also called ‘Paper Mountain’ in the Ming Dynasty. The Four-Unit Water-Powered Paper Mill was built in the early Ming Dynasty. The canal is about 230 meters long. There are four levels of water-powered trip hammers in succession along the flow, which can repeatedly utilize hydraulic resources. Hence the name ‘Four-Unit Water-Powered Paper Mill’. In 2001, the Four-Unit Water-Powered Paper Mill was listed as a national key cultural relics protection unit by the State Council of China.

Opening hours: Open from 08:00 to 17:00 from January 1st to December 31st.

Supplementary note on preferential policies: 1. Unified ticket sales for reserved tickets. There are currently no other preferential policies.