Ancient books get a new chapter

It is common all over China and the world that ancient books have a high proportion of damage after being circulated for hundreds of years.

"Incomplete statistics show that there are 50 million ancient books across China, of which 15 million need restoration. Some books have suffered damage caused by improper restoration methods in the past decades," Chen recorded in 2014.

Traditionally, mostly craftsmen engaged in the conservation and restoration of ancient books, who passed on their skills and experience one generation after another, were insufficient in cross-disciplinary research on the paper itself, which is the very carrier of ancient knowledge and information.

A big headache for the conservation workers of ancient books is that ancient paper could easily last for thousands of years, but paper made in the modern age often had a much shorter life span. A batch of ancient books was restored in the 1960s and "decades later we found the modern paper used in the restoration began to decompose, which caused further damage to the original artifacts," Yang says.

When he took the job as the director of the new institute in 2014, he decided that research should begin with the paper, "which is essentially a polymer material and coincides with my major field".

"We have combined knowledge in physics, chemistry, biology and other sciences to make comprehensive studies on the protection, authentication and restoration of cultural relics.

"We are ahead of the world in this field," Yang says. Many ancient Chinese books are in the collections of universities and museums around the world for historical reasons. "We have often been invited by foreign institutions to speak at seminars and share our experiences in the protection and restoration of ancient books."

Yang says, at the advice of the Chinese institute, a laboratory for the conservation of ancient books was established at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

"When we talk about sharing Chinese culture with the world, it's not just the content but how we protect it, and the knowledge of the material carrier of the culture such as paper," Yang says. "This helps to expand the influence of Chinese civilization in a most legitimate way that can be accepted by the world."