User:JoeHK247/sandbox-Elie

Elie Boutros
Elie with Book
Born	Elie Boutros 6 Feb 1995 Lebanon
Pen name	The Factory Worker
Occupation	Master Craftsman / Architecture Student
Nationality	Lebanese
Literary movement	Modernism, Postmodernism

Unfolding Book

Unfolding Book

"The purpose, effect and content of the book are all dependent on the initial display of the book: closed, half open, completely unfolded" - Book 12 NA 6665 M331

Story

He works in the Fujian Longhai paper mill, at the mouth of the river that feeds into the bay of Xiamen. The factory, it is said, manufactures 80% of the world’s paper. He knows that is not true. It’s been a long time since the Chinese first invented paper in the 2nd century. The time and labor-intensive process of paper making has become summarized by hundreds of hands. The assembly line is divided into several sections that correspond approximately with the original process of handmade paper. One, the cellulose fiber is separated from wood: a network of pipes forces the raw material through sieves and screens. Two, the fiber is stamped into a pulp. Three, the fiber is bleached and chemicals are added to the mixture. Fourth, the solution is screened. Fifth, the paper is pressed and dried into sheets. Sixth, the paper is trimmed to size and package ready to ship. Today, he works in the bleaching vat. Everything is an off white. Surrounded by the same color, he is able to distinguish the small differences in tone. His hands are stained. The light hitting them reflects a brown aura onto the white walls.

Papermaking is part of a family's tradition. According to his father, it began with one of his ancestors, an aristocratic Confucian scholar who exhausted his family's sizable fortune on the translation of a mysterious Italian book that had come into his possession, buying a paper mill to produce the material to print his completed book. Given the amount of pages purportedly in the translated book, the costs of the wood block negatives were enormous. Unlike European machines that used movable type, the Chinese printing presses had to rely on full carved sheets, since the non alphabetized Chinese character system would otherwise require too many specific characters. Rather than being able to rearrange just 26 different letters, Chinese typesetters would've had to deal with over 3,000 individual characters. The book was not as successful as the Confucian scholar had anticipated. Not long after his great great grandfather's death, the paper mill was sold to cover the debt from its printing and publishing costs.

Not only was the book unsuccessful, almost all copies were either lost or destroyed during the cultural revolution. Since the contents and information contained within the book were supposedly indecipherable without the book itself to decode it, the myth perpetuated by his family about the book has become contradictory and vague due to its numerous translations and interpretations. Recently however, there has been a renewed interest in the book. Apparently a fragment of a single copy still exists in the Taiwan National Palace Museum - the only remaining evidence of his family's legacy. The book is now the subject of a film and a documentary, but due to its still controversial status, it has to contend with China's strict media policy.

His supervisor walks by and he exits his thoughts and returns to the work at hand - removing himself from his daydreaming in order to assume the character of a productive factory worker, the role he is being paid to play far below minimum wage. A few hours have passed almost unnoticed inside the bleaching pit - the only way he is able to tolerate the boring and tedious work is by escaping into his wandering thoughts. Finally, the clock passes 6 AM on the wall and his night shift at the paper mill ends. He punches out but doesn't go straight home. He takes the ferry to across the river to the island in the middle of the estuary. The morning sun reflects a glaring white patch of an oily substance traveling on the surface of the river as it moves downstream - he recognizes the color, the same as the waste water that was leftover at the end of the paper bleaching process. The polluted water passes around the boat and mixes with the runoff from the other upstream. Pollution in China is a problem that is repressed by the government in an effort to counteract the country's bad reputation when it comes to the environment. Although most foreigners are aware of the environmentally hazardous practices involved in Chinese manufacturing, the prices offered by their economy are too good to dissuade most of them. So here the fresh water from the river meets dirty water from the factories and flows into the salty water of the ocean where it becomes somebody else's problem.

He is one of the first customers to enter the 24 hour internet cafe. His thoughts about his ancestor's book have stuck to his mind. He is determined to find more information about the manuscript. "China's state-run General Administration of Press and Publication (新闻出版总署) screens all Chinese literature that is intended to be sold on the open market. The GAPP has the legal authority to screen, censor, and ban any print, electronic, or Internet publication in China. Because all publishers in China are required to be licensed by the GAPP, that agency also has the power to deny people the right to publish, and completely shut down any publisher who fails to follow its dictates. Resultingly, the ratio of official-to-pirated books is said to be 40:60. According to a report in ZonaEuropa, there are more than 4,000 underground publishing factories around China. The Chinese government continues to hold public book burnings on unapproved yet popular "spiritual pollution" literature, though critics claim this spotlight on individual titles only helps fuel booksales."

While the cultural revolution had officially ended decades ago, the Chinese government has continued to suppress and censor the information available to the public. Although today, burning books is not nearly sufficient to limit access to information - China has had to regulate servers and control internet providers in what is today known colloquially as the Great Firewall of China.

After circumventing government imposed filters and blocked websites, he is able to find more fragments and anecdotes about his ancestor's book. He wants to create an interactive web page that people can informally add their findings to across through the internet, but Wikipedia has a history of being censored in China. He creates a hidden wikipedia page as a repository for people to accumulate their knowledge about the book in order to aid his understanding of it as well as its eventual reconstruction. Slowly over time, the page grows with text, links, images and other content. However, he realizes that even with all the sources that have been compiled, he is no closer to understanding the meaning of the elusive book. Like his great great grandfather, the confucian scholar, he has failed at understanding and decoding this book that defies description, this lost antibook that is the subject of his family's obsession.