Paper for Development of Written Poetic Texts.

Papermaking is one of the four great inventions in ancient China; the most influential genre of Chinese literature is poetry; and paper and poetry are therefore both our "national quintessence" of which the Chinese people are proud. The period people use the tablets of bamboo or pieces of silk had lasted several thousand years before paper was created, when the instantaneous exchange of emotion had to be oral, and that is why the way of verbal expression used to be oral songs, but not textual poetry; meanwhile, owing to the heaviness and inconvenience of the media, the written texts were only used for conveying the diachronic tradition, not suitable for special circulation. The invention of paper and its wide usage made the Chinese culture step into the Middle Ancient Time and hence led to the boom of textual literature in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Thereafter, poetry changed its form from oral to written texts, which in turn led to the changes in the importance of the literary nature and the poetic ambience of poetry. The revolution of poetry relevant to the aesthetic nature and the formal rhyme was hence the result by using the material media of paper, demonstrating the influence of the material upon the spirit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]