This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Body Modification, a project which is currently considered to be defunct.Body ModificationWikipedia:WikiProject Body ModificationTemplate:WikiProject Body ModificationBody Modification
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Technology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TechnologyWikipedia:WikiProject TechnologyTemplate:WikiProject TechnologyTechnology
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Invention, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Invention on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.InventionWikipedia:WikiProject InventionTemplate:WikiProject InventionInvention
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics
This article is within the scope of WikiProject China, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of China related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChinaWikipedia:WikiProject ChinaTemplate:WikiProject ChinaChina-related
I believe the portrait of Emperor Zhang on this page is unnecessary and confusing; a casual viewer could easily (as I did initially) mistake the portrait for one of Cai Lun, especially considering the similarity in appearance to the central figure in the image of “Patron Saint Cai Lun.” In fact, all of the images on the page must be incorrect, as they portray Cai with a beard, and as a eunuch he wouldn’t have had one. This is evident in the majority of recent representations, for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hunan_International_Economics_University23.jpg, his statue at Cai Lun Memorial Hall in Leiyang, and the official postage stamp of 1962: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cai_Lun_New.jpg. Any one of these would be more appropriate than the images currently used on this page. UnbrokenMonkey (talk) 18:23, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since all portrayals are inherently totally fictional, I don't see why using beardedness should be a deciding criteria. Remsense诉22:58, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, and such a rationale is essentially WP:OR. Both images the OP links are not in public domain; the stamp will not be until 2057, and the Statue is not due to commons:Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/China#Freedom_of_panorama. For the record, both images were used in the article until these issues were discovered during FAC.
The current image is a commonly used representation of Cai by modern sources, reproduced in Tsien 1985, Hunter & Hunter 1978 and Hart 2000. Aza24 (talk)01:43, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thinking about this more, I've removed the portrait of emperor Zhang. It doesn't really add anything, and I can agree that no one reads image captions. Aza24 (talk)05:00, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the section Spread of paper, Zuo Bo is referenced in the context of his relationship to Cai Lun, with particular note of his cultural significance in Japanese historiography. I think it may be appropriate to consider making an article, even if a stub for now, rather than maintaining the redirection towards Cai Lun's page. (I also cannot redlink Zuo Bo for this same reason, alongside the message not to unbold his name(s) due to the redirection to Cai Lun's page.
Go for it. It certainly does no harm to be able to link to a stub that has more substantive content than just a name-drop, as this article does.
I did the same thing with the Timur article in 2010, splitting off Sayyid Baraka as a stub, and it remains a stub to this day in spite of many edits by others in the interim. No harm in it, and at least anyone who clicks on the link in the parent article, gets somewhat more information. ~Anachronist (talk) 02:01, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-4 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
