The earliest books in China appeared in the Shang Dynasty.

They are made of bamboo and wood. Bamboo and wood are common and accessible items. Before the invention of paper and printing, people cut bamboo and wood into small pieces and wrote on them with brushes, but there was no suitable writing material. Bamboo pieces are called "bamboo slips" and wood pieces are called "wooden slips". They are collectively called "Jane".

Generally speaking, only one line of words is written. If it is wrong, it is scratched with a knife. Therefore, in ancient times, the word "abridgement" has been used for a long time. Books are large and small, simple and short in ancient times, the longest is three feet, the shortest is only five inches. Writing a book requires a lot of simplicity, and these simplifications are tied together to make a book.

In cataloging, hemp ropes are often used, but also silk ropes (called "silk braiding") or leather strips (called "Wei braiding"). Ancient books mention "Wei Bian San Jue", which means the famous thinker Confucius, because he often read the "Book of Changes" and wiped out the simplified tube three times.

Depending on the length of a book, determine how many paragraphs it should be compiled in, usually two or three paragraphs, and four or five paragraphs or more. The word "book" for the number of books is a hieroglyph, like a rope connecting a series of simplified books.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, the Warring States Period, and the Qin and Han Dynasties, people had generally used bamboo slips to make books. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there were also books written on silk - "silk books". Silk books were lighter and easier to write than bamboo and wooden slips. However, silk fabrics were expensive, so the number of silk books was far less than bamboo and wooden slips.

Paper books appeared again in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Paper books were light, easy to write, relatively cheap, and very popular among people. After that, paper books gradually spread. By the Jin Dynasty, paper books had completely replaced bamboo, wood and silk scripts.

Extended information:

The earliest book discovered so far is a book made of papyrus by the ancient Egyptians 5,000 years ago. By the 1st century AD, Greece and Rome were using animal skins to record national laws, history and other important content. They were an important form of ancient books like the oracle bones of China's Shang Dynasty. Before the invention of printing, copying of books was done by hand, and the cost and labor were quite high.

In the Middle Ages, only a few churches, universities, nobility and governments had the use of books. It was not until the invention of Gutenberg's printing press in the 15th century that books became affordable items for ordinary people and were thus widely disseminated.

In the 1990s, with the popularization of the Internet, books have gotten rid of the limitations of paper. E-books have become the development trend of future books due to their advantages such as small space, easy dissemination, and easy storage.

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