factory that remains in samarkand, recently recreated along traditional lines by local craftsman zarif mukhtarov. yes, mm-hmm. you can see the threads. mm-hmm, to make it strong? [foreign language] in the first part of the paper-making process, the key ingredient, mulberry bark, is boiled for 4 hours or so until it gets really soft. whoa, look at that. next, the boiled mulberry bark is pulped into a mush for as much as 8 to 10 hours using water power. it's quite a simple but powerful thing, yeah. then, the mush is added to water that's often colored with a natural dye, and then strained in a sieve to create each sheet of paper. this is definitely not mass production. he's just scooping up a layer of the pulp. and sheet by sheet draining it and then posting it over there for drying. it's a beautiful color. the ingredients that create each color are unchanged from centuries ago, such as nut bark to make brown, onion skins for gold, and pink from boiled pomegranate. for centuries, samarkand's paper-makers managed to keep their highly profitable stolen chinese recipe secret, but gradually, the know-