Bamboo strips with the inscription of the Fuzhuan from the Jia edition of Etiquette and Ceremony.
Bamboo strips have the advantage of being light, waterproof, long wearing, and they can be
held together with knots and string so that you can roll up the book for storage and transport.
The bamboo strip complements the vertical right to left structure of Chinese. The book is unrolled
with the right hand. Due to the camera angle and the depth of the depression holding the strips,
the modern transcription is displaced upward by approximately four to five characters. Look for
the character 之 as a marker. It looks much the same today as it did 2000 years ago.
Western Han (206 BC - 8 AD)

http://hua.umf.maine.edu/China/SMcalligraphy/index.html
(c) Marilyn Shea, 2006, 2007