The movable type printing in history textbooks is still in use in this small village!

Wood type printing

Author: Lei Biyu Source: "Knowledge Window" 2017 Issue 08

There is a beautiful mountain village called Dongyuan Village on the banks of Feiyun River in Rui'an City, Zhejiang Province. The green mountains and clear waters have nurtured the simple villagers, and the fragrant ink adds a different flavor to this quaint village. Adhering to the awe of ancient culture, the wood movable type printing technique has been completely preserved here, saving the ancient civilization of thousands of years.

The movable type printing was first invented by Bi Sheng during the Qingli period of the Northern Song Dynasty. It was called "mud movable type printing". Later, after development and improvement, wooden movable type, copper movable type, lead movable type and other printing techniques appeared in the folk. Among them, the wooden movable type printing has the greatest influence on later generations. "Wooden movable type" is carved into single characters with pear wood, jujube wood or willow wood. Because of its convenient material, simple and quick manufacturing, it has become a commonly used movable type in the history of Chinese movable type printing. The finished products printed by wooden movable type have elegant characters and clear ink marks, and can be preserved for up to a thousand years.

The manufacture of "wood movable type" seems simple, but the printing process is very sophisticated. Just the most basic writing and engraving will daunt young people today. It requires years of hard work and cannot be done by taking shortcuts. It will not work without a certain level of skill and endurance.

Model of movable type printing Chinese characters (Source: Tuchong Creative)

The characters of movable type printing must be written in reverse. On a template less than one square centimeter, hold a brush and slowly fill in the old Song font characters with thin horizontal lines and thick vertical lines, one stroke at a time, to form a square and beautiful reverse character. After writing, the most difficult step is carving. Only in sufficient light can the delicate strokes be carved, and then the carving knife is used to carve along the edge of the character. The force must be precise and even. In just a moment, a wooden movable type is carved in the flying sawdust. This skill cannot be learned without years of practice. Long-term production will also cause the maker's fingers to twist, back pain, and dry eyes.

The complicated printing process also tests the producer's inner endurance. It has a total of 15 processes, including cutting, copying (arranging the manuscript), making type molds, writing, engraving, typesetting, proofreading, printing, circling, marking, filling in words, dividing the score, binding, cover, and binding. Each process must be operated in a standardized manner. Among them, printing is the most important process. There are strict requirements on the humidity of the paper used. The amount of ink must be just right and the force must be even. If too much ink is used and the force is heavy, it will be blurred into a piece; if too little ink is used and the force is light, it will be unclear. After dozens or hundreds of pages of scores are printed, circling, marking, punching holes, twisting the paper, cutting edges, putting on the cover, and binding the outer lines, a volume of antique wood movable type printed products is considered to be successfully completed. Sometimes, after being used many times, the wooden movable type will lose its edges and corners, and the shape of the characters will become blurred, and the character blocks need to be constantly supplemented.

This process is long, tedious, and boring, and it requires extraordinary perseverance and patience. In today's impetuous society, if you want to endure this kind of loneliness, you can imagine how strong your heart is. But there is an old man who has been sticking to it without regrets. He is Wang Chaohui, the most famous music master in Rui'an, the 14th generation inheritor of Dongyuan Village's wood movable type printing, and the inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage.

The old man's family has been using wood movable type to print family trees for more than 800 years. The old man said: "The skills passed down by our ancestors cannot be lost." Because of this love, they used wood movable type printing to reprint the family tree, relying on a set of formulas passed down by their ancestors, and passed down by word of mouth to preserve this skill with a history of more than 800 years. It has also become the only movable type printing technique that has been preserved and is still in use in China.