Show the long history of printing culture

From books and newspapers to banknotes and bills, printing is closely related to modern life. China Printing Museum, located in Daxing District, Beijing, with an exhibition area of 5500 square meters, is the largest printing museum in the world. Here, the audience can understand the development history of printing, see the results of various printing processes, and feel the great role that printing has played in promoting the progress of human civilization.

Inherit the wisdom of the ancients

China Printing Museum has a total of three permanent exhibitions: "Printing the Orient - the root of printing in China", "Printing the world - Mutual learning of printing and civilization", "Printing machine treasure - Chinese and foreign printing machinery and Equipment Exhibition". The exhibition "Printing Out the East" introduces the origin, development and dissemination process of printing in ancient China.

Writing and paper making are important conditions for the emergence and development of printing. Archaeological research shows that about 4500 years ago is the period when Chinese characters began to take shape. CAI Lun of the Eastern Han Dynasty invented a complete process of paper making, and the paper made of plant fibers became an excellent carrier for writing. The museum displays the remnants of a classic written by the Tang Dynasty, donated by the calligrapher and painter Qigong. Beautiful and neat characters are written on yellow rice paper, which is still clear after thousands of years, reflecting the excellent papermaking technology and calligraphy atatments of the Tang Dynasty.

"Chinese block printing technique" is a treasure of traditional culture, which was included in the Representative list of intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2009. Block printing originated in the Sui and Tang dynasties and reached its peak in the Song Dynasty, when the book layout, font, paper, ink and binding forms of block printing had great development, forming a unique aesthetic culture of books in China. The Northern Song Dynasty's Tongdian, the Southern Song Dynasty's Jiading Dynasty's Western Han Hui, the Yuan Dynasty's Hangzhou Dynasty's Xuanhe Ancient Atlas, the Ming and Qing Dynasties' poems and anthology... The precious ancient books reflect the development of block printing since the Song Dynasty. Among them, the most valuable is the Song edition of the Spring and Autumn Classics.

The Song edition of the book engraved fine, paper ink and rare, known as "a page of Song edition one or two gold" said. The book of Spring and Autumn Classics, which is a national treasure and a rare edition of Confucian classics, is the only edition in China in the late Southern Song Dynasty.

This "Spring and Autumn Classics Biography" is large, spacious and spacious. Eight lines per half page, 17 words per line, the words as big as money, similar to the size of today's original word. Plate frame left and right double line, plate center in the same direction double fish tail, white mouth, the bottom has Liu Wen, Zhan Zhou and other 14 carving names. The font is italic, the carving knife is rigorous, without losing the beauty of the text. If it is not the name of the engraver at the bottom of each page, it is almost impossible to distinguish the works of different engravers, reflecting the peak of engraving printing skills in the Song Dynasty.

The invention of movable type printing was another milestone in the history of ancient Chinese printing. According to the record in Mengxi Pen Talk, Bi Sheng invented clay type printing in the Northern Song Dynasty. In the display case, a rectangular box contains a set of small squares shaped like seals, which are copied from the process of Bi Sheng. Clay type is the earliest type, to the Ming and Qing dynasties, movable type materials more diverse, wood, copper, mud, tin, lead and other kinds of use.

The rotary typesetting plate invented by Wang Zhen in the Yuan Dynasty greatly improved the efficiency of movable type printing. In the exhibition hall, the use of the wheel typesetter is reproduced: on the wide round turntable, the wooden type is neatly arranged in a dense, nearby workers are turning the wooden plate, looking for the type that needs to be used. Rotary typesetter is the world's first typesetter mechanical equipment, the wooden type arranged by rhyme and model on the wooden turntable. By turning the wooden plate, the worker can take out the required words while sitting, which greatly reduces the labor intensity.

Tell a development story

Ancient Chinese papermaking and printing techniques spread to the West and had an important impact on Western civilization. The printing technique of modern western industrialization spread to China and promoted the development of Chinese printing industry.

The "Geographical Questions and Answers" published by Meihua Library in the late Qing Dynasty, the 1920 edition of the "Communist Manifesto" printed by the new printing house, and the first issue of the color monthly "Art Life" printed by offset printing in 1934... In the exhibition hall of "Printing the World", one exhibit at a time reflects the influence of modern Western printing after it was introduced into China and the rise of Chinese national printing industry.

During the period of the Republic of China, the Commercial Press and China Book Company became outstanding representatives of national printing enterprises. In the center of the exhibition hall is a hand-pulled printing machine made in 1929, the black iron fuselage is simple and low-key, but the bronze nameplate inlaid with "Repair after the national disaster" highlights its special - it was cleared from the ruins of the Commercial Press after the "January 28" incident in 1932, witnessing the rebirth of national printing enterprises in the war.

In the early 1930s, the establishment of the printing plant in the revolutionary base area opened the prelude to the development of the red printing industry. A small and light wooden printing press caught the reporter's eye. The size of a small suitcase, it weighs just over 30 kilograms and is so easy to assemble and disassemble that it can be pulled by a mule. It was manufactured for the needs of guerrilla newspapers during the Anti-Japanese War and was known as the "printing press on horseback". In the exhibition hall, newspapers and books printed and published in the revolutionary base areas are also displayed, and these red cultural relics tell the story of the hard struggle and unremitting struggle of the older generation of printers at the moment of national crisis.

After the founding of New China, national printing enterprises and red printing factories together formed the emerging Chinese printing industry and became an important force in the industrialization of New China.

In order to promote the development of Chinese character printing technology, in August 1974, the national key scientific and technological research project "Chinese Character Information Processing System Project" (referred to as "748" project) was launched. Professor Wang Xuan of Peking University, as the technical director of the "748" project, presided over the development of Chinese laser typeset system, which compressed Chinese characters through dot matrix and calculation methods, so that computers can recognize Chinese characters, and solved the problem of combining Chinese information processing with printing and publishing. Since then, China's printing industry has bid farewell to "lead and fire" and entered the era of "light and electricity".

The request report of the "748" project, the research manuscript of Wang Xuan, the prototype of the laser phototypeset system, and the first sample book successfully discharged using the original prototype...... They have witnessed the birth of Chinese laser phototypesetting system. Also on display is a copy of the Economic Daily on May 22, 1987, the first example of laser phototypeset technology being used in the Chinese newspaper industry. Next to it is the last piece of print used by the Economic Daily, which silently tells the transformation of China's printing industry from lead fire to photoelectric.

Experience print culture

Into the "printing machine treasure" exhibition hall, a variety of printing machinery and equipment is eye-opening. Type casting machine, manual phototypesetting machine, stone printing machine produced in Austria in 1892, the world's only existing by the United States Mili Company in 1926 made double full sheet two-color offset press... These machines date from 1865 to the early 1990s and cover the entire process of pre-press, printing and post-press processing.

Research ink, brush ink, rubbing, paper, a beautiful zodiac or solar term map presented on the paper; With mallet, water basin, paper curtain, wiper board and other tools, according to the "Tiangong Kaisu" recorded in the paper flow chart by hand to make a piece of paper... In the interactive experience area on the first floor of the museum, interesting interactive experience projects let teenagers feel the charm of traditional printing culture.

As a national patriotic education demonstration base and a national science popularization education base, China Printing Museum relies on its collection of cultural relics to do a good job in exhibition, publicity and education. It launches original touring exhibitions such as "The Light of Chinese Printing" and "Edition Vientian-Collection Wood Engraving Exhibition", and holds special exhibitions such as the printing and Publishing exhibition for the centennial of the founding of the Communist Party of China and the printing and Publishing Achievement Exhibition for the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up. We provide red theme visits, Party history learning classes and other services for the public, and develop a variety of traditional cultural experience activities. In the museum, visitors can experience the ancient paper-making fan, zodiac engraving printing, movable type printing of ancient poetry, color overprint New Year pictures, and thread-bound books, etc., and make their own traditional cultural gifts to take home. In addition, the China Printing Museum also carries out activities such as "My Day in the Museum", "Printing into the campus, curriculum into the classroom" and exhibition into the community, so as to let the printing culture fly into the homes of the people and take root in the hearts of primary and secondary school students in various forms.