Show the long history of printing culture

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.