After Bi Sheng’s death, movable type was obtained by Shen Kuo’s later generations, and was still used until the book Dream Pool Essays was written. This proves the reliability and authority of the book. Afterwards, Bi Sheng’s successors continued to use movable-type printing in later generations.
During the early Yuan Dynasty (1206–1368), the known agronomist Wang Zhen made significant innovations on wooden movable type printing. In 1298, Wang Zhen applied wooden movable type printing, to produce 100 copies of the Records of Jingde County in s single month by himself. The Records of Jingde County has mover than 60 thousand words. In addition, Wang wrote about his experience in an article named Ways to Make Types and Print Books to preserve the historical process. He also invented the wheel of the composing frame with movable type characters arranged primarily through a rhyming scheme. Workers could pick up tablets by rotating the wheel while sitting.
Wooden movable type printing spread to minority group areas and was used to print their books during the Yuan dynasty. Hundreds of wooden movable types in the Uighur language were found in thousands of Buddhism caves in Dunhuang, Gansu Province.
The printing of Wu Ying Dian Ju Zhen Ban Collections in 1773, with 134 kinds in more than 2,300 volumes, was the largest scale wooden movable type printing effort of the Qing Dynasty. Jin Jian who took charge of the edition recorded his printing experience in Wu Ying Dian Selective Collections, which was an important record of China’s publishing history and was translated into German, English and other languages.
Ancient Chinese metal movable type included bronze, tin and lead type, in which hand made bronze type was used first and most. Bronze type printing flourished at the end of fifteenth century. The best-known examples come from rich families known as Huasui, Huajian and Anguo who printed books with bronze type in Wuxi of Jiangsu.
The most famous bronze movable-type print was the inner court of The Compendium of Works of Past and Present in Qing Dynasty. From the 4th to 6th year of Yongzheng Period (1726–1728), the Qing government printed 65 copies with 5,200 volumes each in large and small fonts. This was an unprecedented printing effort with the largest word count and exquisite typography.
Color woodcut printing
Color woodcut printing was based on woodblock printing, which can successively print several colors on the same piece of paper by using different sizes of blocks with different colors. Books printed with this technique are called registration editions.
Wu Ying Dian Ju Zhen Ban Collections
When compiling the Siku Quanshu, Emperor Qian Long of the Qing Dynasty ordered to print a large quantity of ancient books bordered on the extinction from “Yongle Encyclopedia.” Jin Jian, the organizer, suggested using movable type because block printing would cost much more time, money and labor. Emperor Qian Long granted the suggestion and elegantly named the movable type printing “Ju Zhen Ban” (literally “peals together type”). With 253, 500 movable tablets of different sizes out of wood of jujube trees. Wu Ying Dian Ju Zhen Ban Collections of 134 books with more than 2,300 volumes came into being.
Early in the use of this technique, the most common colors used were red and black—these books are called “Prints in red and black” or “Mackle prints,” afterwards, with four or five colors involved, the overprinted books became known as “Fourcolor prints” or “Five-color prints” according to the number of colors involved.
Based on archeological discoveries, color woodcut printing was invented, closely following the invention xylography, during the Period of Song, Liao and Jin dynasties (960–1234). In the extant real objects, there are three color-overprinted “Nama Sakyamuni Buddha,” with the printing time estimated to be during the Tonghe Period in the Liao Dynasty (982–1012), found in Fogong Temple, Yingxian County, Shanxi Province; and the Notes to Wuwen Monk Diamond Sutra engraved in 1340 with two colors: red as the text and black as notes, as well as a red-black illustrations of glossy ganoderma at the front of the book. Their existence proves that color woodcut printing was already used in book printing during that period.
In the late Ming Dynasty (16th–17thcentury), color woodcut printing became popular. The extant books of this kind are mostly the outputs from families of Min Qiji and Ling Mengchu in Wuxing (today’s Zhejiang province) during the Wanli period (1563–1620) of the Ming Dynasty. According to rough statistics, the two families printed 145 kinds of books, 13 kinds of which are three-color prints, four are four-color prints and one is a fivecolor version. The two families, engaged in the same business for generations, are legends in Chinese printing history.
Color woodcut printing was further developed during the Qing Dynasty. According to Aggregation of the Carvings in China, there were more than 40 multi-color block print shops during the Qing Dynasty. The representative overprints at the time are the official versions of the four-color Guwen Yuanjian, the two-color Anthology Selected by Emperors in the Kangxi period, the four-color Imperial Tang and Song Collection as well as the five-color ChuangSian-Jing-Kur from the Qianlong reign. Private printing also yielded good works such as two popular versions of Du Gongbu Collection in the Daoguang Period (1820–1850), one was Lukun’s six-color version in Zhuozhou, and the other was Ye Yun’an fivecolor version in Guangdong.
Common Development and Prosperity—Five Major Publishing Systems