The printing change in the era of "Western Learning"
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The origin, development and even transformation of printing have been widely debated for hundreds of years. The premise of "the sooner the better the origin" is to make the conclusions of contemporary scholars and the reality of history gradually drift away.
The two recently published works have gradually cleared up the fog in the history of printing. One is Xin Deyong's "Research on Chinese Printing History." According to the text of the book, Chinese printing originated in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. From the end of the Tang Dynasty to the Five Dynasties, printing entered the elite from the private sector. This book refutes a popular concept that before the Qing Dynasty, especially during the Ming Dynasty, there was a copper type printing technique. And Xin Deyong thinks that it has not appeared, just put the clay type, wooden type or tin type on the coated paper. In the Qing Dynasty, because of the problem of wood moisture, and the convenience of casting, the cost is low, China is mainly based on wood printing.
Xin Deyong pointed out that China did not produce copper movable type printing. "This view, many Chinese may be emotionally unwilling to accept", but only in this way can we better understand the influence of Western printing on China in modern times, and at the same time Understand that "China's transition from 'traditional book industry' to 'modern publishing' has further triggered a series of changes in book culture, leading to a series of technological changes that are different from ancient publishing in printing and binding."
Another book, "Creating the Inscription: The 19th Century Chinese Printing Change" focuses on the activities of modern Chinese clerics in the past, and through the establishment of the cultural activities of the early missionaries to establish printing houses, colleges, libraries, etc., to explore Western-style movable type printing technology. It replaces the whole process of traditional Chinese woodcut printing and reproduces the changes in Chinese printing in the early modern times. The time span spans more than half a century, and the author Su Jing has been in the UK for “bibliography, collation and publication history”, which gives him both professional research methods and the opportunity to read overseas English archives.
On January 31, 1807, Christian Protestant missionary Morrison left London, bid farewell to relatives and friends, and detoured to the United States to Guangzhou. When Morrison arrived in China, the Qing government’s Yuwei was still there, and the pride of the Heavenly Kingdom made many restrictions on foreigners. Therefore, in order to complete the "God's cause", Morrison had to adopt a devious policy to print religious books in the Malacca region of the Malay Peninsula, and then find ways to distribute books to the Chinese mainland.
When printing books, for cost reasons, Morrison abandoned the traditional Chinese woodcut printing and began to use Western-style cast type printing. There are only 26 English letters. As long as these letters are spliced, you can form different words. However, Chinese must engrave every word, which leads to very high casting time and economic costs. Morrison established a "Majiaying Printing Institute" in Macau, casting Chinese characters, printing Christian brochures and journals introducing knowledge and news. He pioneered the use of Chinese movable type printing, and also laid the foundation for the missionary and printing career for the latecomers.
In order to satisfy the commercial interests of the West, the missionaries who came to China earlier must print books that introduce Chinese language dictionaries and local customs, so as to facilitate close access to government officials and status people. Morrison spent five years writing a Chinese-English dictionary, and the East India Company created a printing office in Macau to print. In order to put together Chinese and English together, the printer had to sacrifice the English part and accommodate the Chinese characters with large fonts, which caused a waste of space.
In order to advertise the teachings to more people, missionaries must improve the speed of printing. In the early 19th century, the Paris-based caster Li Geang, with the help of the sinologist Bao Tie, created a way of merging Chinese characters according to the radicals, that is, only creating the universal radicals and then splicing them. The font is finally reduced, saving cost and time.
This kind of printing method makes Chinese characters not look good. The size, location and aesthetics of each word are disproportionate and symmetrical, which cannot be accepted by the Chinese. As a result, the platform of the Batavia Printing Office has to continue to improve the technology to create a small Tyre, which saves printing costs and makes the fonts more beautiful. By 1850, Taiyol had created a total of 5,000 movable characters, which was popular among Chinese people. The users also expanded to newspapers, government and folk printing industries other than missionaries, and became a type of movable type technology that has been used since. In the middle of the 19th century, the Mohai Library, which was founded in London, continued to improve the technology of the Tycoon type, increasing the type of the movable type, and the total number of printed books rose linearly. "The gap between the woodcut and the Western-style movable type printing has opened a big step in the Chinese people's exclamation."
Since then, Western printing presses have been further popularized in China, allowing China to completely abandon the traditional woodcut printing technology. The Meihua Library, established by the American Presbyterian Church, further promoted the printing of the machine. Director Jiang Bili also invented the electroplated copper plate in cooperation with Chinese printing technology. The electroplated copper plate is similar to the Chinese wood engraved version, except that it is cheaper than the woodcut engraving board, and it is cast more quickly and can be copied continuously. Jiang Bili later successfully sold Western-style equipment, Chinese characters and technology to Shanghai Dao Ding Richang. Starting from Ding Richang, the Chinese characters of the Meihua Library have successively had Chinese officials, customs and customers in China.
As a result, Western-style movable characters have finally surpassed and replaced them with the competition of woodcut printing. Western printing is the most important change to the Chinese reading habits, which is to reduce the cost of books and expand the scope of knowledge. Secondly, the book size is reduced, the layout tends to be simplified, and then the paper is printed on both sides. The wire is changed to flat or hardcover, and the upright insert replaces the flat storage. The spine is facing outward and the title author is printed.
The book "Incasting and Engraving" restores the printing change in the era of modern "Western Learning to the East", and also tries to carry out the process, mode of operation, source of funds, personnel disputes, printed matter and scope of communication of modern missionaries. Research analysis. Although its purpose is to study printing problems, it has also detailed the impact of modern Western culture on China. However, perhaps because the author's "ambition is too big", to some extent, the book has a lot of information, which obscures the main line of printing revolution, adding to the difficulty of reading and understanding.