Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 868 Printing Workshop
"I saw that you have a good display here, so I came here to have a look." Zhou Dongtian spoke Cantonese Mandarin in a weird way. Fortunately, there is not much difference between the Mandarin of this time and space and the Nanjing dialect, and the shopkeeper's slow speaking can still be understood.

The environment here is really good. There is a small courtyard between the pavement house and the backyard door in this Pan Jianyuan Bookstore. There are some bamboos planted beside the stone-paved path, and various potted flowers are placed on the ground. They are colorful in the spring sunshine. scene.

In the blank space of the wall, there is a blue mottled sword hanging, below is a rosewood table with piano bricks, and a Guqin.A Wanli imitation Xuande stove is emitting green smoke, and a fragrant and rich aroma is faintly floating in the air.

"Master, it's amazing." The shopkeeper said with a smile on his face, "Looking at the appearance of the master, he should have a scientific name."

Of course, there is no department name. Zhou Dongtian is not an intelligence agent sent abroad, so there is no need to come up with a department name.However, in ancient times, there was no nationwide networked academic qualification inquiry system, and Guangdong was thousands of miles away, so it was not difficult to fabricate a fake identity and fake academic qualifications.Zhou Dongtian didn't dare to brag that he was a juren—the number of juren in each province is still limited, and Nanjing is the capital, and there are people from all provinces across the country.

So he claims to be a scholar—there are many more scholars than Juren, and there are many tricks in it.

"Oh, oh, look at the master's happy face, he will definitely win the provincial examination. Congratulations, congratulations!"

"Thank you. It's all about luck."

"Master Zhou is coming to Jinling for a study tour, so he wants to choose a few books of new subjects?" The shopkeeper of the bookstore speculatively recommended, "I have a few books of Weimo edited and edited by Mr. Fengshan, all of which are beautiful and colorful. Word……"

Mr. Fengshan is Zhang Zilie.There are not many people who know this person in old time and space.But Zhou Dongtian knew that when he was in the printing office, he used modern printing equipment to print some books, including "Kangxi Dictionary".And "Zhengzitong", one of the blueprints of "Kangxi Dictionary", is the work of Mr. Fengshan.

Zhou Dongtian knew that Zhang Zilie was a supervisor of Nanjing Guozijian at that time, and he had never been a Jinshi.Judging from the tone of the shopkeeper of the bookstore, it is obvious that this Mr. Fengshan has a high attainment in stereotyped essays, so that the ink he is responsible for compiling has become a kind of call.

He waved his hand: "No need. Do you have some novel and interesting books here?"

"Why not?" The shopkeeper looked at Zhou Dongtian and Mei Lin, they were probably the sons of wealthy businessmen in Guangdong, they had a reputation, and they probably had already opened their joints in the examination room.Such a person needs novelty when reading a book. He thought for a while, and took a new book from the shelf, "Have Master Zhou read this book? It's a work of a Westerner."

Zhou Dongtian saw it, and it turned out to be "The Elements of Geometry" translated by Xu Guangqi.This book should have been published in 1607.It can still be bought in Nanjing now. It seems that the sales of the book are not very good - the mathematics in ancient China is very profound in algebra, and the geometry is relatively backward. Such a book full of new concepts and nouns, except for a very few Except for those who are interested in this, I am afraid that very few people are willing to ask.

"This book is really novel. It was edited by Xu Shanghai, Shangshu of the Ministry of Rites. It is said that it is the original work of Thai and Western people, and Xu Shangshu himself translated it. It's just that few people understand it."

Zhou Dongtian opened it and looked at it. The printing of the book is very delicate, and some chapters have accompanying pictures. He saw that "right angles", "obtuse angles" and "similar triangles" were mentioned from time to time...Zhou Dongtian suddenly returned to junior high school era.It turns out that these terms existed back then!
He didn't know that these geometric terms, including the word geometry, were all translated by Xu Guangqi.

Seeing that he was very interested, the shopkeeper hurriedly fetched other basic books and piled them on the desk one by one. Zhou Dongtian looked at them and found that most of them were works by Xu Guangqi and also translated works by missionaries: "Sweet Potato Book", There are many kinds such as "Nongyi Miscellaneous", "Nongshu Draft", "Taixi Water Law", "Hungai Tongxian Diagram".There are quite a variety of categories, including books on agronomy—such as several works by Xu Guangqi; books on mathematics: "Tongwen Suanzhi" and "Measurement Method"; works on astronomy and hydraulics, and finally Matteo Ricci A collection of aphorisms such as "On Making Friends".

Zhou Dongtian flipped through them one by one. He was actually not interested in the contents of the books. These books were no more technically superior than those in the big library. What he cared about was the binding and printing of books.

The characteristic of ancient books is that the characters are very large. The font size of these books is at least one size according to modern standards.Zhou Dongtian has been thinking about this question for a long time. Why do books printed in ancient times use such large fonts?Some people say that this is a problem of printing technology, while others say that because of poor lighting in ancient times, larger fonts must be used to facilitate reading.

Zhou Dongtian didn't have time to look at the content for a while, so he told Cai Yibang to buy them all and returned with a full load.When paying, he found that the price of the book was quite expensive.According to the price level at that time, it was difficult for ordinary people to afford it.Even if the poor want to buy the complete Four Books and Five Classics, it is not an easy task.It is not surprising that scholars in this time and space can enjoy all kinds of privileges - the money and time required to get a fame is doomed to the monopoly of knowledge.

The boss of the bookstore made a good deal and was very happy.Zhou Dongtian took advantage of the situation and proposed that he wanted to see the workshops that printed books.

"The workshop is full of black ink, I'm afraid it will stain the clothes of the two husbands..." The shopkeeper was a little surprised by this request. There are many scholars who come to him to buy books, and their personalities are also varied, but no one has ever paid attention to printing books. interested in workshops.

"It doesn't matter, these two are good book people, and they are very curious about how the book is printed. I would like to ask the shopkeeper to be more flexible." Cai Yibang also helped to speak.

The shopkeeper pondered for a while, and there were no unseen people in the workshop. Moreover, there was no "secret skill" in engraving and printing books, as long as you found a few engraving, printing and binding masters, you would know everything.It doesn't matter if the two masters are curious and want to see it.

"Okay, then Xiao Lao will lead the way." The shopkeeper stood up and said a few words to the waiter.Immediately led them to the backyard.

A group of people passed through the backyard gate and walked along the narrow road. They faced a wall of wind and fire that had been eroded by wind and rain for a long time.Here is the printing workshop.The houses are mainly in the form of blue bricks, white walls and black tiles.

Pushing the door and entering, there is a large yard covered with bluestone slabs.The plane is in the shape of Huihui, symmetrical about the central axis, with the main hall as the main body.The upper, middle and lower halls are connected, and there are one to three rows of wing rooms on both sides of the hall.As a dormitory and workshop for workers.In the yard, there is a pond for storing rainwater, and there is also a sun-drying terrace laid out with rows of shelves.

Zhou Dongtian noticed that the overhead halls here are very high, and there are high wind and fire walls between the courtyards.Printing books requires the storage of a large amount of wood, paper, and books, all of which are flammable. The reservoirs in the courtyard and the wind-fired walls that separate the courtyards are used to prevent fire.

There were people busy in the hall and wing rooms, and there were people moving around carrying materials in the yard from time to time.Someone in the house was writing a book sample from a selected blueprint.Choosing a good base is the first step in printing a good book.In addition to searching for the manuscripts of the original authors, the blueprint is to use rare books from the past - there was no concept of copyright in ancient times, regardless of the works of modern or ancient people, as long as the owner of the bookstore thinks it is suitable, they can be used for publication.

Because it is very important to have a good copy, the owner of the bookstore is often a discerning editionist himself, who is good at finding useful copies from old paper piles in second-hand bookstores.Some bookstore owners make friends with famous bibliophiles to obtain various rare and rare books in their private collections.In Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou, there are also a group of so-called book engravers who are both literati and bibliophiles. Home Hu Yinglong.

There are always more than a dozen copyists in Pan Jianyuan's bookstore. Contrary to Zhou Dongtian's imagination, they are all real "copywriters". words, but no culture.It's a completely mechanical job.Therefore, in general books, typos, missing characters, typos, and even literary incomprehension often occur.So the owner of the bookstore also had to hire—but generally use the word "invite"—a few scribes to act as editors and proofreaders.Some bookstores that are not very particular will save this fee.

In the main hall, engraving workers are working at their desks.Pieces of blank book boards that have been opened according to the size are stacked under the eaves of the corridor waiting to be used.The carved boards are stacked on the other side.All kinds of book boards piled up like mountains under the eaves.The shopkeeper said that the better engraving materials are mostly pear wood and jujube wood.Fruit trees are hard and fine in texture and inexpensive, making them the best material for book engraving.The idiom "disaster pear disaster jujube" comes from this.

The engraving workers paste the "samples" written by the transcribers on the boards, and then the engravers use different types of carving knives to carve the ink of the reverse characters on the boards into raised inscriptions, and at the same time, the remaining blank parts on the boards To remove, to dent.The words engraved on the board surface should protrude from the printed surface by one to two millimeters.

The carved boards were sent to the yard, and the casual workers picked up buckets of hot water to rinse the carved boards to remove the wood chips and ink marks.The stereotyping process is complete.

A page is a board.If a book has 300 pages, you need [-] yuan board.The manpower and material resources spent are incalculable.Therefore, manuscripts with unknown market prospects are difficult to get published unless they are privately funded and published.It is no surprise that books are scarce and expensive.

(End of this chapter)