Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 874 Traditional Printing (Science and Technology)
The accompanying shopkeeper was very enthusiastic about guiding the entire printing process.In a hall, printers are printing, and the carved boards are numbered according to the thousand-character script, and placed on shelves one by one.The apprentices carried the book blocks to the special large desk according to the serial number called out by the master.In the center of the hall, there are several large water tanks filled with ink.The apprentices used wooden barrels to draw ink, brought it up to each printer, and scooped it into the ink tray.

When printing, the printing master uses a special cylindrical flat-bottomed brush to dip in ink, brushes it evenly on the board surface, and then carefully covers the paper on the board surface, gently brushes the paper with a brush, and the words or pictures are printed on the paper. Just like.The printing process is complete when the paper is lifted from the printing plate and spread on a shelf to dry in the shade.The shopkeeper told Zhou Dongtian: A skilled printer can print 1500~2000 sheets a day.A good printing plate can be printed ten thousand times.

In Zhou Dongtian's view, the engraving process of woodblock printing is a bit like the process of engraving a seal, except that more characters are engraved.The process of printing is the opposite of stamping.The seal is printed on the top and the paper is on the bottom.The printing process of woodblock printing is more similar to rubbing.However, the characters on the engraving block are positive characters, while the characters on the general stele are negative characters.In addition, rubbing ink is applied to paper, and engraving ink is applied to plates.Block printing inherited the technologies of seal, rubbing, printing and dyeing, etc. It is not an accidental thing that it was invented in China.

The printed books are easy to sell, so the bookstore’s investment in printing books is a one-time investment, and the rest is a net profit after deducting the cost of paper, ink and labor.If it is not easy to sell, the money invested in the engraving is tantamount to losing. If the engraving is good, the plate must be flattened and reused, or it can only be stored in the warehouse to sleep.Once the current situation is turbulent or the bookstore closes down, a large number of stereotypes will be reduced to firewood.The owner of the bookstore is very cautious about engraving a book to ensure that every book can be sold.

So how many plates you have becomes an important capital of a bookstore—especially the plates of books that are guaranteed to be printed and sold.The shopkeeper told Zhou Dongtian quite proudly that there are more than 1 "perennial printable" plates in his bookstore, which is second to none among the bookstores in Nanjing.

However, Zhou Dongtian didn’t take it seriously—it is said that there are more than 20 engraved blocks hidden in the Guozijian in the Southern Song Dynasty.Not to mention the manpower and material resources it takes to carve it.But in terms of the amount of information contained, 20 pieces are only 20 pages of books, and based on a book of 20 to 1000 pages, it is only 16 books.Considering that the number of words per page of stereotyped books is generally less than that of modern printed materials, the amount of information is even less.It's just the size of a unit's library.At the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were only [-] plates in the official bookstore in Hangzhou.

A Siku Quanshu contains 4000 kinds of books, which is barely enough for the size of a street library in a small and medium-sized city.Zhou Dongtian knew that the scale of anything in the handicraft era was very small.Even with the technology of the 19th century, the printing industry in this time and space is a complete failure.

Zhou Dongtian looked at the mountains of slabs in the yard, feeling very emotional.The large-scale use of printing in China has remained in expensive block printing from beginning to end. It is difficult to publish books, and books are rare and expensive.Many works have been lost and lost because they did not get the opportunity to publish or reprint.This cannot but be said to be one of the reasons for gradually falling behind the West.

He strolled and walked to the second hall, where he suddenly became interested—it turned out that the carvings here were images.The shopkeeper said that the carvings are now "embroidered portraits" used in novels.A new copy of "Water Margin" is being engraved in the bookstore.

"This is the 'complex' version that Xiao Lao painstakingly searched for, not the 'simplified version' outside." The shopkeeper's face showed a smug expression, "It has the 'three signs'!"

Zhou Dongtian didn't know much about the editions of the Water Margin, and he couldn't tell what "simplified version" and "complex version" were, so he just echoed a few words.Mei Lin suddenly asked: "Did you print "Jin Ping Mei" here?" After asking this, he felt a little regretful—won't this affect the image!

"Yes, yes," the shopkeeper didn't think it was different, "Xiao Lao here has a copy of "Newly Engraved Embroidered Images Criticizing Jin Ping Mei" engraved by a colleague for consignment sales. Not only is the engraving excellent, but there are also two hundred embroidered images in the book. It is a rare item."

When asked about the price, the book cost one tael of silver.The price is quite not cheap.Merlin decided to buy it.

"This book is in traditional Chinese. It doesn't even read a sentence. Do you really want to buy it?" Zhou Dongtian asked after a while as the shopkeeper walked away.

"Of course I can't understand it, but after collecting one, it will be a precious material, a rare book!"

After a while, the shopkeeper took the book in a hurry, and the book was packed in four letters.It is heavy and has a lot of weight.Zhou Dongtian took out a book and flipped through a few pages, only to feel a scent of ink coming out of his nostrils, and the paper was delicate.Engraving and printing are at the upper-middle level.Because water-based ink is used, the pages are not printed on both sides, so there are a lot of bound books, there are actually 36 volumes.

Each chapter is equipped with two embroidered images.The engraving is much better than the New Year pictures that Zhou Dongtian saw outside.Among them, there are unavoidable scenes of obscenity and robbery, which are exquisitely carved and extremely explicit.It feels like an H novel.

If we come out, it must be a hundred times better than its painters.Needless to say, the human body alone is stronger than this.Zhou Dongtian thought, there should be a big market for the idea of ​​"Jin Ping Mei"?It’s just that it’s too much trouble to create an original one. I don’t know if there have been any manga on this theme in Japan, and if anyone has brought it.

He suddenly thought of a question and asked: "Who is the author of this book?" I wonder if this historical mystery can be clarified in this time and space not long after the work was published?

"The book is signed by Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng, but everyone says it was written by Mr. Fengzhou."

Mr. Fengzhou is Wang Shizhen.Not long after the book came out, there was such a rumor, and it has been the most popular until modern times. This is not news to Zhou Dongtian—he is a little disappointed.

"Some people also said that it was written by a certain husband." The shopkeeper lowered his voice and said, "It's hard to say."

Zhou Dongtian nodded, obviously he couldn't get a clear answer in this time and space.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the atmosphere could be described as open, and the matter of sensuality between men and women was not considered a "shame".The shopkeeper saw that the two masters were very interested in this, and immediately moved a bunch of such novels for them to buy, from the famous "***" to the not-so-famous "Biography of a Crazy Woman". Miscellaneous, there are always as many as twenty or thirty kinds.Some have been lost in the old time and space.I heard from the shopkeeper that these books are not bad sellers, and they belong to the perennial sellable varieties.Zhou Dongtian flipped through a few books and felt that this business opportunity was also very good.Immediately, he took out ten taels of silver and bought all these books.

The shopkeeper of the bookstore made another good deal and became more courteous to them.One question and ten answers.Zhou Dongtian turned his interest to the engraving workshop again, and saw that the workers carving and embroidering statues were different from the ones before, and seemed to be carving some incomplete patterns. After thinking for a while, he suddenly understood that this was carving a drawing board for overprinting.

Walking into the next hall confirmed his thoughts.This is engaged in "color printing."

Block printing generally only uses monochrome printing.Since the Five Dynasties, some people have tried to carry out color printing. The process is to apply several different color materials to different parts of a board at the same time.Then print a color sheet on paper at one time.This method is called "single-version complex color printing method".The famous Tianjin Yangliuqing print is produced by this method.

This method is low in cost and fast in speed, but the printing color materials are easy to mix and penetrate, and the color blocks are clearly defined, making the pattern dull.

Since the Yuan Dynasty, there has been the so-called "multi-version and multi-color printing", which is also the so-called "set printing".Roughly, you can carve as many plates as you want in as many colors as you want. Each printing plate is coated with different color materials and printed on the same paper in stages.The process of color printing has lasted for a long time. Except for printing factories, it was used in printing and dyeing factories until the 20th century.

Nanjing has become the center of color overprinting in the Ming Dynasty, and general bookstores have the ability of color overprinting.

Because the cost of overprint printing is much higher—there are as many pieces of the same engraving board as there are colors, so the color overprinting of books in the Ming and Qing Dynasties generally only uses red and ink, and only the printing of New Year pictures uses more colors.

The embroidered portraits being printed in the bookstore at the moment only use three colors.However, the shopkeeper is already very proud, saying that this time he "does not hesitate to pay for it, but only seeks perfection".

During the whole visit, Zhou Dongtian learned from the shopkeeper that there are about a thousand kinds of books that can be printed in Nanjing.into nine categories.There are tens of thousands of craftsmen, workers, and traders who rely on this.Business is booming.Books were not only exported to the provinces, but also exported in large quantities - especially to Japan and Korea.

But the best seller is the "Shi Wen Ji", that is, "Civil Service Examination Guidance Book".Although new books are compiled and engraved every year, such books are still selling well.Zhou and Mei couldn't help sighing again.

Cai Yibang figured out that the two chiefs were so interested in the bookstore, nine out of ten they wanted to open a bookstore.He is a native of Nanjing, and he has quite a few poor relatives who eat this bowl of rice. He quickly seized this opportunity and recommended it to Zhou Dongtian.

Zhou Dongtian felt that this was all right, after all, engraving masters were still needed - originally he came to Nanjing to recruit a group of master engraving workers for the Lingao printing factory, and the Hangzhou printing factory also needed it.Immediately, he fully agreed and asked him to recruit as many printing workers as possible.

　There are simplified and complicated versions of the Water Margin, and the simplified version has a large number of deletions, especially the part that does not have Zheng Liao, Zheng Tianhu, and Zheng Fangla.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)