Chapter 94: The Printing Workshop

“I saw that your shop was well-appointed, so I came in for a look,” Zhou Dongtian said in a strange-sounding Guangdong Mandarin. Fortunately, the Mandarin of this era was not too different from Nanjing dialect, and he could understand the shopkeeper if he spoke slowly.

The environment here was indeed nice. This Pan Jianyuan Bookstore had a small courtyard between the storefront and the back gate. A path paved with pebbles was lined with several slender bamboos, and various potted flowers were arranged on the ground, creating a vibrant scene under the spring sun.

On the blank space of the wall hung a mottled blue-green sword. Below it was a rosewood table with a qin brick, on which lay an ancient zither. A wispy stream of blue smoke rose from a Wanli-era imitation of a Xuande incense burner, and a fragrant aroma faintly filled the air.

“You praise me too much, sir,” the shopkeeper said with a smile. “Looking at you, sir, you must have an official rank.”

Of course, he had no official rank. Zhou Dongtian was not an overseas intelligence agent and did not need to create one. However, there was no nationwide online degree verification system in ancient times, and Guangdong was thousands of miles away, so it was not difficult to fabricate a false identity and degree. Zhou Dongtian did not dare to boast that he was a provincial graduate—the number of provincial graduates in each province was still limited, and Nanjing was the secondary capital, with people from all over the country. If he boasted recklessly, he might be exposed, which would be more than just a matter of losing face.

So he called himself a scholar—scholars were much more numerous than provincial graduates, and there were many varieties among them.

“Oh, oh, seeing you so full of spring, you will surely succeed in the provincial examinations. Congratulations in advance, congratulations in advance!”

“Thank you. ‘In the examination hall, do not discuss the essay.’ It’s just a matter of luck.”

“Since you have come to Jinling for your studies, Master Zhou, are you perhaps looking for some new examination essays?” the bookstore owner guessed and recommended, “I have a few collections of examination essays hand-picked and annotated by Master Qishan. They are all beautifully written…”

Master Qishan was Zhang Zilie. Few people in the old world knew of him. But Zhou Dongtian knew: when he was at the printing house, he had printed some books with modern printing equipment, including the Kangxi Dictionary. And one of the blueprints for the Kangxi Dictionary, the Zhengzitong, was the work of this very Master Qishan.

Zhou Dongtian knew that Zhang Zilie was a student at the Nanjing Imperial Academy at the time and had not passed the metropolitan examination. Judging by the bookstore owner’s tone, it was clear that this Master Qishan had a high attainment in the eight-legged essay, so much so that the examination essays he compiled had become a kind of brand.

He waved his hand. “No need. Do you have any new and interesting books here?”

“Of course we do,” the shopkeeper said. Looking at Zhou Dongtian and Mei Lin, he guessed they were the sons of wealthy merchants from Guangdong, with an official rank, and had probably already bribed their way through the examinations. Such people, when reading books, primarily sought novelty. He thought for a moment and took a new book from the shelf. “Have you seen this book, Master Zhou? It’s a work by a Westerner.”

Zhou Dongtian looked and saw that it was Xu Guangqi’s translation of Euclid’s Elements. This book should have been published in 1607. To be able to buy it in Nanjing now, it seemed the sales were not very good. Ancient Chinese mathematics was profound in algebra but relatively backward in geometry. A book full of new concepts and terms like this would probably attract few people other than a very small number who were interested in it.

“This book is truly novel. It was compiled by the Minister of Rites, Xu Shanghai. I’ve heard it’s an original work by a Westerner, personally translated by Minister Xu. It’s just that few people can understand it.”

Zhou Dongtian opened it and looked. The printing was very exquisite, and some chapters had illustrations. He saw mentions of “right angle,” “obtuse angle,” “similar triangles”… Zhou Dongtian was suddenly transported back to his middle school days. So these terms already existed at that time!

He did not know that these geometric terms, including the word “geometry” itself, were all translated by Xu Guangqi.

Seeing his interest, the shopkeeper quickly brought out several other books and piled them on the desk. Zhou Dongtian looked at them; most were works by Xu Guangqi, and some were translations by missionaries. There were works on agriculture, such as several of Xu Guangqi’s works; mathematics books like Tongwen Suanzhi and Celiang Fayì; works on astronomy and hydraulics; and finally, a collection of maxims like Matteo Ricci’s On Friendship.

Zhou Dongtian flipped through them one by one. He was not actually interested in the content of the books; these books would not be more advanced technically than those in the Great Library. He was looking at the binding and printing.

A characteristic of ancient books was that the characters were all very large. The font size of these books, if measured by modern standards, would be at least size one. Zhou Dongtian had always wondered why ancient printed books used such large fonts. Some said it was a problem with printing technology, while others said it was because ancient lighting was poor, and larger fonts were necessary for easy reading.

Zhou Dongtian did not have time to examine the content in detail, so he instructed Cai Yibang to buy them all. When he paid, he found that the price of the books was quite expensive. At the price level of that time, it was difficult for ordinary people to afford them. It was not an easy matter for a poor person to even buy a complete set of the Four Books and Five Classics. It was no wonder that scholars in this era enjoyed all kinds of privileges—the amount of money and time required to obtain an official rank determined the monopolistic nature of knowledge.

The bookstore owner had made a good sale and was beaming with joy. Zhou Dongtian took the opportunity to ask if he could see the workshop where the books were carved and printed.

“The workshop is full of black ink. I’m afraid it will stain the clothes of you two gentlemen…” The shopkeeper was a bit surprised by this request. Many scholars came to his shop to buy books, and their personalities were varied, but no one had ever been interested in the printing workshop.

“It’s no matter. These two are book lovers and are very curious about how books are printed. Please be accommodating, shopkeeper,” Cai Yibang also chimed in.

The shopkeeper thought for a moment. There was nothing in the workshop that could not be seen by others. Besides, there were no “secret techniques” in woodblock printing that could be kept secret. As long as one found a few masters of woodblock carving, printing, and binding, one would know everything. It was no big deal if these two masters were curious and wanted to have a look.

“Alright, then I will lead the way,” the shopkeeper stood up and gave a few instructions to his clerk. He then led them to the backyard.

The group passed through the back gate and walked through a narrow passage. In front of them was a fire wall that had been weathered by wind and rain for a long time. The gatehouse stood tall, with upturned eaves. This was the printing workshop. The buildings were mainly made of gray bricks, white walls, and black tiles.

Pushing the door open, they entered a large courtyard paved with bluestone. The layout was a “hui” character shape, symmetrical along the central axis, with the main hall as the main body. The upper, middle, and lower halls were connected, and there were one to three rows of side rooms on both sides of the halls, serving as dormitories and workshops for the workers. There was a pond in the courtyard for collecting rainwater, and also a drying area with rows of racks.

Zhou Dongtian noticed that the halls here were built high off the ground, and there were high fire walls between the courtyards. Printing books required the use and storage of a large amount of wood, paper, and books, all of which were flammable. The pond in the courtyard and the fire walls separating the courtyards served as fire prevention measures.

People were busy in the halls and side rooms, and people were constantly moving materials in the courtyard. In one room, someone was copying a manuscript based on a selected blueprint. Choosing a good base text was the first step in carving and printing a good book. Besides the author’s manuscripts that had been collected, the blueprints were also selected from past excellent editions. There was no concept of copyright in ancient times. Whether it was the work of a contemporary or an ancient, as long as the bookstore owner thought it was suitable, he could have it carved and printed.

Because a good base text was crucial, the bookstore owners were often themselves discerning bibliographers, skilled at finding useful base texts from old bookstores and piles of old paper. Some bookstore owners befriended famous book collectors to obtain their private collections of various excellent editions and rare books. In Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, there was also a group of so-called “book carvers” who were both scholars and book collectors. Most of them were learned scholars and were also wealthy and powerful gentry, such as the Nanjing book collector Hu Yinglong, who had once carved and published the Compendium of Materia Medica.

The Pan Jianyuan Bookstore had a dozen or so copyists. Contrary to what Zhou Dongtian had imagined, they were all true “book copyists.” Although they could read and write beautiful regular script—and could even write in reverse—they had little culture. Their work was completely mechanical. Therefore, typos, missing characters, wrong characters, and even incomprehensible sentences often appeared in ordinary books. So the bookstore owner also had to hire—though the word “invite” was generally used—a few scholars to serve as editors and proofreaders. Some less scrupulous bookstores would save this expense.

In the main hall, the carvers were hunched over their work. Blank woodblocks, cut to size, were piled up under the eaves, waiting to be used. The carved woodblocks were piled up on the other side. The eaves were piled high with all kinds of woodblocks. The shopkeeper said that the better materials for carving were pear wood and jujube wood. The wood of fruit trees was hard and had a fine grain, and the price was not expensive, making it the best material for carving printing blocks. The idiom “disaster to pear and jujube” came from this.

The carvers pasted the “writing samples” written by the copyists onto the woodblocks. Then, the carvers used different types of carving knives to carve the reverse characters on the woodblock into raised relief, while removing the remaining blank parts of the woodblock, making them concave. The characters carved on the block had to be raised one to two millimeters above the surface.

The carved woodblocks were taken to the courtyard, where casual laborers brought buckets of hot water to wash the carved blocks, washing away the wood chips and ink marks. The carving process was then complete.

One page of a book was one block. If a book had three hundred pages, there would have to be three hundred woodblocks. The amount of manpower and materials spent was countless. Therefore, a manuscript with an unknown market prospect would be difficult to get published unless it was privately funded. It was no wonder that books were rare and expensive.