Why Yangzhou is the city of printing?

Yangzhou woodblock printing technology began in the Tang Dynasty, developed in the Song and Yuan Dynasties and flourished in the Qing Dynasty. For thousands of years, Yangzhou Guangling Ancient Books Engraving Society still retains the traditional and purely manual engraving printing skills, and has a number of national and municipal non-genetic people with engraving printing skills, such as Germany and Shandong. These descendants used traditional tools to manually operate, sort out, carve and publish a large number of precious ancient books. China's traditional woodcut printing technology and its cultural form-the lamp never goes out, passed down from generation to generation, benefiting mankind and becoming a pearl of China's intangible cultural heritage.

In 2006, Yangzhou's "Engraving Printing Technology" project was declared to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage representative lists; In 2009, "China Engraving Printing Techniques" represented by Yangzhou was listed in the list of "Masterpieces of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" by UNESCO. Engraving printing technology is also called Yangzhou engraving printing technology in a sense, and there are profound reasons why China engraving printing technology is represented by Yangzhou.

Block printing is one of the important features of Yangzhou's history and culture. In Qing Dynasty, Yangzhou woodblock printing developed unprecedentedly, and countless books were engraved. The most noteworthy is The Complete Poems of Tang Dynasty, which is known as "the first book of engraving and printing in China". During the Kangxi period, the emperor ordered Cao Yin, the governor of Huai Army, to set up Yangzhou Poetry Bureau in Tianning Temple in Yangzhou, and called the skilled craftsmen of block printing all over the country to come to work, focusing on pen and ink and block printing, which took nearly two years to complete. The whole Tang poetry is divided into 120 volumes 12 letters. The layout is half a page with eleven lines, each with twenty-one words, white mouth, double fishtail, left and right. All words, carvings, proofreading and printing are ok. I-type writing engraving, the font is smooth and smooth, the ink color is even, and the paper is printed with flowering paper, which is tough and white. After reading the sample book submitted, Emperor Kangxi praised it greatly. Zhu Pi, the imperial pen, said, "It's very good to carve books!"

Yangzhou block printing is exquisite and unique, and the movable type printing invented on the basis of block printing is also closely related to Yangzhou. During the Song and Qing Dynasties (1040- 1048), Bi Sheng invented movable type printing, which was recorded in Shen Kuo's Meng Qian Bi Tan and published in Yangzhou Sinology. Therefore, without Bi Sheng, there would be no movable type printing. Without Meng Qian's pen talk, movable type printing could not be circulated. Without Yangzhou Studies, Meng Qian Bi Tan could not be published.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China more than half a century ago, Yangzhou has done a lot of work for the inheritance and protection of block printing technology and achieved remarkable results.