China Popular Itineraries |
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| In as early as the Warring States Period (475 - 222B. C. ), there had al-ready appeared in China textiles with flowers printed with hollowed out plate, which was the embryonic form of the later screen mesh printing. The very in-ventions of paper and ink prepared the way for the birth of engraving print-ing. According to the historical records, in the early period of the Tang Dy-nasty (618- 907 A. D. ), some people publicized religion by handing out printed figures of Buddha. The Diamond Sutra printed in 868 A.D. marked the maturation of the engraving. From then on, centers of engraving work-shops came to take shape in Yangzhou, Yizhou, and Hangzhou cities. Mean-while, engraving began to spread all the way from such Asian countries as Ko-rea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Iran to other countries and areas in Europe and Africa. With the development of the publication market, movable-type printing emerged. In the Song Dynasty, Bi Sheng invented clay movable letters. Till the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Zhen made a large number of movable letters of pear and date woods. In addition, he invented the turning wheel of letter board. Eventually, people for a while used metal letters made of tin, copper and lead for printing, only to find that they could not be soaked with ink easily and therefore this method did not become popular. |
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