In the film and television city of Ningxia West, there is a young man. Before his seal engraving, the movable type printing tools placed on him often attract the attention of foreign tourists. Someone wants to buy a poem that he printed on the spot with wood type, muddy type, and stone type, and there are people who want to personally operate and experience the situation when the ancients printed the pages...
The young man is Ren Zhenbin. The type of characters placed on the table was his selection, making of characters, and firing successes. He saw that the type of living words he produced were loved by people. At the same time he was excited, he felt that there was no end in his heart: Is the type of living words he created really valuable, and where is their meaning?
On March 27th, after seeing a report on “Restoring the history of printing—Niu Dasheng†in the “New Newsâ€, he learned that Niu Lao’s wooden type printed in the Western Xia era was known as the first type of movable type. printed matter. He produced the idea that Niu Dasheng, the expert who created the type of work for him.
Through the help of this newspaper editor, Ren Zhenbin finally took his copy of the movable type and the printed matter printed with these types of movable type to see the cow. Niu Lao told reporters: After seeing the young man's copy of the printed characters in his copy, he was very shocked. Because in the past there were people who had done muddy characters, and no one had ever done it in modern times, and no one mentioned it. Ren Zhenbin, who was a man of three types of living characters such as muddy wood, wooden movable type and stone movable type, even though he started late, his achievements and values ​​are more than those of his predecessors.
Live demonstration of ancient books
On April 10th, the reporter invited Niu Lao to visit the booth of Ren Zhenbin, the film and television town of the town of Beibao, to visit him for the movable type printing. The reporter saw that on a wooden board that looks like a chessboard, holding countless 2 cm square blocks, the above is a good line of Xixia and Chinese characters. It is very neat and looks like a bigger one.
Ren Zhenbin showed us the process of printing with wooden movable type. First apply the brush to the ink and evenly apply it on the movable type, cover the required paper, and use a special flat-bottom brush to compact it so that the paper is completely in contact with the movable type, for a moment, the paper is lifted, and a piece of Xia Wen and Han Wen's Wei Tong’s The poetry is vivid on paper, clear and uniform with color...
The tools used by Ren Zhenbin are mostly large and small brushes, rubs, and knives. Brushes are used for painting, for printing, for wiping. They have a basket-shaped rub, and it is said that he produced it.
The discovery of movable type printing
After consulting the data, we learned that printing is one of the four major inventions in ancient China. It has undergone engraving and printing.
Movable printing target=_blank style=color:blue> two stages of movable type printing. Based on the invention of movable type printing based on engraving and printing, economic and time saving is a great technological revolution in the history of printing. In the Northern Song Dynasty, Bi Sheng invented the word of muddy wood. In the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Kui created the wooden movable type, but so far no confirmed printed version of the Chinese character in the Song and Yuan Dynasties has been found.
Before the 1980s, academia was wondering whether muddy characters really existed. Even Hu Shi believed that mud cannot be made. Until the reform and opening up, the study of the history of printing has made new achievements.
Since the 90s of last century, Xixia's wooden movable type Xixia scriptures have been discovered during the archaeological excavation of the Xixia Fangta of Hesi Mountain in Helanshan of Ningxia. Niu Dasheng concluded after researching that it is the earliest existing wood type printed material in the world. This discovery changed the concept that “Wooden movable type was invented by the Wang Dai in the Yuan Dynasty†for many years, which led to the invention and use of the wooden movable type from the Yuan Dynasty to the Song Dynasty. Then, people also discovered Western Xia literature unearthed in Gansu and Western Xia In the literature, the Xixia Wenmu movable type and the wood type printed version were found one after another. These major discoveries fill the gaps in the early printing of movable type and are of great significance for the study of the ancient Chinese movable type printing technology and the history of printing.
Four skills are indispensable
Niu Lao’s evaluation of the characters of muddy wood, wood and movable characters made by Ren Zhenbin has played an important role in the further development of the Xixia printing culture in Ningxia.
The creation process of movable type printing is like this: word formation, word storage, typesetting, paper selection, solid printing, ink painting, and dismantling. Clay characters need mud and firing. Therefore, reviving characters must have the skills of carving, the eyes of art, the knowledge and patience of Xixia. Undoubtedly, the 4 points Ren Zhenbin have.
Ren Zhenbin was born in Guyuan, Ningxia in 1972. After graduating from high school, he worked in Wuhan. Infatuation, painting. In 1989, he accidentally saw the Xixia Imperial Tombs and was shocked by its profound cultural connotation. He began to collect and study Xixia cultural materials. In 2004, he resigned to Yinchuan to copy the lost Xixia murals and Thangka. In order to live and learn the mysterious Xixia culture, he engraved the seal of Xixia in the Xixia royal tomb. Last year, he was absorbed by the Western Film and Television City as an entertainer.
Here, he has a keen interest in printing on movable type. It stems from the fact that he saw an appeal report about "the Standing Committee of the Political Consultative Conference's Standing Committee's call for the construction of the Xixia Printing Museum." He was very inspired and he was determined to reproduce Xixia Printing. For a whole month, he was burying his head almost every day. At that time, he couldn't find a suitable wood. He thought of using Helan Stone instead to create the type of stone. Later, he conducted a test of wood type. The delicateness of Li Mu was most suitable for carving. After a year of engraving, he worked through repeated experiments and made numerous experiments to produce three types of movable type.
Soil type: choose mud is the key
According to reports, there are still three people in China who have copied muddy characters. One is Professor Zhang Binglun of Anhui University of Science and Technology; the other is Mr. Sun Shouling, former director of the Museum of Wuwei City, Gansu Province. He printed thousands of logs from ancient China.
Xia Wen's "The Verse of Vimalakirti" (Volume Two) provides a living example of the ancient printing that was only found in the literature; the other is the experimental team of the clay sculpture in the Chinese Printing Museum. These results all prove that the mud can be engraved after proper treatment, and the carved words can be printed.
When copying the type of mud, the processing of the mud is not easy. You must first select the soil, sifting through it, and sift through the finest mud. After sedimenting, drain the rough mud and make the finest mud as thin as the surface. The more time you use, the more sticky the mud will be. Then make mud into word-sized squares. In this section of the lettering, the hardness and hardness of the mud should be taken into consideration, and the wet and dry dimensions should be mastered. Finally, the firing should be carried out. Therefore, muddy characters are also called pottery characters. It is critical to master the heat. Niu Lao introduction: When Sun Shou-ling burns clay, he does not have a professional stove to burn on his own stove. Some characters in the burning process will blow open. This indicates that the mud is not selected, and Ren Zhenbin chooses Ningxia red clay. More simple and convenient, the stove is a more professional electric stove, and the temperature control is good, and generally it will not happen. This is a technical advancement of muddy characters.
Wooden type and stone type
The steps of printing wooden movable characters are: affixing the rhyme and pasting it on the wood plate and carving it well; using a fine-toothed small saw to saw the words on the plate as a single word; repairing the word neatly to make it uniform in size; making the wheel disk storage Word; typesetting; printing.
According to Niu Lao introduced, in addition to Ren Zhenbin, no one has seriously made wooden type. Because wood is any kind of person who engages in carving can pick out a board and it can be carved out. The technique is simple, but Ren Zhenbin has consciously carved wooden type and printed it into words. This is very meaningful.
Ren Shih-Bin's stone type is also very meaningful. Because carving letters on rocks is a natural thing for people who are carving. But no one thought of carving a book with a stone-lettering method. Ren Zhenbin thought of the Xixia text "Heart Sutra" carved out of He Lanshi.
The idea of ​​creating a typography room
Ren Zhenbin has always been very excited about seeing information about movable type printing, and will always collect it in earnest.
In the report on the “CPPCC Standing Committee’s call for the construction of the Xixia Printing Museumâ€, the experts appealed: It is recommended to build the Xixia Printing Museum in Yinchuan, the ancient capital of Western Xia, as soon as possible to collect and display Xixia printed cultural relics and historical materials. In the museum, a printing simulation room can be set up to display the engraving and movable type printing process; a printing laboratory can be set up to allow the audience, especially teenagers, to operate by hand. They are influenced by patriotism and traditional culture.
This reminded Ren Zhenbin how it would be nice to have such a typography demonstration room in the film and television city! With his own copy of muddy wood, wooden movable type and stone type, the scene is presented to visitors and the work is printed. This is his greatest wish now. This idea, he has already talked with Mr. Zhang Xianliang, chairman of the film and television city, and he got the support answer. His other wish is to copy all the poems that have been praised in history to Ningxia, so that every visitor to Ningxia can appreciate the beauty of Ningxia’s ancient civilization!