In the inner city of Xicheng, there is a foil alley, which is a curtain made of reed stalks, and this alley has a large number of shops selling foil, so it is called foil alley.

On this day, the crown prince's guard of honor arrived in Fenzi Hutong, making the whole street noisy.

As soon as he arrived at the east entrance of Fenzi Hutong, Zhu Cihong saw a royal temple - the Protector Shengzuo Longchang Temple, which was built in the 45th year of Wanli.

The mountain gate is wide, and the stone gate is engraved on the forehead with "the construction of the Shengzuo Longchang Temple", Zhu Cihong hesitated slightly, and finally decided to enter the temple to see.

The big temple sits in the north and faces south, several halls of the building are magnificent, the incense is vigorous, there is a tall bell tower in the temple, the scale is grand, the weather is majestic, quite the style of the Ming Dynasty,

The architectural style of the early Ming Dynasty was similar to that of the Song Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty, simple and majestic, and the architectural style of the middle of the Ming Dynasty was known for its rigor, while the architectural style of the late Ming Dynasty tended to be cumbersome.

There is also a bronze statue of Buddha nearly five meters high in the center of the Shengzuo Longchang Temple, there is a thousand-petal lotus seat under it, and each petal is cast with a small Buddha, which is called "a thousand Buddhas around Pilu".

Zhu Cihong first went to the Great Thousand Buddha Hall to burn a few incense sticks, worshipped, and then visited the Tianwang Hall and other halls, this temple was built only 20 years ago, and it is properly maintained on weekdays, and it still looks brand new and solemn.

The ancient temple in Xisibei Sanjo, Xicheng District, Beijing, in later generations, is the royal temple in front of you, but after the erosion of time and the changes of history, the bell and drum tower of this temple in later generations has long been demolished.

The bronze Wufang Buddha in the Daqian Buddha Hall has been moved to Fayuan Temple for worship, and the rest of the Buddha statues are gone, and the Tianwang Palace, the Daqian Buddha Palace, and the Qianxi Side Hall are used as warehouses by some shops, and other halls are also used as residential buildings.

In the past, the holy land of Buddhism has become a miscellaneous courtyard where all living beings live. Zhu Cihong lamented that wars and dynastic changes have destroyed many Chinese civilizations.

After leaving the Protector Shengzuo Longchang Temple, Zhu Cihong directly asked the guard of honor to go to the destination of the trip-Hanjing Factory.

The Hanjing Factory is located in the foil alley, which is the royal printing house of the Ming Dynasty, which is responsible for engraving and printing Buddhist scriptures, Confucian classics and court documents, and also printing popular reading materials such as "Hundred Family Names".

Hearing that the crown prince's guard of honor was about to come to the Hanjing factory, the booklet of the Hanjing factory immediately ordered the factory to be cleaned at full speed, and then took all the officials and craftsmen to stand 100 meters from the gate to welcome the arrival of the crown prince.

None of them could have imagined that the crown prince would come to the Hanjing Factory, an eighteenth-tier royal institution with a very low sense of existence! This is the first time that the emperor has experienced it for more than 200 years.

I remember that the biggest official who has ever been to the Hanjing Factory seems to be the right young eunuch of the fourth grade, and the dead eunuch still came to urge the printing of Buddhist scriptures, looking very awesome.

The crown prince's guard of honor finally arrived, and the officials of the Hanjing factory were excited, one by one they saluted happily, and under the guidance of the six-grade book, the crown prince's guard of honor entered the Hanjing factory without hurry.

Zhu Cihong ignored the enthusiastic officials, and first briefly inspected the printing workshop of the Hanjing Factory.

He found that the scale of this Hanjing factory is not large, covering an area of only more than 1,000 square meters, with about 100 craftsmen and complete printing equipment.

Zhu Cihong asked the manager of the Hanjing Factory, who was with him all the way, and said, "Is the printing plate of the Hanjing Factory engraving or letterpressing?" ”

The manager of the Hanjing Factory is called Shi Zhidong, 46 years old this year, is a six-grade canon, and was born, because the text and ink are not bad, and he knows the Buddhist scriptures, and he has some connections in the capital, so it is not easy to mix a half-official position in the Hanjing Factory.

After years of hard work, he finally got the leader of the Hanjing Factory, although he knew that there was no future in the Hanjing Factory, but Shi Zhidong could only do so.

Now it's worthless to lift people, and it's not easy to get a serious errand, and it's good to have an official to do it.

The workload of the Hanjing factory is also very small, and there is a lot of time to study knowledge every day, Shi Zhidong has nothing to write an anthology or something, and he can print a few copies by himself if he writes well, and he will leave his name in history.

With such a mentality, Shi Zhidong has been working in the Hanjing Factory for 20 years, and he knows everything about the Hanjing Factory.

Seeing the crown prince's question, Shi Zhidong said respectfully: "Back to Your Highness, the Han Jing Factory has printing engraving and letterpressing, but the use of engraving is more, because the palace requires printing scriptures and books, most of us have engraved engraving here, which is extremely convenient to print. ”

Zhu Cihong nodded, and he could also understand that the so-called engraving plate is to engrave the characters on the sheet in advance, and when printing the book, first use a brush dipped in ink and brush it on the carved board.

Then cover the board with white paper, take a clean brush and gently brush it on the back of the paper, take down the paper, and a page of the book will be printed. After the pages are printed, they are bound into a book, and the book is successfully printed.

Engraving printing was invented in the Tang Dynasty and began to be widely used in the middle and late Tang Dynasty.

Letterpress is to first make a single word of the Yang text anti-text mold, and then according to the manuscript to select the single words, arrange them in the word plate, ink printing, and then dismantle the word mold after printing, and leave it for the next typesetting to be used again.

The range of scriptures required by the royal family was limited, and it is no wonder that the Hanjing Factory also used old-fashioned engraving printing.

In fact, in history, whether in the Ming Dynasty or in the Qing Dynasty, letterpress has never surpassed engraving printing, and engraving printing did not withdraw from the Chinese printing stage until the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

At this time, Wu Zhongdao, who was beside Zhu Cihong, said: "This adult, our family has some doubts in our hearts, I don't know if the adult is willing to explain a thing or two for our family?" ”

Seeing the father-in-law beside the crown prince asking, Shi Zhidong dared to refuse, and hurriedly said: "Father-in-law, please speak, the lower officials know everything." ”

Wu Zhong said curiously: "Although our family was born poor, we also know that someone in the Song Dynasty invented movable type printing, but why is this movable type printing more advanced than engraving printing, and everyone still uses engraving printing?" Engraving needs to spend two or three months in advance to engrave, there should be no movable type printing to save trouble, right? ”

Zhu Cihong is also a little puzzled, movable type printing has been invented for nearly a thousand years, and the mainstream printing in China to the end of the Qing Dynasty is still engraving printing, and movable type printing is rarely seen.

Shi Zhidong saw that what he knew finally had a place to use, so he explained: "Back to this father-in-law, the requirements for letterpress printing are relatively high, if you use wooden molds, print about 200 books, and the wooden molds will be soaked and swollen and the handwriting will become blurred.

In the case of iron molds and lead molds, since the current mainstream is smoke ink as the pigment, it is easy to turn into ink beads on the movable type of iron molds and lead molds, and it is easy to print a cloud of ink.

If you want to solve this problem, you must use paper with strong water absorption, and the result is that there will be ink on the back of the paper, which cannot be printed on both sides, which virtually increases the cost of printing, and is not as good as wooden type.

Only the copper movable type can solve these problems very well, but I do not have many copper mines, copper is the raw material for making currency, the copper mold is too expensive, most people can't afford it, so the copper movable type can not be applied on a large scale.

In addition to the Hanjing factory, as early as a hundred years ago, the economically prosperous Jiangnan area has begun to popular copper movable type printing.

Among them, the most famous are the Hua family and the An family in Wuxi, the Sun family in Suzhou and the Zhang family in Nanjing, etc., and the books they printed and sold with copper movable type were widely circulated, and the printing effect was also very good. ”

Wu Zhong made a gesture and said, "Our family understands, thank you for this adult's solution." ”

Zhu Cihong said in his heart, this Shi Zhidong has a few brushes, which can be used.

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