Living Heritage: Woodblock printing

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Living heritage: Woodblock Printing (China Daily)

Delicate strokes, carved onto wood with ultimate precision. This is woodblock printing, an ancient printing technique that advanced human civilisation.

As Buddhism prevailed in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), there was a strong need to produce a large amount of Buddhist scriptures, and copying by hand could not meet the rising demand. Ancient Chinese craftsmen thus came up with a novel way to mass-produce printed works. Hence came the prototype of woodblock printing.

A 16.4 feet-long scroll of the Buddhist scripture Diamond Sutra, printed in 868, is the “earliest dated printed book” in the words of the British Library where it is stored.

Watch this video to find out more about woodblock printing, which was inscribed on Unesco’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.