Printer Creates New Ancient Books for Future

Yiqiao might not exist on a small-scale map of China， but Xiaoshan Ancient Books Printing House headquartered in Yiqiao， Xiaoshan District of Hangzhou is a national giant in making modern books in an ancient way and reproducing ancient books in exactly the same way as they were printed centuries ago. A showroom at the printing business highlights its printed glories: all the books are printed and bound in ancient Chinese style; the books are in various sizes and various formats; and all have a Chinese text arranged in vertical columns that stand side by side from right to left and all the pages are put together with treads.

The flourishing business in Yiqiao， Xiaoshan has an office building and workshops， embedded in a rural vista stretching in all directions. A highway curves near the office building， connecting it to the outside world. The books printed here can be found in reading rooms， libraries， and government offices nationwide.

The private printing business started in 1984. That year， Li Yimang， head of a government project for reprinting ancient books under the State Council， came to Shanghai and met with the director of the city’s seventh print house. Li was in this part of the country looking for printers how knew how to reprint ancient books. It happened that the director was from Yiqiao， Xiaoshan. It was a time that rural businesses were mushrooming all over the country. With the help of the director， the business came into being with an amount of 150，000 yuan as registered capital and some 20 employees. It was a big rural business in the mid 1980s. It flourished. However， in the early 1990s， business began to sag and sank to the verge of bankruptcy due to various external and internal problems.

In 1996， Zhang Guofu， then a photosetting technician with the factory， bought out the owner for about one million yuan and became a business owner himself. He purchased a land of about 3 hectares and built a new office building and workshops. Over the past 15 years， the factory has flourished. Now one of China’s top three businesses engaged in printing ancient books， the printer has about 90 employees and produces ancient-styled books worth of 20 million yuan a year.

Zhang Guofu keeps a low-profile， but his business is very advanced in technology and his printing quality enjoys national renown. He is fully aware of his market. It is a tiny niche where technology counts and products are for elite customers. A business in this niche does not have any possibility to print bestsellers. But the elite market enables a business like his to survive and prosper if he can manage to keep his competitive edge over his rivals in technology and in quality and cost control.

Zhang Guofu has developed cutting-edge technologies which help the company maintain a leading role on the national market. With a technology to print books on fine fabrics such as silk and brocade， the company prints almost all the books in silk and brocade on the national market. Rice paper was the standard media used in ancient China especially for book printing， painting and calligraphy. It is still in wide use for painting and calligraphy today. With a sophisticated technology to print colors on rice paper， the company printed high quality souvenir books for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

With such cutting-edge technologies， Xiaoshan Ancient Books Printing House boasts prestigious customers such as China Books， Commercial Press， People’s Press， Cultural Relics Press， National Library， Capital Library， Shanghai Library and Gansu Library and a great number of government agencies. It has printed more than 10 million copies of ancient books over the past 15 years. The printer has also printed works of national leaders and cultural celebrities of the past centuries in an ancient style. Among they are “Selected Works of Jiang Zemin”.

The thread-bound ancient-styled books made by the company are now used as state gifts for foreign leaders. “A Collection of Lu Xun’s Manuscripts” and other books won awards as “Excellent Quality Publications” from the National Administration of Press and Publishing. “Waters of Suzhou”， another publication made by the printer， was rated among China’s Top 20 Most Beautiful Books of 2005. CCTV and People’s Daily covered the company for its honors.

In 2002， the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Finance jointly started a national project entitled “Reprinting Good Editions of Ancient Books”. Xiaoshan Ancient Books Printing House was a designated printer for the project. Now the company has been chosen again for the second phase of the project. The second phase is scheduled to reprint rare editions of ancient books， which are precious and academically valuable. Also included in the second phase are books that were overlooked in the first phase. Nearly all the 580 titles in the second phase are listed on Directive I of Precious Ancient Books of China and are Class I national books. Printed and bound in ancient ways， these books are designed to go down in history and carry on the ancient Chinese civilization to the future.□