Song Dynasty Woodblock Printing System

Timeline

1. 960–980Kaifeng (Bianjing) · Kaifeng CityThe early Song inherited Tang and Five Dynasties woodblock traditions, established official printing bodies such as the Directorate of Education in Kaifeng, and permitted private and commercial printing in Chengdu, Hangzhou, Jianyang, and elsewhere. The woodblock printing of the Buddhist Canon begun in 971 showed that woodblock printing could support ultra-large-scale, long-cycle bibliographic production.
2. 1000–1080Lin'an (Hangzhou) · Hangzhou CityIn the first half of the 11th century, official, private, and commercial printing ran in parallel, accelerating the circulation of classics, histories, encyclopedias, medical books, and Buddhist texts. Hangzhou and Jianyang in Fujian developed specialized networks of engravers and distributors; layout, typeface, and collation standards matured, laying the foundation for later printing typefaces such as Song type.
3. 1101–1110Kaifeng (Bianjing) · Kaifeng CityIn the early years of Emperor Huizong's reign, institutions such as the Directorate of Education and the Secretariat in Kaifeng continued to print Confucian classics, statutes, and encyclopedias; woodblock printing remained the main channel for state knowledge production, administrative documents, and paper money printing. Although Bi Sheng's movable type had appeared, due to the number of Chinese characters and costs, woodblock printing still overwhelmingly dominated in the late Northern Song.