The Development of Books
in China: Then and Now
Ping Situ
situp@u.library.arizona.edu
University of Arizona Library
April 2006
Outline
 Historical development of Chinese
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characters.
Historical evolution of books in China.
Introduction of paper-making and printing.
Traditional publishing and e-publishing.
Progress and challenges
Copyright related issues in China.
Historical Publishing Statistics
 206 B.C. – 960 A.D.
 270,000 volumes were published.
 960 – 1279
 124,000 volumes were published.
 1260 – 1911
 1,973,000 volumes were published.
 1911 – 1949
 About 10,000 titles were published.
 1949 – 1993
 Over 131,000 titles were published.
 2000 –
 Over 100, 000 titles published every year.
Chinese Words Now Part of the
English
Examples of common English words with
Chinese roots:
.
Ginseng 人参 (ren shen)
Oolong 乌龙 (u long)
Tofu 豆腐 (dou fu)
Yin-yang 阴阳 (yin yang)
Typhoon 台风 (tai feng)
Feng-shui 风水 (feng shui)
The “Writing” of Chinese Characters
Before the Invention of Paper
 1600-1046 B.C. (Shang Dynasty)
 Letters were carved on oracle bones or bronze
wares.
 770-476 B.C. (Spring and Autumn Period)
 Silk was used only by the rich; bamboo/wood
strips were used by the general public.
Jiaguwen (inscriptions carved in animal bone
or tortoise shells)
 Dated from over 3000
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貝
treasure
貝
treasure
years ago.
Are the earliest Chinese
characters.
Every character is like a
picture.
3000 characters were
discovered. Over 1000 of
them can still be found in
today’s vocabulary.
Are invaluable resources
on the social, economic
and cultural development
of the prehistoric period.
Jinwen (Chinese characters inscribed on ancient
bronze ware )
 Earliest known bronze vessel
inscriptions were made during
the Western Zhou Dynasty (1100256 B.C.)
 The longest text is the
Maogongding which contains
497 characters.
 Compared to oracle bone
inscriptions, Jinwen appears
more organized and is simpler
and less pictographic.
Writing on Bamboo Slips
(Began over 2,700 years ago)
 One written document
needed to be carried
by two strong men.
 A few books would fill
up a big cart.
 The daily official
documents read by
Emperor Qin (259
B.C. - 210 B.C.)
weighed over one
hundred pounds.
Writing on Silk
 Silk first was produced
in China (3000 B.C.)
 It was more convenient
to carry around and
much easier to be
organized than bamboo
“books”.
 High cost limited use
for writing to a small
group of aristocrats.
Evolution of Chinese Script from Pictographs to
Characters
Paper Inventing and Printing
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In 105 A.D. Cai Lun introduced paper making using
bamboo fiber, old fishnet, linen rags, remnants of hemp
and tree bark.
Knowledge of papermaking skills passed to other Asian
countries, Europe and then rest of the world.
With the invention of paper, Chinese began to create
books.
Before printing was invented, all books were copied by
hand.
The earliest known book was printed using block printing
in 636.
By the end of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), China had
bookstores in almost every city.
Movable type printing was invented by Bi Sheng in 1040;
400 years before Gutenberg invented the printing press in
Europe.
Block Printing
 Started in the early Tang
Dynasty (618- 907 AD)
 Nü Ze, compiled and edited
by the Empress, was the first
block-printed book (636
A.D.).
 First use was by officials, but
then extended to the public
and eventually printing
became a business.
 Chiefly were religious and
philosophical documents
(mostly Buddhist sutras and
Confucian literature)
Movable Type Technology
 Clay movable type
print.
 Wood movable
type print.
 Metal movable
type print.
 Tin
 Lead
 Copper
 Iron.
The Chinese Invention of Movable Type
 The Chinese invention of movable type, credited to Bi
Sheng in the year 1045 AD, did not significantly impact
Chinese society.
 Four hundred years later in Europe, Gutenberg's
development of movable type revolutionized the
Western world. Why?
 The Chinese language uses at least 5000 characters
in an average book. The English language, in
comparison, uses 26 letters. Clearly, manipulating
5000 characters on a printing press took much longer
than moving 26.
Traditional Chinese Books
 Vertical texts.
 Read from right to
left.
 Pages turn from left
to right.
 Thread bound.
The Two Giant Hand-copied
Encyclopedic Titles
 Hand copying was more practical because of the vast
quantity of texts.
 Yongle Dadian (The Great Classic of Yongle reign)
1403-1408
 A huge compilation of everything considered worth knowing by at the time of
compilation in 1547, consisting of over 11,000 volumes. Only about 300
survive in original manuscript form today.
 Siku Quanshu (Complete Library in Four Branches of
Literature) 1773-1782
 Containing more than 36,000 volumes. It is the most comprehensive
collection from earliest known Chinese scholarship until the date of
publication in 1782. It covers a wide variety of subjects in the humanities,
science, and social sciences.
An Overview of E-Publishing in China
 The Internet was introduced in China in 1987.
 120 million Internet users in 2005; the number expected to
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surpass 200 million by 2007.
The e-publishing industry in China started with floppy disks in the
mid 1980s. By 1994 more than 1,000 titles had been published on
disks.
Government support and rapid technology development.
CD-ROM publishing in China started in 1993. By 1997 there were
22 CD-ROM reproduction factories in China.
E-publishing activities by libraries: the National Library of China is
developing online indexes to current Chinese yearbooks as well
as Chinese rare books down to article level.
E-government project: Since1999 more than 1000 ministries and
departments, including the provincial and city level, have
established their own web sites.
Electronic Publishing in China
E-books:
 Super Star.
 Founder/Apabi.
 Scholar’s Home.
 Renda Fu yin bao kan zi
liao (index and full-text
of journals and
newspaper articles).
A few examples with a
special focus on Chinese
classics:
 Guo xue bao dian
 Gu jin tu shu ji cheng.
 Si ku quan shu.
E-journals:
 CAJ (Qinghua TongFang): full-text
academic journal articles,
dissertations, selected newspaper
articles, conference proceedings,
patents, etc.
 COJ (Wangfand Data): a fulltext
journal database with its emphasis
on science and technology.
 Weipu Journal Co. (Congqing
Scientific Information Center):
focuses on science and technology.
 DragonSource - (Chinese language
E-Magazines from the Netlibrary).
Challenges for E-Book Industry
in China
 Lack of a win-win-win solution to the copyright issues for
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the writers, publishers and readers.
Lack of e-book display standards. Library users have to
learn multiple software of the different e-book databases.
Lack of capabilities to limit duplicate/multiple copies from
different vendors to save money.
Lack of selectivity when choosing what to add to the ebook collection.
Lack of standardization in pricing.
Lack of standardization in Chinese character encoding.
Chinese Language Computing
Dilemma for E-Publishing
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Three major computer encoding systems are used for Chinese:
 Big5
 It encodes traditional characters and is used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao. It is
one or two byte coding.
 GuoBiao (GB)
 It encodes simplified characters and is used in People’s Republic of China and
Singapore. The latest version is GB18030 which is a one, two or four byte
encoding.
 Unicode
 Unicode includes all the characters from GB and Big5 and more. It is supported by
both Netscape and Internet Explorer and is growing in popularity.
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Putting all characters up as pictures so that they can be viewed on all
browsers.
 challenges: hard to make changes and long time to load.
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Three main types of keyboard input methods:
 by encoding
 by pronunciation
 by structure of the characters.
Copyright Issues in China
 Publishers own the copyright for journals while authors
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hold copyright for individual articles.
Starting in the late 1990s publishers asked authors to sign
over their copyright for both print and electronic.
For articles earlier than the nineties, retrospective
contracts need to be signed with individual authors to
obtain e-copyright.
Some journals may “disappear” someday from the
databases when the Chinese copyright becomes more
explicit.
Different options of economic incentives for authors:
 Free membership (free access to the entire e-book database).
 Pay per download.
 Pay per check-out.
Thank You Very Much!