From the Qin dynasty (221-206BC), Chinese characters developed rapidly. A book titled Shuowen Jiezi that was written in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) contained 9,353 characters; and a book titled Yu Pian that was written in the Northern and Southern Dynasties (386-589) contained more than 22,000 characters. With the development of Confucianism, Taoism, and various other scholars' thoughts, more and more works appeared.

China's population grew rapidly; at the end of the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-24AD), the population had reached nearly 60 million, spurring a great demand by people for books to read. Therefore, a need for new technology (for making books) became urgent.

The paper 's invention provided a kind of high- quality and cheap writing material for the society, which promoted the books' development to a certain degree. But the method of writing books by hands was not suitable for large books, thereby leading to a gap in cultural dissemination.

Under those situations, Chinese people invented the printing technology, offering humanity's development a generous gift in the process.

 Engraved Block Printing

1. Character-carving Skills

The skill of carving characters emerged very early. The oldest inscriptions were made on oracle bones such as animal bones and shells. Inscriptions on bronze ware flourished from the Shang Dynasty to the Western Zhou Dynasty (16th century-771BC). Chinese characters were inscribed in clay molds before casting.

Carving characters on stones came even earlier. Symbol carvings on surfaces of cliffs have been traced back to extremely ancient times. The classics in great-seal script and small-seal script were all carved on stones. The Xipi ng Stone Inscriptions of the Eastern Han (25-220) involved carving the Confucian classics in the clerical script onto 46 stone tables, totaling around 200,000 characters.

2. Engraved Block Printing

With the inventions of paper and ink, the stamper, an early form of engraved block printing, gradually became popular during the Jin Dynasty (265-420). Block printing first appeared in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The text was first written on a piece of thin paper, and then glued face down onto a wooden plate. The characters were carved out to make a wood-block printing plate, which was used to print the text. Wood-block printing took a long time as a new block had to be carved for every page in a book.

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