J.P. Park

That printing, along with gunpowder, the compass, and paper, was first invented in China remains an under-appreciated fact. Paper, a medium that spread rapidly in the fourth century when it replaced wood and bamboo strips as a carrier of the written record, was first produced by Cai Lun, a eunuch in charge of the imperial craft workshop in 103 CE, but it was probably invented some time before the Christian era. Composed of hemp fibers and silk rags, the coarse quality of early paper made it unsuitable for writing, but it functioned well as wrapping material and also served architecture-related functions, such as in windows. Soon, finer materials such as mulberry bark, cloth nets, and other vegetable fibers replaced the earlier ones. It was probably not until the beginning of the fourth century that paper finally replaced wood and bamboo strips as the preferred material on which to write. Thereafter it spread quickly. By the beginning of the sixth century, it was in use everywhere in China and by the eighth century, paper was being made in the Arab world, eventually making its way to Europe by the eleventh century. Printing by square-format woodblocks began sometime around the mid-seventh century (Tsien 1985: 1–3). By the ninth or tenth century, the technical mastery and skills of block carvers, along with printing technology, made sophisticated expressions possible both in text and illustrations. Demand for books grew quickly. History tells us that book stores operated in the capital city of the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) as early as the first century CE, and during the Tang dynasty (618–907) an entire quarter in the city of Luoyang was devoted to bookselling, though most of the books sold there were manuscripts transcribed by hand. However, this does not imply that print media were produced and circulated on a limited scale prior to the tenth century. It is true that relatively small numbers of printed books on the Classics, history, and philosophy were available in wealthy and official circles. However, Buddhist sutras A Companion to Chinese Art, First Edition. Edited by Martin J. Powers and Katherine R. Tsiang.