At the end of September, a passenger boat from Jiangning Province passed through Hongqiao and docked at the Bianshui Wharf in the south of the city.

The ship docked, and the boatman had already taken the gangplank and set it up on the pier. Then a woman wearing a pale green skirt and a floral cardigan with sleeves draped over the ends of the sleeves came out of the cabin, and her eyes were staring at the young man on the pier, and she had been staring at the people on the pier since the boat arrived at the pier.

Another girl behind her wearing a pink skirt and a pale yellow cardigan said to the woman: "Sister Zhou, Your Highness is on the dock, but why don't I see my second brother?" ”

"Maybe something's going on? By the way, in front of people in the future, don't call the little brother Shang Erdan. Zhou Jiamin said to Zhang Pengpeng.

"Hmm."

On the dock, after the young man saw the girl, he smiled at her, "Sister Zhou, are you here?" Little lady Zhang, are you here too? ”

"Hmm." Zhou Jiamin got off the gangplank and walked to the dock, Zhao Dezhao looked at Zhou Jiamin with blank eyes, Zhou Jiamin snorted, "Why do you look at me like this, I'm embarrassed." ”

Zhao Dezhao squeezed his eyebrows and said, "How can you be embarrassed about this?" ”

"Sister Zhou and His Royal Highness King Wei are a pair of natural people." Zhang Pengpeng on the side teased, and then she suddenly remembered something, so she looked at the flirting two with a loss and sighed.

At this time, Shang Haobin had already driven a four-wheeled carriage to come, and when Zhang Pengpeng's eyes saw Shang Haobin, he also flashed excitement, and then lowered his head, his whole face flushed.

Shang Haobin waved his hand and said, "Please get in the car and go to Guangwei Building for lunch, I have already called Wu Lingqing to come." ”

Zhou Jiamin and Zhang Pengpeng looked at everything around Kaifeng, looking at this city curiously along the way, and asking long and short questions along the way, as if Grandma Liu had entered the Grand View Garden.

After lunch, Zhao Dezhao instructed a few servants to accompany Zhou Jiamin and Zhang Pengpeng to Kaifeng for a walk, while Zhao Dezhao, Wu Lingqing and Shang Haobin sat in place and discussed the next things together.

The first thing is books and movable type printing, as for the reward, a few days ago, the prime minister Zhao Pu and the Jin king Zhao Guangyi did a good job, and the soldiers of the southern expedition got what they wanted.

During the Tang and Song dynasties, there were four major systems in China: official collections (public collections), private collections, academy collections, and temple collections.

Zhao Dezhao has always had a wish, that is, to rearrange all the books in the world, and then teach people to write and typeset, and also open libraries in various parts of the Great Song Dynasty, so that the people and scholars all over the world can also get a glimpse of these treasured books, and the other two nodded their heads.

Zhao Dezhao remembered that when he was in Jiangling Mansion, Sun Guangxian, the assassin of Huangzhou, collected a lot of books, and he also participated in the revision of the school on the side, and sometimes corrected the copied books, which was called "surveying the book". This book repair is really huge, and it requires a lot of work from scholars and Confucians.

This trip back to Kaifeng, Sun Guangxian also brought a lot of books, dedicated to the imperial court, and since the Great Song Dynasty merged (southern) Tang and (southern) Han borders, Zhao Kuangyin ordered from Jiangning Mansion, Xingwangfu Palace History Museum, Sheren Yuan and other sub-libraries, private collections of books to be sent to Kaifeng, a total of more than 100,000 volumes.

After Zhao Dezhao said goodbye to Wu Lingqing and Shang Haobin, he returned to the palace.

……

The northwest corner of Chongzheng Palace, in the back garden of Yingyang Gate, in the Qianxiao Building (i.e., Taiqing Building), Zhao Kuangyin, Zhao Dezhao father and son stop here, this building is stacked with the books collected by the three museums (Zhaowen Museum, Jixian Academy, History Museum) of copying the three halls (Zhaowen Museum, Jixian Academy, History Museum), step into the building, only to see that there are many books in the building, but they are not as good as the books in Jiangning Mansion.

Zhao Dezhao said to Zhao Kuangyin: "Jiangnan Li's family, since the beginning of the Li Dynasty, began to school books, to the time when Li Yu ascended the throne, in Jiangning Mansion, 'every house arrived, Xianmu placed books; The scriptures are open, and the civil and military are both 'book collection', so that Jiangning Mansion's '10,000 volumes of Tibetan books in the palace' is the crown of the world with the collection of books in the south of the Yangtze River. ”

Zhao Kuangyin nodded after hearing this and said: "Zhao'er, this time to pacify Jiangnan, I have a collection of more than 100,000 volumes in Jinling, which are distributed in three museums and houses. As for the Han Kingdom, although there are few books, most of them are solitary, and this time the Hanlin Academy and the people will have a good school. ”

The two of them saw that the Hanlin officials, housekeepers, and scholars in the Qianxiao Tower were already carrying and sorting out the books, so he and Zhao Kuangyin went to the study together.

In the corner of the table in Zhao Kuangyin's upper study, there is a firewood kiln (the firewood kiln is the imperial kiln of Chai Rong, the emperor of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and it is recorded that it was founded in Zhengzhou, Henan Province in the early years of Zhou Xiande after the fifth dynasty. But so far has not found the real thing and the ruins) out of the bottle, this bottle is called jade screen cui, from the color of the blue as the sky, bright as a mirror, thin as paper, sound like a rock, moist and delicate with fine lines.

However, now Zhao Dezhao's mind should be on movable type printing, and when this matter is resolved, he also has to think about the five famous kilns of the Song Dynasty in history (Ru, Guan, Ge, Ding, Jun), so that the porcelain of the Great Song Dynasty can spread to the whole world.

At this moment, Zhao Kuangyin had already arrived at the royal table, and the two were thinking about how to act.

The matter of the library building is also a major event of the country, and Zhao Kuangyin has been thinking about it for the past few days. However, the price of engraving is too expensive, each page of the book has to engrave a version, engraving a version takes at least ten days and half a month of work, and the time required is also a lot, and the work required to sort out those vast books takes several years of work, and in case of a wrong word, the whole engraving is useless, in addition to ensuring the integrity of this engraving, the work of craftsmen.

Zhao Dezhao presented the secret technique of movable type printing to Zhao Kuangyin, Zhao Kuangyin listened, held a jade seal in his hand and printed it on the paper over and over again, he asked Zhang Dejun to take a few jade seals and dip some ink in the seal, try it, and a whole row of clear seal rubbings appeared on the Chengxintang paper, and then Zhao Kuangyin understood what Zhao Dezhao said.

"This Li Yu is really a wonderful person, Chengxintang paper is really good, this paper is like a membrane, clean as jade, thin and smooth, crowned for a while, of course, Zhao'er's movable type printing is also good, if it comes out, it will be easier to repair books in the world, and the price of books will naturally be much cheaper."

Zhao Dezhao heard Zhao Kuangyin praise so much, his face flushed, this method was not what he thought, he said: "Daddy praised it falsely." ”

This method is really good, because Zhao Kuangyin let Li Qing, the supervisor, and Zhao Dezhao, the king of Wei, be responsible for movable type printing.

As for Li Yu, this time he also participated in this matter, and the two of them were under the head, and the rest such as Han Xizai, Xu Xuan, Xu Kai, Jiangnan Shi Dafu and Shizi also joined the school, and the imperial court also sent Hongru and others from all over the country to Beijing to revise the book together with the officials of the Great Song Dynasty.

Books have been repaired, schools and other things have already been carried out.

As for movable type printing, it is still in the process of being tested in the prison at Wazipo.

On this day, the autumn is high and cool, in the Wazipo area.

As for why not use wood, Zhao Dezhao borrowed from the idea of Bi Sheng in history, after all, there is the experience of the previous life, Zhao Dezhao is also worried that the wood texture is dense and uneven, the carving is difficult, and the wooden movable type is deformed after being wet, and in the process of use, there will be deformation after the wooden movable type is stained with water, and it is not easy to separate from the medicine.

Because of its low cost and random materials, clay movable type has become a material to be used.

According to the instructions of Zhao Dezhao, the king of Wei, the craftsmen first used cement to make blanks with the same specifications, and the literate craftsmen had carved the reverse words on one end of the blank.

When Zhao Dezhao looked at it, he saw that the height of the protrusion of the character on the blank was like the thickness of the edge of the copper coin.

Because this time it is a test, and the words above are all the same "one".

They were neatly stacked, rested on a single plate with a gap in between, and then pushed into a large kiln ready for firing.

The charcoal and charcoal were mixed together, and at this moment they were already ignited, and the kiln mouth had been blocked, and the temperature near the kiln mouth had suddenly risen.

The kiln craftsmen who have been firing for many years have to judge when the firing will be completed.

At the time of firing, the temperature in the kiln is extremely important, at this time it is called fire, the heat is too low, and the firing is easy to be brittle; If the heat is too high, the rough movable type will crack all at once, affecting the use.

Firing these is more difficult than firing porcelain, and it doesn't need to take as long as firing porcelain.

The charcoal has been burned, and only after the temperature has cooled down do the craftsmen open the kiln and take out the firing blanks.

After coming out, Zhao Dezhao first looked at the fineness and durability of these wooden movable types.

He then asked the craftsmen to start experimenting with the effect of wooden type, and the craftsmen selected good clay type in terms of fineness and durability.

The craftsmen have brought iron plates, potions, etc.

The craftsmen first applied a layer of agent between the clay type and the iron plate, which was made by mixing pine resin, wax and paper ash.

Because they are all the same characters, the typography is very simple, and in a short time, the clay movable type is all lined up on the framed iron plate, and it is very well adhered to the medicine.

Fill a box and it becomes a version.

The craftsmen have already taken the iron plate to the briquette stove and baked it.

When the potion melts slightly, the craftsmen flatten the text with a flat plate, and after the potion cools and solidifies, it becomes a stable version.

Zhao Dezhao took a look, he felt very satisfied, and the craftsmen on the side were also waiting for a miracle to happen.

Li Qing, the supervisor, had already brought snow-white Chengxintang paper as a paper test for the book.

The craftsmen brought Hui ink, the same as Chengxintang paper, and She inkstone, which are all from She County.

The craftsmen used a brush to brush the board with ink, then covered it with Chengxintang paper, and squeezed it with stone slabs and bricks.

The craftsmen opened the note, only to see that there had been a square italics on the snow-white, although all of them were "one" characters, but after all, this was the first time in the history of the Great Song Dynasty to use movable type printing.

Zhao Dezhao immediately asked the chamberlain to transmit this chapter of notes to the inner study of Zhao Kuangyin's Funing Palace.

"You have done a good job, this is the first piece of paper printed with movable type in the Great Song Dynasty, and the significance is also extraordinary, I will definitely let Your Majesty reward you well."

The craftsmen knew what this meant, so they all fell to their knees and shouted, "Thank you, King of Wei, Chitose, and thank you, Your Majesty." ”

"Get up, don't kneel without moving."

After printing, the craftsmen roasted the medicine with fire, and with a slight shake of their hands, the movable type could fall off the iron plate, and then put it back into the original wooden grid according to the rhyme, so as to be used again next time.

In the study room of the Funing Palace, when Zhao Kuangyin saw the words printed on the paper, he asked the chamberlain, and then he was happy, lifted the imperial pen and wrote a few words on the paper: The Great Song Dynasty Qiande will be the supervisor of the imperial system in five years.

The success of movable type printing laid a great foundation for the revision and dissemination of books.

At the same time, with the help of movable type printing, the compilation and arrangement of books in the imperial court was also accelerated.

During this period of time, the people and scholars of Kaifeng were everywhere and there were several more bookstores on the streets, which were opened behind the scenes of the imperial court, and their movable type was provided by the general supervisor.

They picked up the two books "Dream of Red Mansions" and "The Legend of the White Snake" on the bookshelf, and then opened the title page to read, a little lady suddenly sniffed and said: "The words on this Dream of Red Mansions and the Legend of the White Snake are really clear, as if they have just been printed, and they are full of book fragrance." ”

In addition, a few little ladies who accompanied them also picked up the book and sniffed it, and said, "It's really as Wei Niang said." ”

ps.

The bookstore is a two-in-one bookstore that publishes and sells books in ancient times, which was born in the late Tang Dynasty and became popular in the streets and alleys after the Northern Song Dynasty. On the bookshelf of the bookstore are practical medical books, daily books, world novels, gossip tabloids, and "guides" for scientific examination review, which shows that the Northern Song Dynasty was active in commerce and the citizen class.

Thank you for the reward of Song Ying, who dances coldly, mourns martial arts, and loves to laugh!