After explaining the situation to everyone, the rest is their own business.

This time, the effect is still good, under Guo Kang's explanation, the priests are very interested in this theory, and they are willing to read more books. Guo Kang also promised that in the future, he would persuade the family to donate more books to them to make everyone even happier.

When papermaking and printing technology were introduced, it immediately sparked a boom in the local area. Even after decades, Guo Kang can still feel this enthusiasm and the power behind the books.

Before the spread of "Chinese paper", books were very expensive, especially in remote areas, and even more exaggerated - in England in the High Middle Ages, a book could be sold for a pound, and at the prices of the time, it could cost about 600 kilograms of wheat, or 30 heads of fine suckling pigs. Even if you change it to regular spices, you can change it for ten pounds. One can imagine how valuable and scarce knowledge is.

However, papermaking technology has long been spreading to other regions. Around the time of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Sogdian merchants in the northwest had already sold paper back to their hometowns in Central Asia.

However, the more perfect papermaking technology only spread in the Tang Dynasty, and it is said that after the Battle of Talas, some Tang soldiers were captured by the Arab army, and because they had advanced military and production technology, they were highly valued, and some of these papermakers were in Samarkand, guiding the Arabs to establish paper mills to produce mediocre hemp paper - of course, for regions outside of East Asia, this is already a very advantageous technology.

And the Arab profiteers did business much faster than the Tang people. As they expanded, hemp paper was also sold everywhere. In order to facilitate sales, they built factories in Cairo, Egypt, and Fez, Morocco, to sell paper to the Mediterranean world.

Egypt was formerly home to papyrus, a plant that has been used as paper for thousands of years. This material was so precious that the Egyptians called it "pa-per-aa", which means "pharaoh's possessions". Until later generations, many European languages used paper were derived from this word.

However, after the introduction of papermaking, the locals quickly gave up planting sedge and switched to crops that were more suitable for papermaking, such as reeds, due to the technological superiority. Later, the sedge simply disappeared, and it is not known whether it was extinct or rewilded.

However, Europe's technology is relatively backward and can only import paper in large quantities. Spain, one of the cultural centers of the Celestial Religion, is the center of paper export, and the French buy paper from there all year round. Other countries also relied on trade routes from Spain and Italy to import enough paper.

After the establishment of the Purple Horde, a new round of technological changes began. They brought better craftsmanship from the East, again improving technology.

In addition to several previous crops, the Purple Horde also introduced bamboo. This plant grows quickly and grows in warmer southern Europe. At the earliest, this was actually brought by Guo Gai and others to decorate the residence for "Yaxing", but it quickly spread and was used in all aspects.

However, the Purple Horde hardly exported paper, and instead they had to buy it from Egypt on a regular basis, even if the quality was not as good as theirs. Because since the introduction of printing, there has not been much paper.

Contrary to common sense, the efficiency of engraving printing is not necessarily lower than that of movable type. Especially for Chinese characters, the advantages of movable type are not large, and the development may not be as fast as engraving.

By the late Qing Dynasty, full-fledged printing had pushed the price of books to a very low level. According to the British survey, ordinary books of a practical nature are very cheap, and the price of a booklet is even less than a bowl of noodles; And if women workers were used in the printing workshop, the price could be lower.

This is possible because there are many literate and plate-making workers in society, including female workers, who have greatly reduced costs.

On the other hand, copying books is also very popular. Due to the existence of a large number of low-level literati, the reproduction of small batches of books could be completed by copying, and the wages of these "Kong Yiji" were lower than those of movable type printing, and their artistic quality was also superior to that of their counterparts.

Under the attack of both sides, movable type printing has fallen into an embarrassing situation. For a long time, it was the printing of popular pamphlets that were not very good on the table to maintain the ecological niche. Because of the development of market culture in the Ming and Qing dynasties, this kind of thing was "updated" quickly, and the engraving could not keep up, and Kong Yiji could not copy it, so it left some living space......

Under the influence of these various factors, the magical literacy rate of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China was produced.

Of course, these figures can only be used as a rough reference, because the criteria for "literacy" vary too much.

For example, by American standards, according to 1918 statistics, half of the Protestants could easily read the New Testament. Considering that the literacy rate during the Republic of China was not as good as that of the Qing Dynasty, and the quality of the people was also very uneven, this data is very exaggerated.

Similarly, in 1896, statistics in Hawaii found that 25 percent of Chinese women immigrants could read and write. Considering that the women who crossed the ocean at that time were basically unlikely to be in the upper echelons of society, either the cultural environment at that time was not as backward as later generations imagined, or the standards of Americans were too loose. Of course, maybe it's both......

Therefore, the development of this technology, not to mention what effect it can achieve, at least it should be enough to bully the uneducated Europeans at this time. In fact, this does not need the support of modern data, after all, the ancients also knew the importance of education.

Unlike the past history that Guo Kang knew, in this world, the mature printing technology was directly brought over by the Purple Horde, and from the very beginning, Patriarch Zhang collected most of the craftsmen and machines, and printed his missionary pamphlets every day.

Because of these relationships, printing was politically incorrect from the start, and other churches almost tried to ban the use of printed matter and printed matter by believers. Even if it is difficult to completely ban private printing because of regulatory capacity, it is still necessary to maintain the ban at least in important related fields such as religion, theology, and philosophy.

Faced with this situation, the Purple Horde simply let itself go, printing a large number of scriptures and commentaries, and selling them everywhere. This was a confirmation of the previous accusations, and opponents such as the Roman Catholic Church were greatly outraged.

Many clergy insisted that this printing technique was an unequivocal technical heresy, and that it was evil from the very beginning. Some radicals even think that this is a craft invented by the devil. Therefore, not only itself, but all applications must be prohibited, including the introduction, research and adaptation of it.

Most people don't make such an exaggeration overall, but they are undoubtedly quite annoying. In this environment, the field of theology and philosophy is actually under a state of printing ban. In contrast, the books here are even more precious.

(End of chapter)