Block printing flourishes under the Yuan

1289

Yuan bureaucrats printed paper money, Buddhist sutras, and government almanacs in enormous quantities. Wang Zhen would soon experiment with a revolving table of wooden movable type. The technology, half spectacle, half sledgehammer, lingered in the Chinese imagination. The sheer volume of Yuan printing laid the groundwork for a literate popular culture that would flourish even more spectacularly under the Ming dynasty that followed.