Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print: China, 900-1400 ed. by Lucille Chia and Hilde De Weerdt (review)

The fact that this book represents the hundredth volume of Sinica Leidensia is probably nothing but a coincidence—albeit a very fortunate one. It is hard to imagine a work that could be better suited to mark the jubilee of this series than this thought-provoking, multi-faceted, and superbly edited book. It is the outcome of the conference "First Impressions: The Cultural History of Print in Imperial China (8th-14th centuries)," held at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University, in 2007 and a preceding workshop at the same venue in 2005. Bringing together contributions from outstanding experts on print culture and intellectual history between 900 and 1400, this volume offers nine articles focusing on China and an afterword by Ann Blair that compares the impact of printing in China and the West. By concentrating on this period, the editors set this book apart from the previous Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, which covers the late Ming and Qing dynasties.¹ The topics addressed in the present volume range across practices of reading and collecting books, the impact of political decisions and intellectual trends on the dissemination of knowledge through print, and the spread of printing styles and the potential of woodblock printing compared to manuscripts or stone inscriptions. The volume thus covers many of the crucial concerns of this eminent period in book production, a feat beyond the capacity of a single author.

The overall aim of this book is to investigate the shifting relation between text and knowledge in the era when woodblock printing became widespread in China.² Moreover, it sets out to explore the relationship between woodblock prints and other media such as manuscripts on paper, stone inscriptions, and paintings. This breadth of approach is the result of the discussions that were generated at the conference. The editors explain in their introduction that they "quickly realized that thinking of the printing block as an agent of change was only one of the many ways to help us comprehend the shifts in transmitting and transforming knowledge for the first several centuries when this technology was in use" (p. 1). The volume thus presents more than just a history of printing in a narrow sense. It looks into how the developments in printing were shaped by intellectual, social, political, and economic factors and how, in turn, these dimensions of imperial Chinese life were affected by the potential of woodblock printing, in particular the mass production of texts and images.

One single book is, of course, not sufficient to comprehensively cover such a broad subject. It can, however, provide valuable initial insights and deliver an impetus for further research in this direction. Yet, the attempt to tackle the questions of what triggered (and in some cases hampered) massive text production and how this development shaped and changed the world of Chinese literati is admirable and offers new perceptions of Chinese intellectual history at large. Occasionally, the more confined approach originally employed for the conference, with its pronounced focus on printing, still shines through. The introduction by Chia and De Weerdt, for example, gives much room to a survey on the history of printing where one might expect some more general reflections on the relation of knowledge to text production. Still, the composition of this volume is excellent. The nine essays are thematically dense and well-balanced; they use different approaches and have distinct foci, and yet they complement each other, taking the reader on a fascinating voyage through the early centuries of print in China. It is impossible to do justice to the richness of all nine essays in a short review, and I will confine myself to summarizing and commenting on just a few topics that are repeatedly addressed throughout the book.

An important issue in several essays...