The Kang family, which was once almost forgotten, welcomed two young guests who were becoming popular in Baixi Official School.

The day before yesterday, Mao Geng and Wen Yuan had to visit the West Chamber without being polite. Of course, in addition to being polite to come and not being polite, the most important thing is that it is curiosity about Mr. Kang. The male protagonist of the romantic story many years ago should obviously not be ignored. Mao Geng came to visit Mr. Kang with an inquiry mood to comfort his gossip. At the same time, Mao Geng felt that Mr. Kang should be able to find something, such as the story that was once in depth. The story between Mr. Kang and Mrs. Kang is a ready-made love theme, and there must be no lack of sensational elements. Just use the romance techniques of later generations to write it into a love story with ups and downs.

By the way, you can also ask Mr. Kang about the printing of books in the Southern Song Dynasty. On this point, Mr. Kang should have a greater say than the two gentlemen of the Wang family.

The two gentlemen of the Wang family may have known the printing of books in the Jin Dynasty in detail, but even the little tricks of the Jin Dynasty could not catch up with the Southern Song Dynasty - well, they have to be called the Great Song Dynasty, which was called by later generations.

Unexpectedly, after arriving at Kang's house, he entered Mr. Kang's study and found that Mr. Kang had a lot of books collected. Two bamboo bookshelfs were filled with books, and a pile of books was piled up on the table, and even a few books were piled on the round pier. It seemed that Mr. Kang had lived in the pile of books all day long. This was a bit beyond Mao Geng's expectations. I'm afraid there were two or three hundred books, which was not easy for Mr. Kang, who was not well-off.

The mother-in-law helped her clean up the books on the round dormitory, and asked the two of them to sit down with tea. After a few words of politeness, she left the study room.

Mr. Kang rarely talks, but with Wen Yuan there, the scene will not be a mess. After the scene was said, Wen Yuan tried to start a gossip topic, but did not get Mr. Kang's response. Mr. Kang seemed to be a little taboo about the past, or he was not interested in gossip at all.

When Mao Geng saw that he was not afraid of Mr. Kang. Seeing that Mr. Kang was interested, he seemed to be a bookworm, so he would consult about book printing first. So Mao Geng didn't turn around and asked Mr. Kang about the books printing in the Song Dynasty in this era. Mao Geng was a well-known person from Nangui. It was not surprising that he was not familiar with the printing of books in the Song Dynasty. If he wanted to ask about this, Mr. Kang felt that asking himself was the right person.

Speaking of books, Mr. Kang became interested and began to introduce them one by one.

The Four Books and Five Classics are mainstream books in the Song Dynasty, so at the beginning Mr. Kang brought out a bunch of books such as "The Book of Shu Jing", "The Book of Rites" and "The Book of Zuo Zhuan Zheng Yi". Mao Geng flipped through it and saw that the books of the Wang family were of the same format, which were basically the so-called butterfly-covered layout binding books, and two books that were actually rare in the scriptures folded layout binding.

Speaking of which, there are shortcomings in these two binding methods. The so-called folding is still left over from the Tang Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty memorials on TV are the binding format. They are nothing more than folding a long scroll into a stack of "folds", unfolding when reading, and closing it will be a book.

Although the name of the butterfly dress is beautiful, there are actually something ugly about this binding method, that is, when you are reading, you will turn to the back of the wordless one. Because at this time, it is almost all single-sided printing, with one side printed and the other side blank. Single-sided printing actually has it in later generations. For this kind of single-sided printing, the binding method for later generations is to face the words outward, fold the middle line from the center line, and then bind the opening side of the page, and the back is sealed, so the back of the wordless one can't be seen.

The Song people also folded the letters in half to the outer center line, but the Song people bound the center crease. After the two pages were pasted with paste at the center crease, four and a half pages could be turned around the axis of the center crease. The elegant literati of the Song Dynasty called this kind of books bound from the center crease, which was really painful!

Mao Geng looked through these books and thought to himself that if these Song versions were left to the 21st century, it would definitely be a great fortune. But in the Song Dynasty, these large-character Confucian books with gorgeous handwriting were not Mao Geng’s interests.

Mao Geng felt disappointed, hesitated for a while, and asked:

"Mr. Kang, there are no sentences in these books. I don't know how to break the sentence when I read it?"

Mao Geng's question was not loud enough. Mr. Kang didn't hear it clearly. Wen Yuan repeated it loudly again. This time, Mr. Kang understood it clearly. He got up and looked for anger on the bookshelf. He found a book and said:

"Not all books do not read sentences. Brother Mao, you can read this book. As for classics and history books, there has never been a printed copy marked with sentences. If you cannot make a sentence by reading classics and history, you don't have to count on any fame or fame."

When Mao Geng saw that Mr. Kang handed over the book was very new, the title was "Yuan Shifan" and the author was Yuan Cai. When he opened it, Mao Geng was surprised to find that the words were actually used to break sentences. This book is a family precept reading book, with black dots for breaking sentences, and the writing was relatively popular. Although it was mainly classical Chinese, Mao Geng felt it was easy to understand when he read it. It turned out that the people of the Song Dynasty were not so pedantic, and had long had the awareness of using punctuation, which was because he was ignorant. It can be seen that those who wrote time travel novels in later generations were mostly self-righteous and only knew how to belittle the wisdom of the ancients.

After looking through it again, I found that the book could not turn over the back page without words. After a closer look, it turned out that the book was not a butterfly dress, but was bound with paste on the other side of the page. Well, this is the same as the binding method in later generations. The ancients were also good at summarizing and improving.

Mao Geng nodded and praised:

"This book is very good and the binding is very good." This time, the sound of praise was a little loud.

When Mr. Kang heard Mao Geng praise his good books, he stroked his beard and said:

"I only bought this book last year, it's a new book. The binding of this book is called a bag-back package. After wrapping the back, it is naturally better than a butterfly package."

Mao Geng flipped through the book again, thinking that the only drawback was that the fonts were engraved in this book were too large, and each character was probably larger than the number one character in later generations. With such a large character, a page of only about 200 characters was printed, which was a waste and absolutely could not carry a large amount of information. According to the standard that 600,000 words was enough to be long, a shortest novel with a shortest printing method would cost at least 3,000 pages, which was counted as five thick books.

When he thought of this, Mao Geng couldn't help but regret:

"The book is good, but unfortunately it's just that the word is engraved too big. If it's a little smaller, it's even better."

Mr. Kang smiled and then took out a small small book from the inner room, which made Mao Geng stunned. The size of the book was only one-quarter of the normal book. The small characters on it were probably only the size of a small number five characters. However, calculating the number of words, a page actually printed 300 characters. If the format of a normal book could be printed 1,200 characters. If the stereotype can achieve this level, it would be really unacceptable!

The book has a long title - "The New Collection of the Sound and Rhythm of the Great Learning of the Taixue School", and the author is called Li Zhaoqi. According to Mr. Kang, this is only one of the first sixty volumes, and the last eighty volumes, which were written by Li Sizhi. This set of 140 volumes almost covers all fields such as astronomy, geography, economy, politics, and life craftsmanship. It can be regarded as an encyclopedia of the Song Dynasty. Mao Geng was shocked and learned that the Song people called this kind of pocket book a scarf book, which could have been easily stuffed into the scarf box made by ancient men, so it was called a scarf book.

What is even more amazing is that there is a mini book that is more compact than this scarf book, called a sieve book. This is a weapon specially used by candidates for fraud in the subject. You can imagine how small the words on the sieve book are.

Unfortunately, there are only two sets of these 140-volume masterpieces in Xinhua. Mr. Kang finally got five of them and regarded them as treasures. This is the first time in many years that they have taken them out to share with outsiders.

From this moment on, Mao Geng respected Mr. Kang even more. Seeing his love for books, this old man is really a typical bookworm. Apart from reading, he turns a blind eye to things outside the window. It is really not easy.

After identifying Mr. Kang as a scholar, Mao Geng was a little bit more open and further consulted about ash wax. According to Mao Geng's plan, he soaked the thin paper with white wax. The wax paper made should be able to meet the requirements of stereotype printing.

Unexpectedly, what Mr. Kang revealed shocked Mao Geng again.

First of all, the practice of collecting ash waxworms for the tin of the country was originally due to the words of Mr. Kang, who also read in the book.

In addition, wax paper had existed in this era, but was only used as lanterns. Mr. Kang also quoted Su Shi's poem "Writing the Literary Works by Shu Yao at Night": "Put the door and enter the room to write, and wax paper lanterns sway mica." In this way, wax paper was found in the Northern Song Dynasty.

Mr. Kang talked about the differences between beeswax, white wax and black wax, which once again gave Mao Geng a sense of knowledge. It turned out that the earliest wax was taken from worker bees. A wax-like substance secreted by worker bees was called beeswax. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, candles were made of beeswax. By the end of the Tang Dynasty, doctors found that the yield of white wax produced by ash wax worms was higher, so they had the specialty of stocking ash wax worm to collect white wax wax. Later, they found that there was a wax film in the fruits of black wax wood, so this plant wax also began to be used to make candles.

It seems that Mr. Kang knows a lot, of course the things he knows are of no use in the science field, which is a pity!

This time, Mao Geng became more interested in Mr. Kang. Wen Yuan asked someone to find out that Mr. Kang and Mrs. Fu had two sons and one daughter. The son was taken away by Mr. Kang's father when he was born, and one daughter married back to the Yao family. The remaining two old men lived in the Baixi Guanxue School and depended on each other for their own lives. Mr. Kang had a book as his companion, but he didn't feel lonely, but made Mrs. Fu's life too lonely. No wonder Mrs. Fu's mother-in-law was so concerned about the new group of young boys and girls.

At this point, Mao Geng had a brand new idea. Mao Geng decided to package the respectable Mr. Kang and make Mr. Kang a model in the Song Dynasty. The keywords of the packaging will involve: love, national integration, education, dedication, invention. The previous four points Kang himself has, just a brief introduction. As for invention, just put your two inventions on Mr. Kang. This is not what I have done in the future!

Maybe this will have unexpected results.

Note: The first collection of "The New Collection of the Combination of the Biblical and the Sound of the Beads" is 60 volumes, and the last collection is 80 volumes, with a total of 140 volumes. Song Dynasty engraved scarf box, jute paper, gold-inlaid jade, yellow silk horns, and book covers are colorful brocades, beautiful and exquisite. They are collected in Shandong Library, Beijing Cultural Relics Administration, and National Library. 23 volumes are lost.

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Chapter completed!