Archaistic Perfection: the Production of the Woodblock-Printed Edition of the Communist Manifesto in 1970S China

Archaistic Perfection: The Production of the Woodblock-Printed Edition of The Communist Manifesto in 1970s China At the beginning of his introduction to From Woodblocks to the Internet, Christopher Reed lists The Communist Manifesto as one of the most influential printed texts in Western history, sharing equal importance with the Bible, Jane Eyre and Shakespeare’s plays.1 In East Asia, this communist classic not only profoundly influenced the modern history of China, but was also, surprisingly, connected to the use of woodblock printing technology in the 20th-century. In 1973, a woodblock-printed and thread-bound edition of The Communist Manifesto (Gongchandang xuanyan, 共产党宣言, hereafter The Manifesto) was published by the Cloudy Studio (Duoyunxuan, 朵云轩), a publisher in Shanghai which specialised in collectible Chinese literati paintings, stationery, books and similar products.2 This was then, and still is, the first and only woodblock-printed edition of this classic of the communist canon in the history of the Chinese book.3 The choice of woodblock printing technology was remarkable during the 1970s. Under the direct instruction from central CCP leaders including Yao Wenyuan 姚文元, Shanghai Revolutionary Committee ordered the Cloudy Studio to woodblock publish The Manifesto.4 The publisher was only able to recruit a few aged woodblock cutters for the project since no new cutters had been trained during the Cultural Revolution.5 This was not only due to the political ruptures, for by the 1970s woodblock printing had been losing its popularity in the publishing industry for over a century 6 , and was replaced gradually by relatively new technologies such as lithography and later mechanised printing presses7 State patronage of woodblock printing businesses ceased during the Republican Period (1912–1949) when the Guomindang (国民党, The Nationalist Party) government began to subsidise the modern printing industry.8 Although the Communist government claimed that the woodcut was an art form of the revolutionary people, it had no desire to reverse the decline of xylographic book publishing.9 Instead, party intellectuals like Hu Yuzhi 胡愈之, a left-wing publisher during the 1 Christopher A. Reed, ‘Introduction’, in From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Printing Culture in Transition, circa 1800 to 2008, eds. Cynthia Brokaw and Christopher A. Reed (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 1–35. 2 Established in 1900, the Cloudy Studio (Duoyunxuan, 朵云轩) was named Dongfanghong shuhuashe 东方红书画社 in 1966, and then in 1972 it changed its name to Shanghai shuhuashe 上海书画社. It regained its original name in 1978. See Shanghai Difangzhi Bangongshi 上海地方志办公室, ed., Duoyunxuan 朵云轩, available at: http://www.shtong.gov.cn/node2/node2245/node73148/node73154/node73181/node73815/userobject1ai86766. html [Accessed on 28 June 2018]. 3 Chen Peigang 陈培刚, ‘Gongchandang Xuanyan Zhongyiwen Banben Kao’ 《共产党宣言》中译文版本考, Zhejiang Gaoxiao Tushu Qingbao Gongzuo 浙江高校图书情报工作 4 (2005), p. 62. 4 Shanghai Municipal government was renamed as Shanghai Revolutionary Committee (上海革委会, Shanghai Geweihui), since the Cultural Revolution commenced to the end of Mao’s lifetime . Archival Materials of The Communist Manifesto (here after AMCM) no. 11. 5 AMCM no. 16. 6 Cynthia Brokaw and Peter Kornicki, ‘Introduction’, in The History of the Book in East Asia, eds. Cynthia Brokaw and Peter Kornicki (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. xiii–xxxv. 7 Christopher A. Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876–1937, Contemporary Chinese Studies, (UBC Press, 2004), pp. 180–181. 8 By ‘modern printing industry’ I mean the industrialised printing business that used large-scale printing presses, in contrast with the hand-operated woodblock-printing technique. Ibid., pp. 224-25, 238-39, & 252. 9 In fact, the CCP government intended to eliminate woodblock publishing in Sichuan in 1954. Woodblock printing in this research refers to the technology of printing textual and illustrated books. The Chinese term for woodblock printing is diaobanyinshua 雕版印刷. This should not be confused with woodcut (banhua 版画), which mostly refers to artwork illustrations including nianhua (New Year’s illustration, 年画) – traditional 1 Republican Period (1912-1949) and by then the head of the Press and Publication Administration, openly criticised woodblock publishing multiple times in the 1950s as having “served the needs of negative feudal literati”.10 The 520,000 new titles published during the Mao era, therefore, were mostly produced by the mechanised modern printing industry.11 What is more, presenting communist content via the aesthetics of fine woodblock books was a paradoxical practice in the Maoist context. The ‘Use the Past to Serve the Present’ policy, as Tina Mai Chen argues, was widely quoted among artists, historians and antiquity-related industries, provided an authoritative interpretation of the relationship between modernisation and Chinese tradition, as well as historical achievements and contemporary CCP ideology.12 Fine xylographic thread-bound Chinese books (shanben mukeshu, 善本木刻书), however, had been negatively associated with Confucian literati elites since the early PRC, and were classified as one of ‘The Four Olds’ (sijiu, 四旧), a term that referred to “old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas” at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.13 The Manifesto was itself cited in an article published on 21 August 1966 by the Red Flag magazine in support of the Red Guards’ ‘Destroy the Four Olds’ (Posijiu, 破四旧) campaign, as a call to “completely depart from tradition.”14 Although the policies of the 1970s were much less radical than they were at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the 'Criticising Lin, Criticising Confucius' Campaign fuelled a resurgence of tensions between literati culture and Maoism. A poster published in 1974, for example, depicts a worker smashing a thread-bound copy of the Analects and other thread-bound books (fig. 1.1). Although it is reasonable to argue that the contents of the Analects were the primary object of criticism rather than the mode of publication, as propaganda, the message delivered to the public was nevertheless that thread- bound books were a target to be destroyed. In spite of these statements directed at a mass public, the Shanghai administrative authorities15 asked the Cloudy Studio to set up a woodblock-printing department and to print The Manifesto and three other titles in 1972.16 During the Mao era, 13 newly-carved books and hundreds of painting replicas and re-printed historical woodblock titles were published in Beijing, Shanghai and Yangzhou, all by state-owned publishing houses. 17 In the Mao era woodcuts as a type of folk art. The process of creating woodcut is often called printmaking (banhua chuangzuo 版画创作), and artists of woodcut are called printmakers (banhuajia, 版画家). This research works on woodblock printing as a type of printing technology, which is a widely accepted term in East Asian book history. For discussions on woodblock printing, see Brokaw and Kornicki, ‘Introduction’, pp. xiii–xxxv. For discussions on woodcut as an art, see Xiaobing Tang, Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 10 ‘Hu Yuzhi zai Quanguo Xinhua Shudian Chuban Gongzuo Huiyi Shang de Kaimuci (1949 Nian 10 Yue 3 Ri) 胡愈之在全国新华书店出版工作会议上的开幕辞 (1949 年 10 月 3 日)’, in CBSL 1, pp. 248–249. See also ‘Lun Renmin Chuban Shiye Jiqi Fazhan Fangxiang (Hu Yuzhi Shuzhang zai Diyijie Quanguo Chuban Huiyi Quanti Huiyi Shang de Baogao) 论人民出版事业及其发展方向 (胡愈之署长在第一届全国出版会议全体会议上的报告)’, in CBSL 2, pp. 515–516. 11 Zhang Zhaokui 张召奎, Zhongguo Chubanshi Gaiyao 中国出版史概要 (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1985), p. 495. 12 Tina Mai Chen, ‘Use the Past to Serve the Present, the Foreign to Serve China’, in Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution, ed. Ban Wang (Leiden: BRILL, 2010), pp. 208–210. 13 Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1999), p. 575. 14 Huang Yanmin 黄延敏, ‘Posijiu Yundong de Fazhan Mailuo’, 21 Shiji Shuangyuekan 21 世纪双月刊 137 (2013). p. 75. 15 AMCM no. 5. 16 Appendix III List of New Woodblock Books Published during the Mao Era. 17 Buddhist titles carved by Jinling Buddhist Carving Studio are not included in the 13 titles. This is because Jinling Buddhist Carving Studio was not registered as a publisher during the Mao Era; therefore, books printed by Jinling were not listed as publications. They were circulated among believers, and did not enter the distribution system. Qin Jiahang 秦嘉杭, ‘Xinzhongguo Diaoban Yinshu Yanjiu 新中国雕版印书研究’, Daxue Tushuguan Xuebao 大学图书馆学报, no. 33(1) (2015): pp. 101–105. 2 publishing industry where books were designated to classified audiences, the permissible buyers of these woodblock publications, as indicated in the AMCM, were restricted to “high ranking politicians, foreign friends and academic experts”.18 Presentation: Similarities and Differences When compared with contemporary publications and classic woodblock books, The Manifesto reveals more similarities with ancient books in both design and materials. Figure 1.2 and figure 1.3 compare the cover page and one internal page from the woodblock edition of The Manifesto with the 1959 press-printed edition, whilst figure 1.4 includes the cover page of the Song edition of An Examination of the Text in the Commentary and Annotations on Mencius (Mengzi zhushu jiejing, 孟子注疏解经), and a contents page from a Song edition of Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government (Zizhi tongjian, 资治通鉴, published between 1132 and 1133), both are among the earliest extant printed Chinese books.19 It can be seen that, for the cover page, The Manifesto applied a distinctively different design style from the contemporary version, whilst closely resembling that of the 12th-century book, exhibiting the same binding method, the same coloured and textured cover, and the same title slip design. The similarities between the woodblock edition of The Manifesto and the ancient historical classic continue on the contents pages. In both books, the contents are arranged vertically, from right to left (fig.

Load more