Located near Taipei Train Station, Ri Xing Typography (日星鑄字行) looks like any of the other unprepossessing workshops and offices on its small side street. But the tiny factory houses one of Taiwan’s treasures — the last complete set of traditional Chinese character molds for lead-type casting in the world.
The lead type is used for movable type, a printing process that has been largely superseded by newer techniques. So Chang Chiehkuan (張介冠), whose parents founded Ri Xing Typography in 1969, plans to bring his family’s legacy into the 21st century by digitizing Ri Xing’s typefaces and turning the factory into a museum.
“Our most important goal right now is to preserve our industry by letting people come here and experience movable type for themselves. That’s our biggest dream,” says Chang.
Ri Xing Typography is one of the last factories in Taiwan to produce traditional Chinese character lead type (the other, Chung Hsing Typography (中新鑄字行) in Kaohsiung, was founded by Chang’s uncle). The facility looks much as it did 40 years ago. A steady, rhythmical thumping emanates from its type-casting machines and flows through rows of shelves upon which thousands of pieces of lead type, representing every Chinese character and dozens of symbols, are stacked.
Movable type may be 1,000 years old (and Chinese characters are, of course, much older than that), but Chang hopes that he can make the printing method relevant to a new generation by turning Ri Xing lead type into computer fonts and making the typefaces compatible with newer printing methods. The digitization is one part of Ri Xing Typography’s restoration and preservation plan (日星鑄字行活版字體復刻暨保存計畫) Chang launched last fall. The second part is turning the factory into a museum where visitors can experience movable type hands on.
The project is a monumental one and Chang expects it will take at least 10 years to complete. Ri Xing’s lead type comes in three different fonts, most of which are available in seven different sizes, giving Ri Xing a total collection of a whopping 200,000 molds. Chang estimates it will take two to three years just to scan, upload and edit every character.
His dedication is spurred on by the fact that Taiwan is the last country in the world to use traditional Chinese characters as its standard writing system. And he believes Ri Xing’s lead type, made from molds that were originally hand-carved, captures the spirit of Chinese writing better than computer fonts.
Normally laid-back, Chang becomes effusive when showing visitors charts comparing characters printed with the shop’s kaishu (楷書, or standard script, a style of Chinese calligraphy) lead type and a font found in most word processing programs. (The two other styles available as lead type in Rixing are songti (宋體), a non-calligraphic font, and the bold heiti (黑體).)
“I think that when you compare them side by side, you can see right away that words printed with lead type are much lovelier because they are able to preserve the beauty of Chinese calligraphy and the grace of its individual brush strokes. Right now that is something you can’t find in computer fonts, in our opinion,” says Chang, who grew up surrounded by printing presses. “My parents have worked in this industry for 70 years, so I was immersed in it as soon as I was born. As a result, I feel very deeply about type.”
Chang’s ultimate goal may be to transform Ri Xing into a museum, but it is still an active business with clients, many of whom have ordered lead type from the factory for decades. Ri Xing’s customers are usually smaller print shops that produce specialty items, such as movie tickets or forms with serial numbers. Their proprietors dug their heels in two decades ago when Taiwan’s printing industry began to abandon movable type in favor of faster methods like offset printing.
“These older business people didn’t want to follow the rest of the industry and change what they were doing. They still use movable type, so I stay here and work with them so they can get the supplies they need,” says Chang.
Now Ri Xing Typography is garnering a new, but equally dedicated, group of supporters. Many of these fans are graphic designers who were drawn by media reports on Ri Xing. Some now volunteer with the digitization project, including Mu-han Chiu (邱睦涵), a freelance designer who first saw photos of Ri Xing’s lead type online.
“It is important to our culture. Taiwan and Hong Kong are the last places to actually use traditional Chinese character typeface, and it would be a shame to let this ancient form of writing disappear,” says Chiu. The 30 or so volunteers aren’t just designers, she adds — they include computer programmers and a bookstore owner.
“There are a lot of people who are passionate about this project,” says Chiu.
The Ri Xing plan is still a long way from being realized, but it has already received a fair amount of publicity in the Taiwanese media, thanks in part to a visit to the factory by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in June. Ri Xing is open to visitors for a few hours each week, and individual lead type can be purchased for NT$1 to NT$80 per piece. Its gifting potential is increased by the fact that the Taiwanese pronunciations of lead type (鉛字) and the fate that draws people together (緣份) sound alike.
“Chinese characters have a very long history and they are always evolving,” says Chang. “As long as they keep transmitting culture and knowledge, as well as their own individual meanings, then they are already fulfilling their purpose. It doesn’t matter what they look like, but we think lead type really brings out their beauty.”
WHAT: Ri Xing Typography (日星鑄字行)
WHERE: 13, Ln 97, Taiyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市太原路97巷13號)
OPEN: Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:30pm to 7pm and Saturdays from 9am to noon. Call ahead to confirm visiting hours
TELEPHONE: (02) 2556-4626
ON THE NET: rixingtypography.blogspot.com
Summer isn’t the best time of year for high-altitude treks. At lower altitudes, however, there’s no shortage of short leg-stretchers that’ll get you immersed in nature without leaving you prostrate with heat exhaustion. Here are three in the south. THE SIRAYA HEARTLAND If this set of trails has an official name, I’ve not been able to discover it. But it seems that this patch of woodland, 14 km inland from central Tainan, is supervised by Sinhua Forest Area (新化林場), which itself belongs to National Chung Hsing University (國立中興大學). I associate the area with the Siraya people, an indigenous ethnic group still fighting
June 29 to July 5 With women gathering rocks and men hurling them at thousands of rivaling neighbors, ritualistic stone battles were regular affairs for people living in Pingtung during the 1800s. Direct combat and use of weapons were prohibited to avoid serious injury, with the losers hosting the winners for dinner. These “guests” often acted rudely, and faced no repercussions for smashing windows or snatching their hosts’ possessions. These battles usually took place yearly, with a significant number happening every Dragon Boat Festival. The winners had rights to the losers’ banquet prepared for the festivities. Sometimes things would get out of
It can take ice cream maker Miky Wu (吳書瑀) months to create a new flavor. In addition to using only eco-friendly and organic ingredients, her brand 1982 de glacee also eschews artificial additives, replacing emulsifiers and stabilizers with Taiwanese rice and wood ear derivatives. Wu’s non-traditional methods and dedication to capturing the essence of the main ingredient can lead to hours and hours tinkering in her “research office” in Tainan, even referencing academic papers to get the science correct. Her efforts were recently recognized for the third year in a row by the prestigious A. A. Taste Awards run by the
Certain historical statues have been disappearing in Thailand, but they are not effigies of colonialists or slave owners torn down by protesters. Instead, Thailand’s vanishing monuments celebrated leaders of the 1932 revolution that ended absolute monarchy in Thailand, who were once officially honored as national heroes and symbols of democracy. Reuters has identified at least six sites memorializing the People’s Party that led the revolution which have been removed or renamed in the past year. In most cases it is not known who took the statues down, although a military official said one was removed for new landscaping. Two army camps named after 1932
RSS