Ancient crafts give designers a heritage of creative ideas

Early last year, when the production team members of the mobile game Canal Towns, which is set in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), were creating the scenes depicting Yangzhou in East China's Jiangsu province, they wanted to include ancient crafts that were associated with the city. This naturally directed their attention to woodblock printing and Yangzhou Guangling Ancient Book Engraving Co Ltd, which are well-known cultural legacies of the prosperous town along the Grand Canal in ancient China.

As a technique invented in China more than 1,300 years ago, woodblock printing was included in UNESCO's representative list of intangible cultural heritage in 2009. Yangzhou Guangling Ancient Book Engraving Co Ltd is one of the few publishers that can produce handmade books in the traditional Chinese fashion.

Since the production process is far more complicated than that of modern methods, and is time-consuming and expensive, limited precious copies are made each year for collection purposes.

How to employ the ancient printing technique to create products for daily use today is one of the key questions that the craftspeople of woodblock printing are mulling.

In the mobile game, there is a workshop in Yangzhou where sutras are manually engraved on wooden blocks, printed on traditional paper and the pages bound as in ancient times, and another workshop produces single-page calendars. By playing the game, people can learn more about the traditional craft of woodblock printing.