jan 1, 28 - Printing

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The earliest surviving woodblock printed fragments in China are of silk printed with flowers in three colours from the Han Dynasty. The earliest examples of woodblock printing on paper appear in the mid-seventh century in China. By the ninth century, printing on paper had taken off, and the first extant complete printed book containing its date is the Diamond Sutra of 868. By the tenth century, 400,000 copies of some sutras and pictures were printed, and the Confucian classics were in print.

According to southern Chinese histories, in the 480s, a man named Gong Xuanxuan called himself Gong the Sage and "said that a supernatural being had given him a 'jade seal jade block writing,' which did not require a brush: one blew on the paper and characters formed." He then used his powers to mystify a local governor. Eventually he was dealt with by the governor's successor, who presumably executed Gong.

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