Address: 25 North Xinghua Road, Huangcun Village, Daxing District, Beijing, China
Opening time: 8:30 – 16:30 (Closed on Mondays).
The China Printing Museum, which is open to the public since June 1, 1996, is located in Huangcun Town in Daxing District Beijing. This museum is the biggest printing museum in the world with an exhibition area of 4,600 square meters (1.14 acres). It is divided into four exhibition halls and some specialized exhibition areas.
In this museum, visitors can receive a comprehensive introduction of the history of Chinese print industry. The various exhibition halls include exhibits of the origins of printing and ancient printing methods, articles of the progress of modern printing, tools of the new technology and equipment exhibits. The museum also contains three specialized exhibition areas. All the halls are distributed over three floors. In the reception area stands a statue of Bi Sheng, inventor of movable-type printing.
In the hall with the theme of ancient printing industry, visitors can appreciate pictures which describe the origin, invention and development of printing and its introduction to other countries from the late New Stone Age to the Qing Dynasty. Significant tools applied in the past printing industry such as the well-known diamond sutra of the Tang Dynasty, the movable type made of certain kind of earth invented by Bi Sheng in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), and the rotary composing plate in the Yuan Dynasty are exhibited in this hall.
The hall of modern printing outlines developments in printing technology in modern times. Combined approach to exhibitions, shows the eighties focus on development of pre-press technology in China since the new achievements, as well as prepress, printing, printing at the new equipment and new materials, and an appropriate description of the international printing technology, new achievements, local reflecting the contemporary printing trends.
The hall of digital technology on the first floor focuses primarily on the historical leap from letterpress to offset printing. It contains a specialized exhibition area to show the excellent products of printing. The exhibition area of the German Gutenberg Museum displays a brief history of printing in Germany and Europe from the 15th century onward. A model of the wooden hand press invented by Gutenberg and the earliest font presswork in Europe-Bible is on display.
General Hall is located on the ground floor of the museum. This is the venue which allows printing companies and printing research center to set their own exhibition counter. Besides that, there are special counters which display many unique printing matters as well. In the middle of the hall, stands the bronze sculpture of Bi Sheng, the founder of movable printing type.
