Eighty Characters a Day

A drawer in Ma’s office contains scores of different cutting tools – sharp, thin, long and short. When engraving, Ma holds the woodblock with one hand and engraves each line of characters with the other. It takes a long time to engrave one character. Owing to eyestrain, Ma wears presbyopic glasses even though he has just turned 50. The blocks he engraves are made of birchleaf pear wood. The wood must be boiled for a few days in a solution that kills woodworm and other pest eggs. Most difficult is controlling the level of strength exerted during the engraving process. One slip could spoil days of painstaking work.

Ma told this reporter that he can engrave 80 characters per day. As there are 400 characters on either side of a woodblock, it takes around two weeks to finish one piece. Ma has no exact idea of how many blocks he has engraved over the past 30 years. “Maybe enough to fill a small garage,” he said.

The furniture in Ma’s office, comprising two wooden tables, two chairs, two desklamps and a big wooden closet, has been there since the office was built in the 1980s.

“Block engraving is tedious, and the constant eye strain threatens engravers’ health. Also taking into account the low income, few young people have any interest in learning the technique,” Deng Qingzhi said. What to the layman is tedious, however, is an irreplaceable joy to Ma Mengqing. “I haven’t taken a vacation for years. I feel uncomfortable not coming to work even for one day,” Ma said. A good engraver not only masters the technique, but also has the ability to stand loneliness.

Irreplicable Treasure

Sutra-engraved woodblocks now stand on shelves in a modern two-story building within the Jinling Buddhist Press. According to Ma Mengqing, each block is unique. They are impossible to replicate because Ma and Deng are the only engravers at the press, and they can make at most four woodblocks a month. Under these conditions, replicating all the woodblocks would take 2,600 years.

Since the listing of the Jinling sutra engraving and printing technique as a national intangible cultural heritage, the press has tried to recruit engravers. But no one wants to learn. As the sole inheritor of the technique, Ma has tried to promote it among people who care about the craft, but he still has just one apprentice. “I am the only apprentice, but my teacher wants more, preferably male with a background in higher education,” Deng Qingzhi said. Miss Deng studied block printing at school. After passing her examinations she became apprenticed to Ma. “The salary here plus the government subsidy is OK, certainly enough to cover the costs of daily life,” Deng said.

Last year the Jinling Buddhist Press took on two people born in the 1990s. “They are well-educated and enthusiastic about sutra engraving. I hope they will persevere in mastering my technique and eventually become successors to the Jinling sutra engraving and printing technique,” Ma said.

Ma is optimistic. Years of engraving work have brought him tranquility. All he can do now is to protect the woodblocks and so preserve these classic Buddhist texts for the benefit of future generations.

Source from China Today