I used to have the nickname “black hands,”
because everytime I created a letterpress image,
my hands would be covered in dust and ink.
I'm Yam Wai-sang.
I followed my father’s footsteps and
went into the printing industry at a young age.
I’ve been doing this for 40, 50 years.
From letter printing to offset printing, I’ve done them all.
Letterpress printing requires you to press letter
molds on surfaces to print words.
There’ll be a dent on the surface.
It adds vividness to the work. There’s more warmth to it.
My father move from mainland China
to Hong Kong to find a job in 1947 after the war.
There were many international trading companies
in Central (a district in Hong Kong).
All these shops needed
envelopes, paper, cards,
contracts, invoices,
debit notes, credit notes.
All of them needed to be printed.
Publishing technology wasn’t very developed,
so we printed them using letterpresses.
My siblings and I started helping out
at the store before we were 10 years old.
There are around 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese characters
that are commonly used.
We needed to patiently look for the characters
in a mountain of molds.
And the characters are flipped,
so you need to know how to read them reversed.
I wasn’t able to read them all when I first started.
So whenever I found one, I felt really happy.
Life was simple then.
We had food after work and had fun together.
While at work, we were a team. We were very happy.
For example, if we want to print a business card,
we need to arrange the letter molds and make a template.
We need to find all the letters we are going to use.
Some molds become shorter after they’re used for a long time.
We use paper to elevate them so their heights are consistent.
This machine has no motor.
You put the template on it and then add ink.
You have to manually insert the paper one by one to print.
This machine is called “Heidelberg.”
It’s one of the last letterpress printer models.
They stopped making it after the 1970s.
We bought offset printers in the 1980s.
Their printing speed is 10 to even 100 times
more than a letterpress printer.
Letterpress printers slowly disappeared in the market.
Many people thought it was a pity.
But it was already too late.
All the companies that made letter molds had already closed.
The last shop
closed in 1995.
When all these companies shut down,
letterpress printing came to an end.
In the past we had so many letters.
We had hundreds of thousands of letters.
Now we only have a tenth of what we had at the peak.
I’ve been doing this almost my entire life.
I want more people to know what letterpress printing is.
It’s one of ancient China’s four great inventions.
You may think I’m passing this skill down.
I want to, but I can’t.
My son and daughter are both working in other industries.
I don’t want to force them to work in this one,
because I know it’ll disappear in time.