Thank you for the introduction.
I want to ask everyone,
who has heard of the Ri Xing Type Foundry?
Okay, put your hands down.
Not many.
That's because you aren't familiar with the Ri Xing Type Foundry.
Okay! Thanks!
Here's a little request,
for the five ladies and gentleman,
it is a very rare chance
to be invited here,
and give a talk.
So if they speak well,
please give some applause.
(applause)
And when they they don't speak well,
give them applause too.
(applause)
So,
when you are in an industry for a long time,
you naturally get experience right?
Two months ago,
when the organizers (of TEDxTaipei) came to find me,
they said, "Our theme this year is 'flip'"
So I said "That's what I do everyday!"
Why?
We know that printing is a technique
that requires copying and copying.
First of all,
we need to make the copper mold for the font stamp.
It's a copper mold like this.
Only with this, can we
create "font stamps"
This is a type of copying,
a type of "flipping".
However this is,
fairly important in
suceeding our heritage and culture.
The Ri Xing Type Foundry makes
what's most needed in the printing industry,
font stamps.
Without font stamps,
you can say that the printing industry pretty much doesn't exist.
Due to this reason,
printing is actually
a very important industry to humans.
About 20 years ago,
in 1986,
this industry faced the biggest
enemy of all.
This enemy,
is what everyone uses today.
Computers.
When computers came out,
Type foundries and the printing industry
stared collapsing.
You might think it's strange,
Why is it that when computers come out,
printing collapses?
That's because in traditional industries,
type foundries have low efficiency.
That is,
one printer can only print out
30 to 40 prints in a minute.
While colour printers can print out
12000 in an hour.
The difference is big!
Also,
in the printing process,
It's not just printing.
In typography,
for printing in typography,
there's type founding,
checking,
typesetting,
printing,
loading,
these five steps.
And each step requires much skill.
These skills are also hard to train.
So that's why,
this industry is gradually taken over by computers.
This is a major problem
for the whole type founding industry.
Type foundries have been disappearing
ever since 1986.
I entered this industry
through the help of my dad.
Of course, there are more
elder people who helped with my skills and techniques.
Being in this industry,
I realized that culture is truly important.
Culture has depth.
So because of this,
even though this industry has
been declining since 1986,
I insisted to not change careers.
Actually that was mainly because I didn't
have the ability to.
More problems came during 1996,
and finally in 2001,
type foundries all around Taiwan
started closing one by one.
The biggest type foundry in Taiwan,
"Chung Nan Type Foundry",
was long ended by that time.
It chose to stop operating.
So one of my custumers asked me:
"(sigh) The biggest (type foundry) in Taiwan is closed!
When's your turn?"
Why?
Because all the type foundries
in Taiwan are kinda guile.
"If you come to me, you can't go anywhere else."
This is to keep customers.
So my client asked me:
"why? you?"
Oh, these are my parents,
Without them, I wouldn't be here.
So back on topic,
my customer came and asked me:
"The biggest quit! When are you going to quit too?"
The main thing I told them is that,
when we were starting this industry back in the earlier days,
things were quite tough,
so as long as there is a printing firm
that needs font stamps,
Ri Xing will be there for them.
But in truth, the problem still isn't resolved.
This industry is bound to fall.
until 2008,
I started thinking,
"what can I do for Taiwan?"
If I have the ability,
I am willing to do something
for Taiwan, for this land I love.
That is, build a letterpress printing museum.
It's easy to say,
but in reality, hard to do.
We mentioned "copper moulds" before,
its the most important part in a print foundry.
Without it, we can't make font stamps.
So I started right back to the beginging,
taking each of the font stamps one by one,
proofing,
scanning,
and after correcting it,
putting it in a more modern engraving machine,
to re-engrave these copper moulds.
At first, I was alone in this.
But because of an opportunity,
a design company called "Muogo"
visited my place and said:
"How many words can you fix in a day?"
I replied, "Eight hours for one word."
They said, "How many words do you need to fix?"
I told them that I had 4500 words to fix.
That will take me more than 10 years!
So they asked me if I needed help.
I told them sure,
if anyone is willing to, please help me.
So we started up a "Restore-print plan" on the internet.
This plan gathered many young people to come help me.
But as we say "the word looks like the person",
(Chinese saying that your personality is like how your writting looks like.)
So for the same person,
the same word looks different in
the morning, noon, and night.
These words can't become a collection.
It's completely out of order!
Why?
Because each Chinese character has it's own characteristics.
Each stroke, each dot, has their own life.
It needs grace to become beautiful.
But when you have a group of words,
they need to have similarities.
Without something in common,
"Wow! Flying dragons and dancing phoenixes!"
(Chinese saying of many different things entwined together.)
It wouldn't look like words for industries,
it would be more like a piece of art.
This is challenging.
So eventually we decided to take a break.
However, we have not changed our minds.
We hope to create a letterpress printing museum in Taiwan.
This remains a hope in our hearts.
We will overcome difficulties step by step.
Although it's not an easy thing,
I believe that it is something Taiwan should have.
I will stick to it!
This is an important challenge,
and we must overcome it.
To the people of Taiwan:
The fact that we are able to write in
the world's most unique writing,
"Chinese Characters",
and to use it in printing,
This is something that Taiwan stands out
in this world.
This is our happiness!
We are the only country in the world which writes "tradditional Chinese".
We cannot give up our words easily,
we cannot give up our culture easily.
We have to hold our
responsibilities for this land.
We must fight!
This is something we can do together!
Therefore, if anyone of you have the time and willingness,
Ri Xing Type Foundry welcomes you!
Let us complete this together!
Thank you.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community