Ancient chinese typography
Sometimes being a compulsive eBay buyer can be a good thing. Recently I acquired an old chinese book.
The thing that immediately amazed me is the quality and the variety in the pages layout and the typography. Unfortunately I can’t read japanese, so I don’t understand anything about the meaning of the book.
Interesting headers and table layout.
More table layout with cartoon style drawings.
This page is simply amazing, I would really like to understand the meaning of this page to know why the characters are laid out this way.
Just love the illustration on this one.
Diagramm.
Some more freestyle layout.
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January 18th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
This thing is absolutely beautiful, but it is a Chinese book… not a Japanese one… it is a Kung-fu book.
January 18th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Yes, it is beautiful, but certainly not Japanese.
January 20th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Wow I feel kind of dumb now, anyway thanks for both of your comments, I corrected it a bit so that it’s more accurate, even though I still have no real information about the book.
January 20th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
… well… I do the same at Japanese or Chinese restaurants… I just try what looks beautiful… and often do not care much where it come from.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
It’s an ancient Chinese “Taoist magic figures” book.
ps: Taoism on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism
January 21st, 2008 at 7:52 am
[...] faire de l’autopromotion de bas étage, mais vous serez peut-être intéressés de découvrir cet article que j’ai récemment publié sur mon blog en anglais. Vous pourrez y découvrir quelques pages [...]
February 11th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
It’s definitely a Chinese book, with some pages layouted calendar style for geomancy purposes. The octagon are for the eight directions. The third page, captioned “More table layout with cartoon style drawings.” is a timetable which lists what to do by hour.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Alright, just found more info about the book. It’s definitely a Chinese book, but not martial arts. It’s a general encyclopedia for the masses, complete with medical info. In one of those pages, you’ll find details about the different stages of birth - from embryo stage to birth. This info can even be found in very ancient books - the Chinese had researched all this.
However, the information does not stop at “practical” use. There are many “charms” too, which you can copy and paste at your doorstep, bedside, under the pillow etc. The second graphic is a good example. The cartoons all mean some form of pain, and the squiggles are charms.
The third graphic in which the characters are scratching their ears are people hearing weird noises in their ear. The graphics depict a person hearing high-pitched noises in their right / left ear. The table is of the time you hear the high-pitched noises. For example, if you hear it at noon from your right ear, it means that you’re thinking of your girlfriend.
This “people’s encyclopedia” you bought is published yearly, and sold very cheaply (Sing$3.50 thereabouts). It’s always bound in a red cover. The version you bought was probably from Taiwan, because mainland Chinese use simplified Chinese, not Traditional Chinese characters.