Ri Xing Type Foundry

The foundry was set up in 1969 by its first owner, Zhang Xiling, to make lead type. The name Ri Xing expresses the hope of 'producing every day'. In 1986 computer typesetting entered Taiwan's printing market. Together with affordable offset presses, efficient and labour-saving offset printing gradually replaced letterpress as the main printing method, which affected the whole letterpress industry chain. In 2000, when Zhongnan Type Foundry, the largest in Taiwan, closed, Ri Xing became the only foundry in Taiwan still producing lead type. When Zhang Jieguan took over the business, he held to the principle: 'As long as there is still one letterpress printer in Taiwan, Ri Xing will keep making lead type.' The foundry's original work was the first stages of letterpress printing, casting type and picking type. Letterpress has since been almost entirely replaced by digital printing, and both the foundry's stages and the typesetting and printing done downstream by letterpress printers have shrunk close to extinction. Besides casting and picking type, Ri Xing runs workshops and classes in typesetting and platen press printing as a form of education, so that work set in lead type can be printed. As a result, it keeps the complete letterpress process: typeface restoration, copper matrix engraving, type casting, typesetting and platen press printing. Only the final binding is done elsewhere. Zhang Jieguan, the second-generation owner, is skilled in all these stages. He also teaches any staff who are willing to learn, so that letterpress can be passed on. However, the structure of the industry and young people's attitudes to work have changed, few take up a single trade for life, and so training successors has hit a gap. With support from an association for preserving Taiwan's letterpress culture, as well as professionals and volunteers, Ri Xing has been gradually transforming while continuing to produce lead type, hoping to keep this almost vanished industry and craft alive. It also hopes one day to build a letterpress craft museum, to preserve the culture of type founding and letterpress printing and give the old craft new meaning as heritage. Members of the public and foreign visitors can come to buy lead type or learn about the foundry.

Translated and shortened by DealTaipei from Taiwan's national tourism database. Sources are on the terms page.