Hua Sui

A page from one of Hua Sui's books printed in 1490 using metal movable type.

Hua Sui (; 1439–1513 AD), courtesy name Wenhui (文輝), art name Huitong (会通), was a Chinese scholar, engineer, inventor, and printer of the Ming dynasty. He belonged to the wealthy Hua family of Wuxi that was renowned throughout the region. Hua Sui is best known for creating China's first metal movable type printing in 1490 AD.

Metal movable type printing Metal movable type printing had been invented in Korea during the earlier 13th century, but there is no concrete evidence that suggests Hua Sui's metal type print was influenced by Korean printing. During the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368 AD), the governmental magistrate and scholar Wang Zhen (fl. 1290–1333) was an early innovator of wooden movable type, as his process improved the speed of typesetting as well. Much like Bi Sheng experimenting with wooden movable type in the 11th century but finding it unsatisfactory, Wang Zhen also experimented with metal type printing using tin. He had accumulated a sizable fortune, and desired to use that fortune in order to establish the reputation as a printer in the region. He printed the Bai Chuan Xue Hai of 1501 using metal type, and printed many rare books he obtained in a rapid process thanks to the speed of metal typesetting. Hua Qian (fl. 1513–1516), a nephew of Hua Sui, was yet another bronze-type printer of the Hua family. His studio signature was Lan Xue Tang (Hall of Orchid and Snow), and his largest printing project was reprinting the old Tang dynasty encyclopedia of the Yi Wen Lei Ju (1515). However, the Qing government also sponsored bronze-type printing, as they crafted 250,000 bronze characters earlier in 1725 to print the Gujin Tushu Jicheng (古今圖書集成, Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to Current Times). Although the bronze characters were kept safe and deposited in the Wuying Palace, they were all melted down in 1744 in order to forge coin currency. Chui-Li-Ge of Changshu was known to have printed a large literary collection of his in 1686 AD. The total cost for the endeavor was 200,000 silver teals. Casting was favored over the long and laborious process of cutting individual characters of bronze, which may have been a simple task with the material of wood, but not as economically feasible with metal that could be simply cast instead. However, for traditional Chinese metal movable type printing, some records of the 18th century indicate that individual engraving and cutting was used as well. Then there was the process of assembling and setting the type, and ultimately distributing it, which necessitated at least a small level of division of labor.