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墨書 Inktalez
Not long after completing the first issue of the Bulletin Board, I received a new task from my math teacher and homeroom teacher, Li Yunzhao—Engrave Steel Plate.
Once again, it was after school, and only a few boarding students remained in the classroom. I picked up the tools borrowed from Teacher Li and began to sketch, ponder, and prepare on the desk. This time, I didn't have to worry about the content; Teacher Li had given me a stack of Exercises and instructed me to copy them exactly, specifically reminding me to leave some space between each Exercise for answers.
However, Engraving Steel Plate was still a new experience for me. I had occasionally seen my father or other teachers do it once or twice but had never closely studied the entire process. Now that it was my turn, I silently contemplated for a while before starting to work based on my imagination.
First, I carefully placed a steel plate set in a yellow wooden frame on the desk, ensuring that the two-inch wide and five or six-inch long "steel plate" was centered on the desk. Next, I took some wax paper from a hard paper tube and gently laid it on top of the steel plate. Since the wax paper was usually rolled up for storage, it kept curling up when I first placed it down. Anxiously, I pressed down hard on the top part, but ended up leaving deep marks on the wax paper, rendering that sheet unusable. After hesitating for a moment, I came up with a solution: I pressed a thicker textbook on top of the wax paper, and it finally lay flat.
I began to copy the Exercises onto the wax paper. I had some basic skills in mind; I needed to cover the part of the wax paper where I would write with the steel plate and then use a pen with an iron core to engrave. However, since this was my first time engraving on wax paper, I struggled with controlling my strength. At first, fearing that my writing would be too light to show up, I pressed down heavily; then when I realized that I was almost tearing through the wax paper, I overcorrected and wrote too lightly out of fear of damaging it. The characters seemed to float above the paper. Moreover, due to my deliberate light touch, my writing turned out crooked with unnecessary connecting strokes between characters.
Having always written neatly within the lines of my notebooks, facing this unlined wax paper made every line of text appear unevenly weighted at one end or curling upwards. The size of each character and spacing between lines were impossible to keep uniform; it looked like tadpoles crawling chaotically in a pond—none of them resembling proper writing.
After quite some time, I slapped my forehead in regret: actually, there were many small squares printed on the wax paper. Although these squares were small, they could easily be used as guidelines for writing two rows as one line; each character could occupy two squares while each number took one square—this was a good match. Fortunately, having learned from my earlier mistake with the discarded wax paper, I decided to treat this sheet as an experimental piece and tried every step and idea in engraving to find what I deemed best.
Once I gradually found my engraving technique, half an afternoon had passed before I finally laid out a brand-new sheet of wax paper. Learning from my previous experience with the Bulletin Board, I pre-planned the approximate positions of each Exercise on the experimental wax paper and marked them clearly with an iron pen before transferring everything onto the official wax paper.
With these experiments as a foundation, this time everything went smoothly. I didn’t even care whether my writing looked aesthetically pleasing; at least it was neat and clear enough. My pressure was consistent as well. Although my fingers felt sore and pale from prolonged tension and effort, I persevered until all twenty Exercises designated by Teacher Li were engraved onto the wax paper.
However, finishing the engraving didn’t mean my work was done; I still needed to use cut white paper to make fifty or sixty copies for distribution among classmates tomorrow.
As I prepared to head to the school’s printing room with the engraved wax paper in hand, Yin Hongsong and Luo Yongzhong—who had been watching me closely—stood up simultaneously and extended their hands toward me. After working hard for a while, I felt somewhat tired and thought that this task wasn’t too difficult; besides, we were all classmates—it didn’t matter who did it—so I handed them the wax paper. As they left the classroom, curiosity piqued within me about printing; thus, I followed them toward the printing room.
Teacher Lan Bifang—who managed the printing room—cheerfully opened the door and briefly explained to eager Yin Hongsong and Luo Yongzhong about the steps and precautions for printing before leaving us kids in charge of the entire printing room.
The first step in printing was to load the wax paper into the printing machine. The area for loading wax paper matched its size perfectly; we just needed to ensure that its front faced towards the machine. There was a groove at the top of the machine where we needed to align it properly before pressing it down with a special little iron rod along that groove until it was securely fixed in place. Afterward, we tightened all surrounding clips that held it down completely.
The usual practice among teachers when printing involved first rolling ink onto an ink roller after securing everything before tightening those clips around it; this method ensured that the wax paper adhered more smoothly to avoid wrinkles forming in between after securing everything down. However, since this was our first time operating it and we overlooked this small detail during our initial attempt at printing, we discovered many wrinkles on our printed Exercises after finishing—the excitement quickly turned into disappointment until we managed to correct our approach by our third attempt.
After loading in the wax paper and preparing dozens of pre-cut sheets of sixteen-page white paper, we began adjusting our ink levels. Unsure how much ink we needed for our prints but adhering to a principle of “better too much than too little,” we scooped out a large lump from the ink box into a square container slightly larger than our machine body and rolled our ink roller over it several times.
When we felt it was about right, everyone unanimously chose Luo Yongzhong—the strongest among us—to take hold of the roller while Yin Hongsong pressed down firmly on our mold against the white paper so that Luo Yongzhong could roll out what we hoped would be perfect prints through that layer of gauze and wax paper.
As we lifted off our mold to reveal what lay beneath on that first sheet of white paper—a dark smudge greeted us—everyone's hearts sank like stones dropped into cold water; how could this happen?
“It must be because there’s too much ink applied and too much pressure used,” I quickly voiced my judgment.
Everyone pondered but couldn’t think of any other reason; thus they decided to follow my suggestion: if there was too much ink applied then let’s return some back into its box while rolling over areas without ink next time; as for using too much pressure—that could easily be fixed by asking our strong friend to ease up.
After making these adjustments once more everyone’s focus returned: this time things improved significantly! Although still somewhat darkened overall appearance remained evident—the characters were now barely legible—but if we sent these out as is they wouldn’t meet expectations.
This time Yin Hongsong took center stage again saying: “I remember when teachers print exams—the first few sheets are always test prints; only by around five or six sheets do they start looking better.”
According to him, we printed a few more copies, and indeed, each one was clearer than the last. By the time the Exercises were finished printing, the classroom outside had unknowingly brightened with Electric Light. All three of us had gotten quite a bit of ink on our hands, and even the strongman Luo Yongzhong had beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
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