Woodblock printing had undergone steady development for four to five hundred years before the invention of movable-type printing in the eleventh century during the Northern Song dynasty. It has been a time-honored practice to apply movable-type notions to printing since ancient times. In fact, as early as in the Zhou and Qin dynasties, the casting of bronze vessels at that time followed the principle similar to that of movable-type printing. For instance, Qingonggui (also known as Duke Qin’s gui), a bronze food container made in the Eastern Zhou dynasty in the seventh century BC, was unearthed in Gansu, the inscription of which consisted of 50 characters.