Colored printing is abbreviated as "color printing". It is a traditional folk handicraft art developed on the basis of blue printed cloth. Color printing has a long history. The process is all done manually. The subject matter comes from traditional folk culture and has high craft value, aesthetic value and practical value. According to the town records of Shimen, Chongfu, Wuzhen and other towns in Tongxiang, during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, dozens of printing and dyeing workshops in these areas mostly printed and dyed printed blue cloth. Among them, Shimen Fengtongyu Dyeing Workshop, founded in the 26th year of Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty (1846), printed and dyed colored printed cloth while printing and dyeing printed blue cloth. The production of colored printed cloth is mainly distributed in the central towns of Shimen, Chongfu, Wuzhen and other towns in Tongxiang and their surrounding areas. Tongxiang colored printing uses natural minerals and plants (such as chrysanthemum, mulberry, blue grass) as dyes. Its printing and dyeing techniques mainly include engraving (painting, stereotypes) and dyeing (painting, color fixing). The colors use bright red, bright green, yellow, blue, purple and other colors, which are bright and beautiful. The patterns are drawn from folk culture and have strong local and national characteristics. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Tongxiang colored printing was very popular among the people. In modern times, due to the development of dyeing and weaving industry, colored printing products gradually became rare. In November 1937, Fengtongyu Dyeing Workshop was destroyed by Japanese artillery fire. Although it resumed business after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, colored printing and dyeing basically stopped. In 2003, Tongxiang Fengtongyu Blue Printing Fabric Co., Ltd. was established to resume the printing and dyeing of colored printing cloth. In the old days, the colored printing and dyeing technology of Tongxiang was inherited from master to apprentice. The inheritance relationship was relatively complicated, and it was difficult to arrange the specific genealogy. Take Tongxiang Fengtongyu Blue Printing Fabric Co., Ltd. as an example: in the Qing Dynasty, there was Feng Zhaoqing; in the Republic of China, there were Xia Guang and Wang Akang; in the contemporary era, there were Shen Jialin, Ai Weijing, Qian Shixun, etc., among which Ai Weijing (born in 1971) is the representative inheritor. The exterior view of Fengtongyu Dyeing Workshop before the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War. The fourth person from the right is Mr. Feng Zikai, a famous cartoonist and writer. (Contributed by Tongxiang Fengtongyu Blue Printing Fabric Co., Ltd.) Hand-made color printing has been included in the second batch of Zhejiang Province's intangible cultural heritage list. Information source: Jiaxing Library Information source: Jiaxing Library