This morning I was invited by some of the folks that have been helping me with my research to go on a trip to visit the Jinling Buddhist Publishing House (jinling kejing chu) in downtown Nanjing. I can’t really say that I am that interested in ancient Buddhist texts, but I was looking forward to seeing how they carve the wooden blocks, print and bind books in the classical way. It takes nearly a month to carve one panel and often a single mistake can destroy the whole thing.

The site is listed as a UNESCO intangible world heritage site and is closed to public visits.  I guess that made my visit all the more interesting. In the evening I pulled together stills and video clips using from the visit into a short video. It was also an opportunity to test Avid’s iPad app, which seems to be more powerful than Apple’s iMovie app for iPad.