Although computerized typesetting is popular, xylography, a 1,300-year-old printing technique done entirely by hand, is still alive in China.

At an old-fashioned workshop in the Jinling Buddhism Publishing House in downtown Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, workers print sutras from wood plates engraved more than 100 years ago.

The craftsmen apply ink to the plates, cover them with paper, and stroke the paper with brushes until the outlines of the Chinese characters appear.

Domestic and foreign collectors prefer xylographic sutras to machine-made styles because of their traditional and artistic value, said Xu Wei, director of the publishing house.

The art of xylography consists of sample writing, carving, printing and binding, all done by hand, Xu said. Every year her publishing house prints about 150,000 copies of sutras.

Ink used for xylography is a mixture of pine ash, flour, liquor, vinegar and several other components which must be fermented for at least three years. And the paper is made from bamboo.

The publishing house, set up in 1866, is a world center for publishing Buddhist sutras, which are also regarded as artistic works, and has a collection of 130,000 of the plates.

A professional carver can engrave only about a dozen Chinese characters a day, and it usually takes about a week to complete a plate, Xu said.