Ink prints make up a significant part of the art market in modern China. The number of prints created annually is not exactly calculated. The price of ordinary quality prints makes them accessible to a wide segment of the Chinese population, as well as to foreign tourists and trainee students coming to China from all over the world. At the same time, the price of high-quality and historically remarkable prints on the antique market is comparable to original works of calligraphy and painting. The history of prints dates back one and a half thousand years, during which they were an important factor in the development of Chinese fine art. Chinese experts of past and present times have studied in detail the history and technology of imprints, 1 while Western sinologists have recently drawn attention to this unique phenomenon of Chinese culture.2 The article aims to fill this gap in Russian Sinology. Key words: ink print ta, Zong Shua brushes, tabao swabs, water prints Shuita, powder prints Fent, prints Wujin ta, prints Chanyi ta, composite prints Quanxing Taben, prescriptions te, stelae Bei, reliability Zheng. Ink impressions on paper allow reproducing inscriptions, ornamentation, and relief images found on artifacts made of stone, metal, wood, and ceramics. To get an impression from famous calligraphic or pictorial works, originally created on silk or paper, their compositions were engraved in the intaglio technique on stone or wooden blocks, from which the impressions were then removed. The emergence of prints became possible due to the development of the production of high-grade thin and strong paper. A careful analysis of the scanty and indirect information from written sources led to Starr concluded that the first impressions appeared most likely at the turn of the fifth and sixth centuries in the era of the southern and northern dynasties (420 - 589), probably almost simultaneously in the territories subject to the state of Northern Wei (386-534) and the southern ... Read more