Section 1　Sophisticated and Ingenious Farming and Weaving Techniques

There is an idiom in China: “Having ample food and clothing.” A series of inventions and creations emerged in ancient China centering on this idiom. The time of rice planting can be traced back to 10,000 years ago. Pigs were domesticated around 9,000 years ago. Raising silkworm as the prerequisite of inventing silk weaving has a history of nearly 8,500 years. Millet started to be farmed about 8,000 years ago. Tea trees originated from the southwestern regions in China and tea tree-planting had already reached certain scales by the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220). The domestication and farming of soybean has a history of over 4,000 years. And orange fruit crops had already been planted 4,000 years ago.

I. Rice-Planting

Rice, wheat and corn are the three major staple crops in the world and have great influence in the development of human civilization. China is now the country that has the largest rice production and second largest rice-planting area in the world (second only to India). The total production of rice in China in 2015 reached 208 million tons. At present, rice-producing areas in China mainly include the regions of the Yangtze River Basin and the Pearl River Basin. In history, they have always been the main rice-producing areas because their warm climate and crisscrossing rivers provided good conditions for rice growing. So China’s rice-planting civilization originated from there.

At present, there are three relic sites of rice culture that have stretched over 10,000 years since the Neolithic Period in China. These relics were concentrated in the midstream of the Yangtze River: the Xianrendong and Diaotonghuan Relics in Wannian County, Jiangxi Province and the Yuchanyan Relics in Daoxian County, Hunan Province. In the 1990s, archeologists made three excavations of the first two relics, two of which were implemented in cooperation with the U.S. Analysis of the collected phytolith of cultivated rice showed that the relics have had a history of at least 12,000 years.1 Almost concurrent with the above excavations, archeologists in Hunan Province explored the Yuchanyan Relics in Dao County. The rice found there was the most primitive strain of ancient cultivated rice that showed the evolution from ordinary wild rice to that in the early stage of cultivation.2 It has had a history of over 13,000 years.3

The rice-planting civilization experienced a long process in its formation. At present, the earliest archeological relics that showed the characteristics of rice-planting agriculture in China are the Jiahu Relics in Wuyang, Henan Province, with a history of 9,000 to 7,800 years. At the time, rice-planting was still in the initial formation stage of the rice-planting agriculture. At the downstream of the Yangtze River, rice-planting agriculture had already replaced foraging and hunting and become the dominant part of the local economy during the Liangzhu Culture Period between 5,200 and 4,300 years ago. At the midstream of the Yangtze River, rice-planting agriculture replaced foraging and hunting during the Daxi Culture Period between 6,300-5,300 years ago.4 As far as means of production is concerned, rice-planting technology lagged behind the millet planting in North China before the middle of the Tang Dynasty(618-907). During the period of the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties (220-589), the “plowing-harrowing-levelling” cropping system that could preserve moisture and prevent drought had already taken shape in the northern dry-land farming area. In the middle of the Tang Dynasty, China’s economic center moved south to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Advanced production technology in the Central Plains was spread to South China and eventually developed into paddy field farming techniques characterized by “plowing-harrowing-pulverizing.” Cattle ploughing was commonly used in the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220). Mostly a straight-beam plough was used and pulled by two cattle. The plow had a moldboard (or plow mirror) that could turn and break soil. A bent-beamed plow used in the Tang Dynasty had a well-developed structure. It was light, convenient and easy to operate so that farming could be completed using only one person with one plow. A harrow was a farming tool with many short spikes or teeth. It was used to break down soil pieces and stubble, remove weed and level the field. A plot of field would be pulverized after being raked. The tool used was called a “Chao,” which was basically a rake with a straight-stick-shaped head. The teeth on it were longer and it was mainly used to smooth the paddy fields.

Rice-planting in South China was more complicated than wheat planting in North China.5 In the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), Lou Shu, the county magistrate of Lin’an, Zhejiang, presented to the emperor the Painting of Farming and Weaving. The part about farming included 21 pictures about seed soaking, plowing, harrowing, weeding and sieving etc., which showed the farming and harvesting steps in rice planting in regions south of the Yangtze River. Crop irrigation tools included wellsweep, windlass, square-pallet chain-pumps (dragon bone water lifts) and noria. Square-pallet chain-pumps or dragon bone water lifts operated with a chain transmission. It consisted of a water channel, chain wheel, and a chain and water-lifting pallets. It could be driven by man, livestock or wind power. It had a function similar to the Archimedes screw in Europe. In the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), a eunuch named Bi Lan once made a dragon bone water lift. The Painting of Farming and Weaving in the Southern Song Dynasty is the earliest picture showing a tread dragon bone water lift. Generally, two, three or four people trod and moved the long axis to pull the chain and water-lifting pallets to raise water into the field. A dragon bone water lift was fit for low-lift irrigation, while a noria driven by waterpower was better for lifting water from large rivers into higher fields.

II. Silk Weaving

About 5,000 years ago, Chinese people had already started to raise silkworms and weave silk fabric in the basins of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. In the 1980s, archeologists found remnants of silk fabric made 5,500 years ago in the Qingtaicun Neolithic Relics in Xingyang, Henan in the Yellow River Basin. This fabric, made from mulberry silk or silk from a domestic silkworm, was a kind of shallow crimson silk gauze. This discovery proved that primitive looms were already used at that time.6 In 1958, remnants of silk fabric made over 4,000 years ago were excavated from the Qianshanyang Late Neolithic Relics in Zhejiang in the Yangtze River Basin. The manufacturing of exquisite silk fabric mainly depended on the technologies of silk reeling and weaving.

Simply speaking, silk reeling is the process of drawing silk from silkworm cacoons. During the Qin and Han dynasties (221 BC-AD 220), the Chinese people generally adopted the method of boiling cacoons in hot water and then reeling silk.7 The tools used in silk reeling in earlier times were I- and X-shaped wood frames that reeled the silk on. Later, silk reeling machines were invented. The structure of such machines was recorded in the Painting of Farming and Weaving in the Southern Song Dynasty and the Book of Agriculture in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). A silk reeler would pick up the silk ends in a cacoon boiler, put the silk around the silk guiding pulley on an erected pole on the machine frame, then put it through the silk guiding hook and circle it round the reeling frame called a “Kuang.” The ingenuity of such a reeling machine lies in the movement of the pedal plate used to drive the rotation of the reeling frame that has a crankshaft and connecting rod mechanism. And, at the same time, rotational motion is transformed into the reciprocating motion of a silk feeding rod with an eccentric structure by means of a belt drive, so that silk thread coils on the reeling frame turned evenly. After reeling, the silk obtained would also go through processes of silk winding, silk joining, silk twisting, warp winding and weft winding. It then became ready for weaving on a loom.

Looms experienced great development in the Han Dynasty in ancient China. The oblique loom, the jacquard loom and other devices emerged in this period. An oblique loom is a pedalled loom with a tilting body and warp face used to make a plain weave fabric. A jacquard loom is needed, on which complicated side openings can be created through raising different heddles and then weft can be put through by picking, if people want to weave fabric with complicated geometric patterns. The models of two types of “one-hook-multiple-heddle” jacquard loom in the Western Han Daynasty (202 BC-AD 8) were excavated from the Laoguanshan Han Tomb in Chengdu.8 Later, the jacquard loom developed in the direction of multiple heddles and multiple footsteps. During the period of the Three Kingdoms (220-280), Ma Jun innovated loom designs to use 12 footsteps to control 50-60 heddles. In the Southern Song Dynasty, the Chinese developed the pattern-base jacquarding technique and invented the pattern-tower loom. It was operated by two people, one making patterns and raising heddles on the top and the other treading pedals and sewing weft to finish weaving at the bottom. Pattern-tower jacquarding separated jacquarding as a special area in weaving from single-person weaving production. One person specialized in pattern-making operation, so that it became possible to weave large complicated and multicolored fabrics.9

Jacquard loom in the book Exploitation of the Works of Nature

Superior silk weaving techniques created a great variety of silk fabric in ancient China. These products can be classified into “Xiao,”“Sha,” “Zhou,” “Gao,” “Wan,” “Ti,” “Juan,” “Luo,” “Qi,” “Chou,” “Duan,”“Rong” and “Jin” on the basis of their texture; this processing technology, formed an array of splendid and gorgeous fabrics. Here, the author only wants to mention one very famous single-layered plain gauze covergarment. In 1972, a silk fabric piece that only weighed 49 grams was excavated from the Mawangdui Han Mausoleum in Changsha. This gauze garment, as thin as a cicada’s wing, was 128 cm long with sleeves 190 cm long. The silk gauze of this relic has clear meshes, and it was so thin and light that people could easily see through it. It is the thinnest silk fabric currently found in the world and reflects the superb standard of the silk weaving technology in the Han Dynasty in China.

Because of silk trade, the world-renowned Silk Road emerged as an important communication line between China and the Central and Western Asia, also connecting the Midterranean Region. During the reign of Emperor Wudi (156-87 BC), Zhang Qian made two diplomatic expeditions to the “Western Regions” and opened up the way for the economic and trade exchanges between the Central Plains and the countries in Central Asia. Large amounts of Chinese silk were transported incessantly to Central Asia, Western Asia and Europe through this line. At the same time, walnut, grape, pomegranate, broad bean, alfafa and other plants were transported to the Central Plains from the “Western Regions.” The Silk Road greatly promoted the communication between China and foreign nations. Similar to the Silk Road on the continent, the communication line between the East and the West in maritime trade was known as the Silk Road on the Sea.

III. Tea Tree-Planting

Tea, or Camellia sinensis in Latin, is one of the three major drinks in the world nowadays, the other two being coffee and coco. It has a long history of cultivation in China. The southwestern region in China is the place of origin of all tea trees in the world.10 Wild tea trees can still be found, even today, in Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou. The domestication and cultivation of tea trees in China can be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC). In the Han Dynasty, tea production reached high levels, and tea was traded as a commodity in some regions in China. There were records about treating diseases with tea in the fourth century. In the Tang Dynasty (618-907), tea drinking gradually became popular;the scale of tea production and trading grew larger, and large tea plantations emerged. In 760, Lu Yu wrote the Classic of Tea, the first treatise on tea in the world. The book summarized in detail the site selection for tea plantation, and the method of tea picking.11 At the end of the Tang Dynasty, Han E specifically recorded the tea tree cultivation technology. He also included the method to select and store tea seeds in his book Essential Farm Practices in Four Seasons. The development of tea tree cultivation technology after the Song Dynasty (960-1279) mainly showed in the classification of tea trees and the management of tea plantation.

In the early days, tea was mainly used as medicine, and it was not processed. Later, fresh tea leaves were dried in the air or in the shade so that they could be stored and carried conveniently. In the Classic of Tea written by Lu Yu, tea production technology was divided into six processes of steaming, pounding, beating, baking, stringing and sealing. Namely, picked tea leaves were first steamed with a type of steaming bucket called “Zeng” to complete fixation. Then, the leaves were pounded into shreads and beaten into balls or cakes. These were then put into an oven and baked until dry. Finally, bamboo peel slips or strings were used to string up the tea cakes or balls with one another. They were then sealed up for storage. Because tea balls or cakes needed complicated technologies in production, they had to be broken into pieces before used for drinking, which caused a great amount of inconvenience. However, loose tea production technology emerged in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and tea drinking changed from boiling to brewing with boiling water. In the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), steaming fixation was changed into parching fixation in tea processing technology. Namely, dry heat was used to make tea leaves wither so as to retain their fragrance.

Tea from China influenced the whole world. Early in the ninth century, tea drinking spread to Japan mainly through Japanese Buddhist monks, who came to China to study Buddhism. Now tea ceremonies became an important component of the Japanese culture. In the 10th century, tea was spread to the Arabian regions by nomad travelers. Later, tea spread from China to Europe via the Silk Road on the continent and on the sea. In 1559, Giovanni Battista Ramusio, a Venetian writer, recorded in his book Navigatiane et Viaggi, the words told by a Persian merchant that there was a kind of plant in China only the leaves of which could be used as a drink. Everybody called it China Tcha. It was regarded as a very precious food. The plant grew in the Jiazhou Prefecture in Sichuan, China. The fresh or dried leaves of this plant could be boiled in water. When you drank one or two cups of this boiled drink on an empty stomach, it could cure body fever, headaches, stomachache, low backache and joint pain.12 In the 17th century, a coffee house in London started to run tea drinking business. The magazine Mercurius Politicus published a tea drinking advertisement on September 30, 1658, which read, “That Excellent, and by all physicians approved, China Drink, called by the Chinese Tcha, by other nations Tay alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness-head, a Cophee house in Sweetings Rents by the Royal Exchange, London.”

In 1720, tea became a main export of China. Trade companies in European countries such as, France, Prussia, Denmark and Sweden purchased huge amounts of tea from China; in addition, tea prices fell sharply, which promoted the tea consumption among the people in different classes. In 1792, the UK imported 20 million pounds of tea from China. From the 20th century, tea spread from Europe to South America and Africa, and thus became a globally popular drink.13 Nowadays, Asia stands as the main tea production region. In 2014, China’s total tea production reached 2.09 million tons, accounting for about 41.6 percent of the world’s production.