Wang Zhen (official) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Wang Zhen was an official of the Yuan Dynasty

Yuan Dynasty

The Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...

(1271 – 1368 AD) of China. He is credited with the invention of the first wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

en movable type

Movable type

Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document ....

printing

Printing

Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

in the world, while his predecessor of the Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty

The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...

(960 – 1279 AD), Bi Sheng

Bi Sheng

Bì Shēng was the inventor of the first known movable type technology. Bi Sheng's system was made of Chinese porcelain and was invented between 1041 and 1048 in China.-Movable type printing:...

(990 – 1051 AD), invented the world's first earthenware

Earthenware

Earthenware is a common ceramic material, which is used extensively for pottery tableware and decorative objects.-Types of earthenware:Although body formulations vary between countries and even between individual makers, a generic composition is 25% ball clay, 28% kaolin, 32% quartz, and 15%...

movable type printing. His illustrated agricultural treatise was also one of the most advanced of its day, covering a wide range of equipment and technologies available in the late 13th and early 14th century.

Life and works

Wang Zhen was born in Shandong province, and spent many years as an official of both Anhui

Anhui

Anhui is a province in the People's Republic of China. Located in eastern China across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, it borders Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a tiny...

and Jiangxi

Jiangxi

' is a southern province in the People's Republic of China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to...

provinces. From the years 1290 to 1301, he was a magistrate

Magistrate

A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...

for Jingde, Anhui province, where he invented the use of wooden movable type printing. The invention of wooden movable type was described in Wang Zhen's publication of 1313 AD, known as the Nong Shu (農書), or Book of Agriculture. Although the title describes the main focus of the work, it incorporated much more information on a wide variety of subjects that was not limited to the scope of agriculture. Wang Zhen's Nong Shu of 1313 was a very important medieval treatise outlining the application and use of the various Chinese sciences, technologies, and agricultural practices. From water powered bellows to movable type printing, it is considered a descriptive masterpiece on contemporary medieval Chinese technology.

Wang Zhen wrote the masterpiece of the Nong Shu for many practical reasons, but also as a means to aid and support destitute rural farmer

Farmer

A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...

s in China looking for means to improve their economic livelihoods in the face of poverty and oppression during the Yuan

Yuan Dynasty

period. Although the previous Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty

was a period of high Chinese culture and relative economic and agricultural stability, the conquering Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty

Yuan Dynasty

thoroughly damaged the economic and agricultural base of China during the conquest of it. Hence, a book such as the Nong Shu could help rural farmers maximize efficiency of producing yields and they could learn how to use various agricultural tools to aid their daily lives. However, it was not intended to be read by rural farmers (who were largely illiterate), but local officials who desired to research the best agricultural methods currently available that the peasants otherwise would know little of.

The Nong Shu was an incredibly long book even for its own time, which had over 110,000 written Chinese characters. However, this was only slightly larger than the early medieval Chinese agricultural treatise of the Chi Min Yao Shu written by Jia Sixia in 535 AD, which had slightly over 100,000 written Chinese characters.

Water powered bellows

The Chinese during the Han Dynasty

Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...

(202 BC – 220 AD) were the first to apply hydraulic power (i.e. a waterwheel) in working the inflatable bellows

Bellows

A bellows is a device for delivering pressurized air in a controlled quantity to a controlled location.Basically, a bellows is a deformable container which has an outlet nozzle. When the volume of the bellows is decreased, the air escapes through the outlet...

of the blast furnace

Blast furnace

A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...

in creating cast iron

Cast iron

Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...

. This was recorded in the year 31 AD, an innovation of the engineer

Engineer

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

Du Shi

Du Shi was a Chinese governmental Prefect of Nanyang in 31 AD and a mechanical engineer of the Eastern Han Dynasty in ancient China. Du Shi is credited with being the first to apply hydraulic power to operate bellows in metallurgy...

, Prefect

Prefect

Prefect is a magisterial title of varying definition....

of Nanyang

Nanyang, Henan

Nanyang is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of Henan province, People's Republic of China. The city with the largest administrative area in Henan, Nanyang borders Xinyang to the southeast, Zhumadian to the east, Pingdingshan to the northeast, Luoyang to the north, Sanmenxia to the...

. After Du Shi, Chinese in subsequent dynastic periods continued the use of water power to operate the bellows of the blast furnace. In the 5th century text of the Wu Chang Ji, its author Pi Ling wrote that a planned, artificial lake had been constructed in the Yuan-Jia reign period (424 – 429 AD) for the sole purpose of powering water wheels aiding the smelting and casting processes of the Chinese iron industry. The 5th century text Shui Jing Zhu mentions the use of rushing river water to power waterwheels, as does the Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

geography text of the Yuan-he Jun Xian Tu Chi, written in 814 AD.

Although Du Shi was the first to apply water power to bellows in metallurgy, the first drawn and printed illustration of its operation with water power came in 1313 AD, with Wang Zhen's Nong Shu. Wang Zhen explained the methods used for the water-powered blast-furnace in previous times and in his era of the 14th century:

Wang's movable type printing

In improving movable type printing, Wang Zhen mentioned an alternative method of baking earthenware

Earthenware

printing type with earthenware frame in order to make whole blocks. Wang Zhen is best known for improving its use by inventing wooden movable type in the years 1297 or 1298, while he was a magistrate of Jingde in Anhui province from 1290 to 1301. His main contribution was improving the speed of typesetting with simple mechanical devices, along with the complex, systematic arrangement of wooden movable types. Wang Zhen summarized the process of making wooden movable type as described in the passage below:

Wooden movable type had been experimented with by Bi Sheng

Bi Sheng

Bì Shēng was the inventor of the first known movable type technology. Bi Sheng's system was made of Chinese porcelain and was invented between 1041 and 1048 in China.-Movable type printing:...

in the 11th century, but it was discarded because wood was judged to be an unsuitable material that Bi Sheng found difficult to use. Wang Zhen improved the earlier experimented process by adding the methods of specific type cutting and finishing, making the type case and revolving table that made the process more efficient. In Wang Zhen's system, all the Chinese writing characters were organized by five different tones and according to rhyming, using a standard official book of Chinese rhymes. Two revolving tables were actually used in the process; one table that had official types from the book of rhymes, and the other which contained the most frequently used Chinese writing characters for quick selection. To make the entire process more efficient, each Chinese character was assigned a different number, so that when a number was called, that writing character would be selected. Rare and unusual characters that were not prescribed a number were simply crafted on the spot by wood-cutters when needed.

While printing new books, Wang Zhen described that the rectangular dimensions of each book needed to be determined in order to make the corrected size of the four-sided wooden block used in printing. Providing the necessary ink job was done by brush that was moved vertically in columns, while the impression on paper the columns had to be rubbed with brush from top to bottom.

Two centuries before Hua Sui

Hua Sui

Hua Sui was a Chinese scholar and printer of Wuxi, Jiangsu province during the Ming Dynasty . He belonged to the wealthy Hua family that was renowned throughout the region. Hua Sui is best known for creating China's first metal movable type printing in 1490 AD...

pioneered bronze-type printing in China in 1490 AD, Wang Zhen had experimented with metal type printing using tin

Tin

Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...

, a metal favored for its low melting point while casting. In the Nong Shu, Wang Zhen wrote:
Thus, Chinese metal type of the 13th century using tin was unsuccessful because it was incompatible with the ink

Ink

Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush, or quill...

ing process. Although unsuccessful in Wang Zhen's time, the bronze metal type of Hua Sui in the late 15th century would be used for centuries in China, up until the late 19th century.

Although Wang Zhen's Nong Shu was mostly printed by use of woodblock printing

Woodblock printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper....

, his invention of wooden movable type soon became popularly used in the region of Anhui. Wang Zhen's wooden movable type was used to print the local gazetteer

Gazetteer

A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for information about places and place names , used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup of a country, region, or continent as well as the social...

paper of Jingde City, which incorporated the use of 60,000 written characters organized on revolving tables. During the year of 1298, roughly one hundred copies of this were printed by wooden movable type in a month's time. Following in the foot steps of Wang Zhen, in 1322 AD the magistrate of Fenghua

Fenghua

Fenghua is a county-level city in the north of Zhejiang province, China. It is under the jurisdiction of Ningbo prefecture-level city. The city and its administrative hinterlands has a population of over 480,000....

, Zhejiang

Zhejiang

Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital...

province, named Ma Chengde, printed Confucian classics with movable type of 100,000 written characters on needed revolving tables. The process of metal movable type was also developed in Joseon

Joseon Dynasty

Joseon , was a Korean state founded by Taejo Yi Seong-gye that lasted for approximately five centuries. It was founded in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Goryeo at what is today the city of Kaesong. Early on, Korea was retitled and the capital was relocated to modern-day Seoul...

Korea by the 13th century, while metal movable type was not pioneered in China until the Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...

(1368 – 1644 AD) printer Hua Sui

Hua Sui

used bronze movable type in 1490 AD. Although metal movable type became available in China during the Ming period, wooden movable type persisted in common use even until the 19th century. After that point, the European printing press

Printing press

A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...

machine first pioneered by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century became the mainstay and standard in China and for the most part the global community until the advent of digital printing

Digital printing

Digital printing refers to methods of printing from a digital based image directly to a variety of media. It usually refers to professional printing where small run jobs from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed using large format and/or high volume laser or inkjet printers...

and the modern computer printer

Computer printer

In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...

.

With movable type printing during the Ming dynasty of the 14th to 16th centuries, however, it was known to be used by local academies, local government offices, by wealthy local patrons of printing, and the large Chinese commercial printers located in the cities of Nanjing

Nanjing

' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...

, Suzhou

Suzhou

Suzhou , previously transliterated as Su-chou, Suchow, and Soochow, is a major city located in the southeast of Jiangsu Province in Eastern China, located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality. The city is situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Taihu Lake and is a part...

, Changzhou

Changzhou

Changzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It was previously known as Yanling, Lanling, Jinling, and Wujin. Located on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, Changzhou borders the provincial capital of Nanjing to the west, Zhenjiang to the...

, Hangzhou

Hangzhou

Hangzhou , formerly transliterated as Hangchow, is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Governed as a sub-provincial city, and as of 2010, its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 8.7 million people...

, Wenzhou

Wenzhou

Wenzhou is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. The area under its jurisdiction, which includes two satellite cities and six counties, had a population of 9,122,100 as of 2010....

, and Fuzhou

Fuzhou

Fuzhou is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian Province, People's Republic of China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute the Mindong linguistic and cultural area....

. There were many books from a wide variety of subjects published in wooden movable type during the Ming period, including novels, art, science and technology, family registers, and local gazettes. In 1541 AD, two different significant publications using wooden movable type were made under the sponsorship of two different princes; the Prince of Shu printing the large literary collection of the earlier Song Dynasty poet Su Che, and the Prince of Yi printing a book written as a rebuttal against superstitions written by a Yuan Dynasty era author.

During the Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

(1644 – 1911), wooden movable type was used on a much wider scale than even the previous Ming period. It was officially sponsored by the imperial court at Beijing, yet was widespread amongst private printing companies. The creation of movable type writing fonts became a wise enterprise of investment, since they were commonly pawned, sold, or presented as gifts during the Qing period. In the sphere of the imperial court, the official Jin Jian (d. 1794) was placed in charge of printing at the Wuying Palace, where the Yongzheng Emperor

Yongzheng Emperor

The Yongzheng Emperor , born Yinzhen , was the fifth emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the third Qing emperor from 1722 to 1735. A hard-working ruler, Yongzheng's main goal was to create an effective government at minimal expense. Like his father, the Kangxi Emperor, Yongzheng used military...

had 253,000 wooden movable type characters crafted in the year of 1733. Jin Jian, the official in charge of this project, provided elaborate detail on the printing process in his Wu Ying Tian Ju Zhen Ban Cheng Shi (Imperial Printing Office Manual for Movable Type). In nineteen different sections, he provided detailed description for:

type body
cutting the type
making type cases
form trays
strips in variable thickness
blanks
center columns
sorting trays
page and column rule forms
setting the text
proofing
printing
distribution of the type
and a schedule for rotation

There are notable differences between Wang Zhen's movable type process and Jin Jian's. Wang carved the written characters on wooden blocks and then sawed them apart, while Jin initiated the process by preparing type bodies before the characters were individually cut into types. For setting type, Wang employed a method of revolving tables where the type came to the workers, whereas Jin developed a system where the workers went to the organized type. Wang's frame was also added after the type had already been set, whereas Jin printed the ruled sheets and text separately on the same paper.

Agriculture

The main focus of the Nong Shu written by Wang Zhen was the realm of Chinese agriculture. His book listed and described an enormous catalogue of agricultural tools and implements used in the past and in his own day. Furthermore, Wang Zhen incorporated a systematic usage of illustrated pictures in his book to accompany every piece of farming equipment described. Wang Zhen also created an agricultural calendrical

Calendar

A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...

diagram in the form of a circle, which included the Heavenly Stems

Heavenly Stems

The ten Celestial or Heavenly Stems are a Chinese system of ordinals that first appear during the Shang dynasty, ca. 1250 BC, as the names of the ten days of the week. They were also used in Shang-period ritual as names for dead family members, who were offered sacrifices on the corresponding day...

, the Earthly Branches

Earthly Branches

The Earthly Branches provide one Chinese system for reckoning time.This system was built from observations of the orbit of Jupiter. Chinese astronomers divided the celestial circle into 12 sections to follow the orbit of Suìxīng . Astronomers rounded the orbit of Suixing to 12 years...

, the four seasons, twelve months, twenty-four solar terms, seventy-two five day periods, with each sequence of agricultural tasks and the natural phenomena which signal for their necessity, stellar configurations, phenology, and the sequence of agricultural production.

Amongst the various contemporary agricultural practices mentioned in the Nong Shu, Wang listed and described the use of ploughing, sowing, irrigation, cultivation of mulberries

Sericulture

Sericulture, or silk farming, is the rearing of silkworms for the production of raw silk.Although there are several commercial species of silkworms, Bombyx mori is the most widely used and intensively studied. According to Confucian texts, the discovery of silk production by B...

, etc. It listed and described many of the various foodstuffs and products of the many regions of China. The book outlined the use of not only agricultural tools, but food-processing, irrigation equipment, different types of fields, ceremonial vessels, various types of grain storage, carts, boats, mechanical devices, and textile machinery used in many applications. For example, one of the many devices described and illustrated in drawing is a large mechanical milling plant

Milling machine

A milling machine is a machine tool used to machine solid materials. Milling machines are often classed in two basic forms, horizontal and vertical, which refers to the orientation of the main spindle. Both types range in size from small, bench-mounted devices to room-sized machines...

operated by the motive power of ox

An ox , also known as a bullock in Australia, New Zealand and India, is a bovine trained as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration makes the animals more tractable...

en, with an enormous rotating geared wheel engaging the toothed gears of eight different mills surrounding it. Of great interest to sinologist historians, Wang Zhen also outlined the difference between the agricultural technology of Northern China and that of Southern China. The main characteristic of agricultural technology of the north was technical applications fit for predominantly dryland cultivation, while intensified irrigation cultivation was more suitable for southern China. Furthermore, Wang used his treatise as a means to spread knowledge in support of certain agricultural practices or technologies found exclusively in either South or North that could benefit the other, if only they were more widely known, such as the southern hand-harrow

Harrow (tool)

In agriculture, a harrow is an implement for breaking up and smoothing out the surface of the soil. In this way it is distinct in its effect from the plough, which is used for deeper tillage. Harrowing is often carried out on fields to follow the rough finish left by ploughing operations...

used for weeding in the south, yet virtually unknown in the north.

See also History of agriculture
History of agriculture
Agriculture was developed at least 10,000 years ago, and it has undergone significant developments since the time of the earliest cultivation. The Fertile Crescent of Western Asia, Egypt, and India were sites of the earliest planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously been gathered...

.

Nong Shu Book chapters

Chapters 1—6

Comprehensive prescriptions for agriculture and sericulture

Chapters 7—10

Treatise on the Hundred Grains
- Cereals (including legumes, hemp, and sesame)
- Cucurbits and green vegetables
- Fruits
- Bamboos and miscellaneous (including ramie, cotton, tea, dye plants, etc.)

Chapters 11—22

Illustrated Treatise on Agricultural Implements
- Field systems
- Agricultural tools
- Wicker and basket ware
- Food-processing equipment and grain storage
- Ceremonial vessels, transport
- Irrigation equipment, water-powered mills, etc.
- Special implements for wheat
- Sericulture and textile production

External links

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