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The Water Mill and Northern Song imperial patronage of art, commerce, and science - China
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 2002 by Heping Liu
Contemporary private writings provide abundant reflections of the court politics of water milling. For example, the noted scholar-official, poet, and painter Wen Tong (1018-1079, jinshi 1049) drew on his personal experience as an official in the Shu region when he wrote the sympathetic poem "The Water Mill [Shuiwei]" (75) for a private mill owner he once visited:
A water mill is built into the river rapids by a man of Jialing,
Its high structure and deep foundations proclaim his hard labor;
Folks in the neighborhood ten li (76) around all come here to share milling,
Wheat comes in, flour goes out, one after another without ceasing.
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Despite toil and risk, the owner earns only a thin profit,
For generations his family has made its living by the riverbank;
Now the Sovereign is sending his men to supervise water conservancy,
Alas, what will the fate of these horizontal and vertical water wheels be?
Wen Tong's sympathy with the private mill owner reveals his reservations about the government's intervention in controlling water resources, a view he shared with the opponents of the New Policies reform.
Water Mills, Hydraulic Engineering, and Astronomical Clocks
In the tenth century, the water mill depicted in the Shanghai scroll would have been seen as an advanced machine of hydraulic engineering. As Mark Elvin points out, it is impossible to understand the economic history of China without an understanding of hydrology and hydraulics. (77) The period of the Northern Song was fertile in scientific advances and technological innovations, in hydraulic engineering in particular, as research in science and technology was backed and financed by the government.
The eleven imperial water mill visits testify to the Northern Song founders' keen interest in the science of hydraulic engineering. Taizu and Taizong, however, were not the only two Northern Song emperors with scientific interests, nor was the water mill the only advanced hydraulic machine of the time. The hydraulic astronomical clock also benefited from Northern Song imperial patronage. The development of hydraulic astronomical clocks in China parallels that of water mills. Joseph Needham and his associates have suggested the first century C.E. or even earlier as the date for the Chinese use of water mills and identified the great Han mathematician and engineer Zhang Heng (78-142) as the inventor of the water-powered mechanized astronomical clock. (78) The first Song water-powered mechanized astronomical clock was designed by the little-known Sichuanese Zhang Sixun in 976 and completed under the auspices of Taizong in 977. "His Majesty then ordered it to be erected under the Eastern Drum Tower of the Daming Hall with a plaque written by the imperial hand, reading 'The Astronomical Clock of Supreme Peace' [Taiping hunyi], as the late Northern Song imperial engineer Su Song 1020-1101, jinshi 1042) recalled. (79) Sixun was rewarded with an imperial appointment as assistant of the Astronomical Bureau.
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