“Ancient Chinese science and technology” are like a ticket to travel through time and space. Many people rush to the Imperial Palace and the Great Wall, but they are shocked by a small invention: the ship shaped pier of Luoyang bridge, the ten thousand year error of Dengfeng Dengfeng Observatory is less than one millimeter, and the Dujiangyan Irrigation Project dam free water diversion has been running for more than two thousand years…
The The Four Great Inventions Is Just The Prologue: How Many Ancient Chinese Science And Technology Families?
The compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing in textbooks are the “top spokesman” of ancient Chinese science and technology. According to statistics from the British Joseph Needham Institute, from BC to the fifteenth Century, China’s major technological inventions accounted for at least 54% of the world’s total during the same period (Needham et al., 2,004). In other words, more than half of the technologies that changed human life were initially beta tested on this land. The key is that these technologies have not been sealed in the museum, and they still leave touchable “living fossils” on today’s map of China.
First Station: Compass — From Geomantic Compass To Circumnavigation Of The Earth
When foreign tourists see the 12 direction “dry compass” with accurate scale in Qingdao Ancient Ship Museum, their first reaction is often “this was born one thousand years earlier than Google map.”. The book Pingzhou Ketan of the Northern Song dynasty recorded “boatmen watching the compass” to navigate at night, about two centuries before Europe (Needham et al., 2,004). Later, Arabian sailors learned to use it, and brought it into the Mediterranean, directly contributing to the era of great navigation in the fifteenth Century. When you see this “copper plate”, you will understand that the original engine of Global trade is a thumb sized magnetic needle.
Second Station: Movable Type Printing — How To “Mass Produce” A Book
Many backpackers took photos of the black “Tao Huo character” monument in Kaiyuan Temple, Quanzhou, Fujian Province, and immediately forwarded the circle of friends “the ancestors of the original Emoji expression look like this.”. The movable type characters created by Bi Sheng in the Northern Song Dynasty cut the cost of books by 90%. The publishing center of the Song Dynasty, Ling’an, produced more than 2,000 kinds of books in a year (Chia, 2,002). Compare this to the “hand speed” of European scribes of the same period, and you can understand why China achieved a literacy rate of more than 20% in the Song Dynasty. Go to the workshop to arrange a page of movable words by hand, and then use a bristle brush to print a Thousand Character Classic, which instantly explains the foundation of large-scale knowledge dissemination technology cost reduction and efficiency increase more than any classroom.
Third Station: Water Transport Instrument And Elephant Platform — The World’s First “Astronomical Clock Tower”
The 11 meter water transport instrument platform in Kaifeng in the Northern Song Dynasty is known as the “Tim Cook laboratory in the Middle Ages”. It is driven by a water wheel, driving 36 water buckets and 19 gears, automatically reporting time, demonstrating astronomical phenomena and tracking the sun and the moon, with an error of less than 100 seconds per day (Liang & Zhang, 2,019). It was 200 years later that mechanical clocks of the same complexity appeared in Europe. Today, next to the restored model of Henan University, you can hear the sound of “Ding Dong” on the spot. At that moment, you will have a real sense of “the ancient Chinese built a mechanical computer on the roof”.
Fourth Station: Dujiangyan Irrigation Project — “No Dam Water Diversion” To Keep Chengdu Plain From Floods And Droughts For 2300 Years
30 minutes by G-Series High-Speed Train from Chengdu to Dujiangyan Irrigation Project. During the Warring States period, the water conservancy system used fish mouth to divide water, baopingkou to control flow, and feishayan to discharge sand, achieving an annual water diversion of 10 billion cubic meters without a metal gate (UNESCO, 2,000). In other words, it automatically completes the flow AI allocation by terrain and water level difference. Foreign water conservancy engineers often call it the “Taj Mahal of civil engineering”, but the key point is: the system has irrigated about 10,000,000 mu of good land so far, making Sichuan a “ballast stone” of China’s grain. Overlooking the Minjiang River in Guanlan Pavilion, you can directly experience the core logic of ancient Chinese science and technology “solving problems rather than manufacturing engineering wonders.”.
Fifth Station: Maritime Shipbuilding — Watertight Compartment Makes Zheng He Fleet Stable As A “Floating City”
The 11.07 meter long rudder post unearthed at the site of Nanjing treasure shipyard reminds tourists that the length of Zheng He’s flagship can reach 130 meters, 5 times longer than that of Columbo’s. The technology that really dazzles foreign sailors is the “watertight compartment” – the ship is divided into 13 independent compartments, and any two compartments can still float when water enters. This design was widely adopted by the European Navy in the eighteenth Century, directly promoting the global liner safety standard (Mote & Chu, 2,003). Standing in the huge dock copied at 1:1, you can touch the cabin fir siding with your hands, and understand the bottom line of “China Shipbuilding makes the world connect earlier”.
Sixth Station: Decimal System And Arithmetic Research — “Mathematical Chip” Was Produced As Early As Two Thousand Years Ago
Many international students heard that the decimal system was born in the Warring States period in the Chinese abacus Museum in Hangzhou for the first time, and the expression management was out of control instantly. Joseph Needham pointed out that China’s adoption of fixed bit values and decimal symbols was more than 1,000 years earlier than that of Europe (Needham et al., 2,004). The calculation can be put into a pocket square, and a set of 271 bamboo sticks can complete the square root, solve the equation and calculate the circumference.
Compared with the complicated digital operations in Rome in Europe and America at the same time, it is not hard to come to the conclusion that market, engineering and even astronomical computing are “one step faster”, becoming the underlying accelerator of ancient science and technology. Today, visitors can use the hand feel of Quchong’s “3.1415926” in the museum, and experience the liberation of “zero” and “position value” in mental arithmetic in five minutes.
Seventh Station: Iron And Steel Smelting — A Material Revolution Of The Warring States Iron And Steel Man
At the Han Dynasty iron smelting site in Ji’nan, Shandong Province, the carbon particles that remained in the slag can still be seen. According to archaeological data, in the third century BC, China had mastered the three steps of the blast furnace, liquid pig iron and cast iron decarbonization, with an annual iron output of about 5,000 tons, equivalent to 14 times that of the British occupied area of Rome in the same period (Wagner, 2,008). In other words, the iron sword in the hands of the Terracotta Army not only “cuts copper like mud”, but also implies the efficiency upgrading of the whole chain of agriculture, architecture and military. On site VR simulation display: when Europe was still in the manual workshop mode of “block ironmaking + blacksmith beating”, China had made the ironmaking plant into a “batch production line”.
Eighth Station: How To Activate Ancient Chinese Science And Technology In The Journey?
- Read the official “ancient science and technology theme Tour” route (Chinese official website + English PDF) before the trip, and have a basic framework for the invention story.
- Book at least one “interactive exhibition hall”: such as Quanzhou movable type workshop and Nanjing treasure shipyard VR navigation. It is better to plant memory points by hand than by far.
- Connect the “science and technology site” with the local life scene: after visiting Dujiangyan Irrigation Project in the evening, go to Dujiangyan Irrigation Project city to drink Sichuan tea, watch the project miracle in the daytime, taste spicy rabbit head in the evening — the two channels of rationality and sense organs are parallel, and the experience is easier to be “long-term preserved” by the brain.
- Use the double label #AncientChineseTech + #TravelChinaNow in the social platform to facilitate the mutual promotion of routes with global science and technology lovers, and also attract Museum operators to answer questions.
Conclusion: From “Punch In Scenic Spots” To “See The Source Code Of Civilization”
Ancient Chinese science and technology is not an “old object” in a glass showcase, but a set of “source code” scattered in today’s China and still breathing. No matter you are a backpacker, international student or business observer, as long as you listen to the Jingdong gear in front of the water transport instrument platform and a handful of Minjiang River water in Dujiangyan Irrigation Project, you will understand that understanding China is not only about looking at mountains and rivers and delicious food, but also about touching an original engine that “once accelerated the world.”. Perhaps it is this interactive experience that can be seen, played and re engraved that will become the real reason for the next flight to China.
References
- Needham, J., Ling, W., & Gwei-Djen, L. (2004). Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 7 Part 2. Cambridge University Press.
- Chia, L. (2002). Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th–17th Centuries). Harvard University Asia Center.
- Liang, H., & Zhang, J. (2019). Timekeeping mechanisms in Su Song’s astronomical clock tower. Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science, 233(8), 2874–2885. https://doi.org/10.1177/0954406218774498
- UNESCO. (2000). Dujiangyan Irrigation System – World Heritage Nomination. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1001
- Mote, F. W., & Chu, P. (2003). A history of Chinese technology and engineering. In The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 8. Cambridge University Press.
- Wagner, D. B. (2008). Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 5 Part 11: Ferrous Metallurgy. Cambridge University Press.
