The Machines of Ancient China — Part 4/4

October 29, 2010

Qin Shi Huangdi (259 to 210 BC), the first emperor who unified China, summoned 700,000 people to build his tomb. These people probably worked at least ten years or longer.

Modern day workshops that duplicated what it took to create the Terra Cotta warriors used ancient materials and methods. It took twenty days to complete one warrior.  Each warrior used an average of 130 kilos or 286 pounds of clay.

To complete the entire army, more than one thousand tons was needed.

Another Chinese inventor during the Song Dynasty created a machine known as the Cosmic Engine, the ancient world’s astronomical computer.

Su Song was the inventor.  The Cosmic Engine was so complicated that for centuries no one (even Westerners) understood how it worked. Today, few westerners know that it existed.

However, records show that the Cosmic Engine was created in 1092 AD.

The Cosmic Engine calculated time—not just hours and minutes but weeks, months and seasons reflecting how the earth moves around the sun. It also calculated how the earth and planets moved through space.

The Cosmic Engine was five stories tall and its working innards are complex.

Today, we know exactly how this device was created since Su Song left detailed blueprints and directions of exactly how it was built. Song’s Cosmic Engine worked from the eleventh century until enemies of the Song Dynasty destroyed it.

Using Song’s blueprints, the Science and Technology Museum in Beijing built a fully accurate reconstruction. Another reconstruction exists in London.

This ingenious device led to the invention of Western clocks centuries later.

Today, we know that many of the inventions and discoveries the modern world is built on originated in ancient Imperial China.

Return to the Machines of Ancient China – Part 3 or to discover more inventions see China Points the Way

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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The Machines of Ancient China — Part 3/4

October 29, 2010

More evidence has been discovered that the Chinese had a long history using geared machines.

Beautiful, engraved jade rings were found in tombs dated back to 400 BC. 

After studying the elaborately designed rings, archeologists believe the only way to produce this precision was by using a machine—a device known as a compound machine is one that synchronizes rotational with linear motion.

Over thousands of years, these technological innovations traveled from east to west along the Silk Route.

In fact, there is an archeological site in China that provides solid evidence of the abilities of China’s ancient engineers and craftsmen.

The first emperor of China’s Terra Cotta army is that evidence.

Located near Xian, it is considered by many to be the eighth wonder of the ancient world.

Over eight thousand human sized statues were created by Chinese engineers and craftsmen to protect Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi more than twenty-two hundred years ago.

These Terra Cotta warriors were armed with over ten thousand bronze weapons—the exact weapons used in combat. Amazing as it sounds, these weapons were coated with chromium, which wasn’t developed in the West until the 1930s.

It is believed that these warriors and their weapons were mass-produced in factories that match today’s modern factories.

The most impressive discoveries were the emperor’s full-scale chariots made of gold, silver and bronze. During the Qin Dynasty, the Chinese had established high standards for metallurgy and metal production.

The methods used to build these chariots were highly advanced and are still in use today.

Return to the Machines of Ancient China – Part 2 or to discover more inventions see With or Without Paper

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Silicone “Juice” in China

October 27, 2010

In You Can’t Build a New Silicon Valley Just Anywhere by Margaret O’Mara, writing for Foreign Policy magazine, she says, “for many of the would-be silicon cities being constructed by the Russias and Chinas of the world; with their long histories of centralized control, they are still convinced they can order up success.”

O’Mara’s theme is that the success we have seen in California’s Silicon Valley is due to the freedom America’s republic—now a democracy—offers along with loads of money from the government and venture capitalists with no strings attached.

If that were true, explain how China (ruled by Emperors under an autocratic imperialistic monarchy) was more technologically advanced than any country on earth for almost two thousand years.


If you don’t speak Chinese, the English subtitles say it all.

After all, the Chinese invented the stirrup for saddles which revolutionized warfare on horseback, gunpowder, the multistage rocket, the compass, paper, the printing press and pasta along with a long list of other innovations, which changed the world.

Without the Chinese, where would the world be today? See Chinese Crossbow and other Inventions

China may not offer the same individual freedoms the West does, but “face”, which is important in Chinese culture, is a strong motivator to improvise and invent so one gains “face” and becomes powerful and wealthy.

Before Deng Xiaoping and the “Getting Rich is Glorious” generation that he gave birth to, I would have agreed with Margaret O’Mara but not now.

In my next series, The Machines of Ancient China, we will discover more about China’s contributions to the world we live in.

To discover the Chinese advantage, learn about Guanxi in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Keeping the Rare Earths in China

October 1, 2010

At one time, it must have seemed like a good idea to allow China to process 90% of the earth’s supply for rare earth oxides/metals.

After all, rare earths are dangerous and costly to extract and the extraction methods used in China are highly toxic. The Economist reports that there have been horror stories about poisoned water supplies.

The thinking around the world must have been, “Better that China wrecks its environment than us.”


The Other Side of the Story

These rare earth-based metals are important in manufacturing sophisticated products such as flat-screen monitors, hybrid and electric-car batteries, wind turbines, aerospace alloys and high-tech weapons, which the U.S. needs to fight wars.

Then China became angry when Japan arrested a Chinese fishing boat captain whose trawler collided with a Japanese patrol boat in contested waters.

What China did to force the Japanese to do what China wanted caused the rest of the world to sit up.

China shut off the supply of rare earths to Japan.

A report from Reuters by Julie Gordon says this caused companies that depend on rare earths to struggle to secure a supply. It also woke up the rest of the world—a lesson learned that you don’t keep all the eggs in a basket that you don’t own.

See Hitting Endless Home Runs

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions

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China Moves Toward Orbit and Beyond

September 30, 2010

The next Star Trek movie may have an all Chinese crew from the CNSA (Chinese National Space Agency), as China becomes the dominate nation in outer space.

The New York Times reports that President Obama called on NASA to cancel the program that was to return humans to the Moon by 2020, which means America will not be starting a space race with China.

In fact, President Obama has called on China and the U.S. to cooperate in outer space. Something no other U.S. President has asked before. When the current International Space Station started construction in 1998, China was not included.

The crippled U.S. space program suggests that America has no choice but to cooperate or else cede the frontier of space to the Chinese.

Senior Chinese space officials recently announced that China could be on the moon by 2022. To reach the moon, plans are to put three different space stations into Earth orbit by 2011, then 2015 and the largest station by 2020, which will lead to the moon. Source: Washington Times.com

It is feasible that China could be on the moon by 2017 and after that, China plans to go where no man or woman has gone before — Mars and Venus. Source: KotZot.com

Shanghaiist.com reports that, “Scientists predict that one of China’s most significant achievements in the 21st century will be to set up a “moon city” using solar energy. The surplus energy will then be transmitted to storage centers back on earth.”

If this works, China’s hunger for electricity may be met without the need for coal burning power plants, which means cleaner air.

Meanwhile, the Arms Control Wonk says that China’s leaders remain silent about the military applications of China’s space programs, which will cause many Sinophobes to lose sleep.

This is ironic, since the Chinese invented multi-stage rockets around the 14th century.

See Adding to Honor in One Lunar Leap

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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