Song Yingxing (Sung Ying-Hsing)

SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology, Metallurgy, Paper and printing, Textiles

[br]

b. 1600 China

d. c. 1650

[br]

Chinese writer on technology and industry.

[br]

Song was an outstanding encyclopedist in the field of technology and industrial processes. He produced the Tian Gong Kai Wu (The Exploitation of the Works of Nature) of 1637, China's greatest technological classic, which dealt with agriculture and industry rather than engineering. It covered a wide range of subjects, including hydraulic devices and irrigation, silk and other textiles, salt and sugar technology, ceramics, pearls and jade, papermaking and ink, metallurgy of iron, bronze, silver, tin and lead, and transport. The work incorporated the finest Chinese illustrations on these subjects. Strangely, it fell into obscurity and it was a copy preserved in Japan that became the basis for later editions.

[br]

Bibliography

1637, Tian Gong Kai Wu.

Further Reading

J.Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965–86, Vols IV.2, pp. 171–2, 559; IV.3, many scattered references for it is an essential source of information about Chinese technology.

LRD