In blazing sun a peasant works the field.

His sweat drops into the soil underfoot.

None but those who work know--

Each bite of food is earned with painstaking effort.’

                                                            (From an ancient Chinese poem)

These lou of varied styles indicate the hard work of spring seeding. In the scorching sun, a peasant, stripped to his waist, drags a lou hard. His wife carefully holds the lou and shakes the funnel to drop seeds evenly into the soil just plowed open. Their sweat drips down with those seeds. This windlass tells of the hardships of dry land farming. It takes the effort of four to bring up a bucket of water from a well several hundred meters.  The spear over there, usually carried by the Miao living in the mountains, can be used for protection attacks by beasts or as a shoulder pole to carry two stacks of firewood. This ‘tiger-head hay cutter’ can be used to shorten hay; this wood fork is for clearing and piling grasses. Even this simple ‘connecting pole’ can help to thresh farmyard wheat.

For countless generations, our people have farmed the land and accumulated rich farming experience and created farming tools to meet local conditions. This is our history of agriculture that demonstrates the wisdom and greatness of our people.

Chinese began agricultural production on a large scale thousands of years ago. Although agricultural production still largely depends on animal and human labor, rich experience, advanced methods and effective tools in farming played an important role in advancing early civilizations.

The farming tools here from different areas represent farm and pasture conditions south and north, on plains and plateaus and in mountainous areas over time spanning from the Ming Dynasty (1368) to modern times.