raise rite mud pump made in china

Explore a wide variety of mud transfer pump on Alibaba.com and enjoy exquisite deals. The machines help maintain drilling mud circulation throughout the project. There are many models and brands available, each with outstanding value. These mud transfer pump are efficient, durable, and completely waterproof. They are designed to lift water and mud with efficiency without using much energy or taking a lot of space.

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The HMI HM-1 hydraulic mudjacking pump was the first concrete raising product engineered and manufactured by HMI, just over 40 years ago. It’s reliability and superior engineering maintains its place in the market, but has also acted as the springboard for other, more advanced models / options which offer various options of engine horsepower, hopper size, pumping pressure, and so much more.

Our largest, self-propelled, multi-functional pump. This rugged and durable pump is the top-of-the-line mudjacking unit. With the highest available pumping pressure, largest material hopper, most horsepower and versatility.

Our most popular model, the self-propelled, hydraulic mudjacking pump drives circles around the competition. Affordable and durable, the Power Pump is a great way to start-up or add to a concrete raising business.

That fortuitous weekend of labor was the start of it all. The growth and innovations have followed, whether it was the invention of the first hydraulic mud pump or the introduction of polyurethane systems at the entrepreneur level.

RaiseRite Concrete Lifting, Inc. began in 1974, by myself and two others, with no money to buy our equipment so we rented it from my father-in-law. Our first truck was a 1951 Chevy flatbed, we affectionately named "Bullwinkle". By September, RaiseRite needed to add another crew to cover Green Bay.

In 1978, I knew there had to be a more efficient and less strenuous way to raise concrete, so I developed the first hydraulic mudpump. The next year, sales were well on their way as was HMI as we began manufacturing the "new" hydraulic mudjacking pumps. Today, HMI continues to manufacture mudjacking pumps and systems, polyurethane foam lifting systems, and polyurethane foam.

Monthly, HMI hosts Discovery and Training Seminars either at our Manitowoc training facility or various metropolitan areas throughout the United States. These seminars offer individuals looking to add to their existing business or start-up a business, the opportunity to experience "hands-on" how to raise concrete. As a supplier and trainer, HMI has helped put over 1200 families into business and have contributed to the employment of over 10,000 people.

I am still retaining the position of CEO, but I work side by side with my two sons: Jeff-President HMI and Brian-President of RaiseRite. Over the past 40 years, we have lifted and leveled 14,000,000 sq. ft. of concrete participating in over 70,000 projects. HMI"s equipment has lifted and leveled 240,000,000 sq. ft. of concrete on every continent, but Antarctica. I look at this anniversary not being about us at HMI/RaiseRite. It is all about you-our customers-Thank you again!

About HMI/Raise Rite: HMI/Raise Rite has two Manitowoc locations: 4803 Leonard Lane and 1025 E. Albert Dr. employing approximately 30 individuals. In addition to concrete raising, RaiseRite has a foundation piering and waterproofing division. For more information, please use the contact information and links provided below.

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BW160/BW200/BW250/BW450/BW600/BW850 mud pumps are mainly used for irrigation agricultural machinery. for water well drilling, borehole drilling, core drilling, anchor drilling, etc projects

But they are also the main equipment of the geological survey, the main role in the process of core drilling boreholes is to supply fluid (mud or water), making it circulate during drilling and carry rock waste back to the ground, in order to achieve and maintain the bottom hole Clean and lubricate drill bits and drilling tools with cooling.

TypeHorizontal single cylinder double-action reciprocating piston pumphorizontal type single-cylinder double-acting pumphorizontal triplex Reciprocating single-acting piston pumpHorizontal three-cylinder reciprocating single-acting piston pumpHorizontal three-cylinder reciprocating single-acting piston pumpHorizontal double cylinder reciprocating double-action piston pump

^1 i é ice-ian civilizationsA time to live... 30 Argentina Pride of the Pampa Life on the pampa, the vast grassy plain of central Argentina, inspired a rich literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth cen¬ tury, and provided the theme for much of Argentina"s musical folklore. The nomadic gauchos (cowboys) became legendary figures, renowned for their horsemanship, their spirit of independence, and their physical endurance. Today, with the adop¬ tion of mechanization and modern tech¬ niques of animal husbandry, the way of life mythified in gaucho literature has been transformed. Photo shows cattle on the pampa being vaccinated against foot and mouth disease.The Courier A window open on the woríd Editorial IN Asia, where Oryza sativa, the most widely cultivated of the world"s rice species, is generally believed to have originated, many languages use the same expression, "eating rice", to convey the idea of "a meal" or "eating" in general. Rice is the staple food of more than a third of mankind. It con¬ stitutes half the diet of one thousand six hundred million people and another four hundred million rely on it for between a quarter and a half of their diet. Nine tenths of all rice grown comes from Asia, and the civilizations of this part of the world have developed profound links with rice. Despite the fact that, as the French geographer Pierre Gourou points out in his recently published book Riz et Civilisation (Rice and Civilization), rice was not a factor in the emergence of these civilizations (the Chinese and Indian civilizations existed long before rice acquired its later dominant position) it is certainly true that rice has influenced, indeed fashion¬ ed, the rites and social structures of these civilizations by the demands it imposes upon them, including the need for availability of a large labour force and mastery of the growing environment. As was stressed during the International Symposium on Civiliza¬ tions Related to Rice Cultivation in Asian Countries (organized by The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies in collaboration with Unesco, which was held in Kyoto, Japan, from 6 to 10 June 1983), by its physical and spiritual presence rice came to pervade the vocabulary, the daily life, the literature, the arts and even the beliefs of the peoples of Asia. Owing to the constraints of time and space it was clearly impossi¬ ble in a single issue of the Unesco Courier to assess the influence of rice on all the countries of Asia. We have therefore selected a few particularly striking examples of the impact of rice on the lives and minds of the peoples of the region. These include the deep-rooted notion of the "rice soul", the Tamil festival of Pongal, the kalapana system of ancient Thailand and the Azolla cult in Viet Nam. If a certain emphasis has been given to the impact of rice on myth and custom, not forgetting its socio-economic implications, our opening article by professor Monkombu Swaminathan, director of the International Rice Research Institute, draws attention to the progress achieved in genetic research on rice thanks to which crop yields have increased rapidly over the past two decades. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has estimated that it will be necessary to increase the production of rice by three per cent annually until the year 2000 merely to keep pace with the demands of a rising world population. Cover: a rice-field in Bali (Indonesia). Photo Amos Schliack © ANA, Paris December 1984 37th year Editor-in-chief: Edouard Glissant 4 9 14 16 18 20 23 24 27 31 32 34 36 38 The miracle of rice by Monkombu S. Swaminathan Rice in myth and legend by Obayashi Taryo Krushna the farmer by Prafulla Mohanti Pongal by Guy Deleury China"s 7,000-year-old crop by Hu Baoxin and Chang Shujia The god who stole the rice by Obayashi Taryo Green winters on the Red River by Dao The Tuan A household god by Lee Kwang-Gyu A city built on rice by Srisakra Vallibhotama "Never eat rice in the dark..." by Samuel K. Tan The soul of a people by Zainal Kling A "Plov" is as good as a feast by Boris V. Andrianov A touchstone of time and place by Rafaralahy Bemananjara Unesco Newsroom 2 A time to live... ARGENTINA: Pride of the pampa Published monthly in 28 languages by Unesco, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 7, Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris. English French Spanish Russian German Arabic Japanese Italian Hindi Tamil Hebrew Persian Dutch Portuguese Turkish Urdu Catalan Malaysian Korean Swahili Croa to- Serb Macedonian Serbo-Croat Slovene Chinese Bulgarian Greek Sinhala A selection in Braille is published quarterly in English, French, Spanish and Korean ISSN 0041-6278 N° 12 1984- OPI - 84 - 1 - 417 AThe miracle of rice by Monkombu S. Swaminathan KNOWN to have been cultivated in parts of India and China for seven thousand years, rice today is an integral part of the lives of millions of peo¬ ple throughout the world. Used almost ex¬ clusively as human food, rice constitutes half the diet of one thousand six hundred million people; another four hundred million rely on it for between twenty-five and fifty per cent of their diet. Rice is an annual grass of the Oryza genus and grows in a wide range of environments, from 50 degrees north latitude to 40 degrees south latitude and from below sea level to more than 2,500 metres above sea level. Although it was originally cultivated in the humid tropics as a semi-aquatic plant, it is adapted to a wide spectrum of environmen¬ tal conditions ranging from arid to rather cold situations. There are two species of cultivated rice: Oryza sativa, which is a common rice wide¬ ly grown in the tropical and temperate zones, and Oryza glaberrima, which grows in west Africa. Besides these cultivated species, the genus Oryza comprises about twenty wild species. Over time, three sub-species of Oryza sativa developed: Indica, Japónica and Javanica. The designation Indica was used to label the tropical rices and sub-tropical varieties of India and China, while Japónica covered the short- and round- grained varieties of Japan, China and the Korean peninsula. Javanica was used to designate the bulu (awned or bearded) and gundil (awnless or beardless) rices of In¬ donesia. The summer rices, the aus varieties of eastern India and Bangladesh and the Iong-panicled and bold-grained rices of In¬ donesia, which showed a high affinity with both the Indica and Japónica rices, were classified as an Intermediate Type. East Asia 39.6 (27.5 %) U.S 1.2 (0.8 %| 1.3 (0.9 %> N. Africa W. Asia 0.4 (0.3 %l 0.6 (0.4 %) Others 2.1 (1.4 %) N. Africa and W. Asia 1.1 (0.7 %) Brazil 6.2 (4.3 %) West Pakistan 2 (1.4 %) India 39.8 (27.6 %) Bangladesh 10.2 (7.1 %) Burma Extremes of climate also led to the for¬ mation of specialized types such as upland and deep-water rices. Varieties capable of tolerating salinity, alkalinity or cool night temperatures also evolved under the com¬ bined forces of human and natural selec¬ tion. There were probably more than one hundred thousand varieties of Asian rice before genetic erosion set in shortly after the Second World War. The African Oryza glaberrima rices have a parallel evolutionary pathway to that of Schematic map showing land devoted to rice production throughout the world. The space for each country is roughly proportional to the area of land (express¬ ed in millions of hectares) planted with rice. Also shown is each country"s percentage of the world total. China 34.4 (23.9 %) Rep, of Korea 1.2 (0.9 Lao People"s Dem 0.7 (0.5 %) %) . Rep Japan 2.5 (1.7 %) 4.8 (3.3 %| Thailand 9.4 (6.6 %) 2.3(1.6%) Central and East 1.8 (1.3 %) Dem. Kampuchea 1.3 (0.9 %) Malaysia Southeast Asia 34.7 (24.1 %) Philippines 3.5 (2.4 %) Subsanaran Africa 4.2 (2.9 %) Sri Lanka 0.8 (0.5 %) 0.7 (0.5 %) South Asia 54.1 (37.5 %) Soc. Rep, of Viet Nam 5.4 (3.7 %) Indonesia 8.9 (6.2 %) Chart (: Scientific American, New York Oceania 0.1 (0.1 %)Rice-field songs in the Korean peninsula. To the accompaniment of a drum, the man standing leads the song and the others respond in chorus. Folk songs ac¬ company every stage in rice cultivation, from planting to harvest, andaré often ar¬ ranged into a kind of "show". their Asian counterparts, although the history of their cultivation in west Africa is shorter and their diversity less than with the Asian rices. The many varieties of rice thus developed constituted a valuable pool of germ plasm which it was essential to collect, classify and preserve for current and future breeding programmes. Shortly after the Second World War, most Asian countries began to conserve their cultivars (varieties developed under cultivation). A number of foreign introduc¬ tions were also included in each national collection. However, coverage was general¬ ly poor of varieties from the remote areas. Few wild species were preserved. Although rice is not indigenous to the United States, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) made serious efforts to assemble a world collection of rice. The USDA also funded field collection projects in India and Pakistan. The conservation ef¬ forts were materially aided by the construc¬ tion of a medium-term cold storage facility at Beltsville, Maryland in 1957 and the establishment of the National Seed Storage Laboratory at Ft. Collins, Colorado in 1958-59. The US rice collection continued to grow from about 6,000 in 1960 to about 13,000 in 1981. During the early 1950s, the International Rice Commission of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations attempted to set up three regional collections for the ecogeographic races: Indicas in India, Javanicas in In¬ donesia, and Japónicas in Japan. Another set of deep-water rices was maintained in Bangladesh. The four collections totalled 1,344 varieties, but the three centres in theThe rice plant Oryza sativa, the world"s major cultivated rice species, was domesticated in Asia more than 7,000 years ago and over the centuries differentiated into three subspecies based on geographic condi¬ tions. These subspecies are indica, japónica (or sinica) and javanica. tropics could not adequately maintain the seed viability without refrigerated storage. Among the Asian countries, Japan is the only nation to have had medium and long- term storage facility since 1965. When the International Rice Research In¬ stitute (IRRI) began its research operations in 1961-62, it took on the role of a global repository and exchange centre. The IRRI was able to acquire a duplicate set of most national collections. When the high- yielding semi-dwarf rices began to spread quickly in the Asian tropics and to replace the traditional varieties, fourteen Asian countries collaborated with the IRRI in launching systematic field collection opera¬ tions in both the threatened areas and other remote, hitherto unexplored areas. These collaborative efforts have added 38,000 samples to national collections and the base collection maintained at IRRI. The dwind¬ ling wild rices are also a target of conserva¬ tion. Similar efforts by regional centres and national programmes in west Africa have added 7,700 African samples to the world"s rice gene pools. Since 1978 the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR) has join¬ ed the campaigns by providing some of the funds. During 1984 the IRRI collection of cultivars and wild rices totalled 74,000 ac¬ cessions. Thus, the collective efforts of all concerned have not only saved the rice crop from genetic impoverishment but have greatly enriched the gene pools available for further crop improvement. Shortly after the IRRI was established, its seed distribution service and the promis¬ ing sources of desired characters identified by its staff greatly stimulated the national rice research programmes to expand their systematic evaluation projects. Since 1962 the International Rice Germplasm Center at IRRI has supplied nearly 100,000 seed packets to rice researchers around the world in response to more than 3,000 requests. The number of requests indicates the magnitude of research experiments being conducted by rice scientists in different countries. The IRRI"s systematic evaluation opera¬ tions for a large number of desired traits were expanded and streamlined in 1974 under the Genetic Evaluation and Utiliza¬ tion (GEU) Programme. Multidisciplinary teams were organized to seek rice improve¬ ment in eight research areas: agronomic characteristics (especially grain yield), disease resistance, insect resistance, grain and nutritive quality, drought resistance, adverse soil tolerance, deep water and flood tolerance, and extreme temperature tolerance. The magnitude of the IRRI"s GEU programme is indicated by the 30,000-50,000 seed samples drawn from the Germplasm Center each year. A major thrust of the GEU programme is to raise yield levels and to stabilize crop production in vast rainfed areas where the numerous subsistence farmers have not benefited from the semi-dwarf rices, which dominate *§. "Il Wkr BMà t« ; â " *8 il i .. ; * !^^**N. ^fi^î;,* From land to mouth 1. Ploughing a rice-field in Sri Lanka. 2. Mechanized planting on a co¬ operative farm in the Democratic People"s Republic of Korea. 3. Replanting rice in Democratic Kampuchea. 4. Harvesting rice with the sickle in the valley of Paro, in Bhutan. 5. Añer the rice harvest, villagers of Java (Indonesia) get together to make stacks. 6. Winnowing rice in Burma. 7. In Nepal a wooden beam called a dekhi is used for husking rice. 8. Lunch break in Pakistan.The delta region of Bangladesh, con¬ sisting of the mouths of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, is an area where rice farming is difficult because of abrupt rises in the water level, especially since embankments are still not widespread. Farmers in the delta plant deep-water rice which grows as fast as the water rises and may reach a height of 6 metres. Current research is aiming to improve varieties of rice adapted to flooded land. the irrigated areas. In recent years several Asian countries have organized national GEU programmes. On an international scale, exchange and evaluation were greatly expanded by the establishment of the collaborative Interna¬ tional Rice Testing Programme in 1976. From 1960 to 1980, average rice yields in Asia rose by forty per cent and production by more than sixty per cent, although it must be remembered that Asia"s population rose fifty-five per cent over the same period. These improvements in production are due primarily to increases in yield per hectare rather than to expansion of areas cultivated. This has helped to lower the real price of rice to consumers in several densely populated countries. How did the farmers of Bangladesh, Bur¬ ma, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and other Asian countries achieve the feat of raising rice production more in this period of twenty years than in the whole of the preceding 5,000 years? Their success can be largely attributed to five major advances: 1. The introduction of high yielding, semi- dwarf, modern varieties. Traditional, tall varieties of rice have a tendency to "lodge", that is, to fall over because of wind, rain or the weight of the grain. The grain rots or is eaten by rats. Modern semi-dwarf varieties can yield five tons or more per hectare because their strong stemsinherited from their Chinese parents enable them to stand erect and convert nutrients, water and sunshine into grain more efficiently. About twenty-five per cent of the world"s rice acreage is now planted to semi-dwarfs. Many of the new varieties carry built-in genetic resistance to a host of insects and diseases. For example, a gene from a strain of Oryza nivara, from north central India, has been instrumental in limiting the ravages of the grassy stunt virus. 2. The development of strains with short growth duration which are insensitive to day-length. Teams of researchers selectively bred these traits into the modern rice varieties to make it possible for farmers to grow two or three crops where they previously grew only one crop, and to grow superior varieties at different latitudes. 3. Cultivation of hybrid rice. China is the world"s pioneer in hybrid rice production. China now grows more than seven million hectares of hybrid rice. Yields are about twenty per cent higher than those of ordinary semi-dwarfs. 4. Improved irrigation and water management. Better availability of water gives farmers the opportunity of growing two or more crops per year in the same field. 5. Introduction of new farm-management techniques. Yields are higher and farm incomes more secure because farmers now have improved implements and mineral fertilizers and bet¬ ter methods of applying them, including in¬ tegrated procedures for pest control and improved post-harvest technology. There is a clear need for continued genetic improvement in rice and advantage must be taken of what the new technologies such as tissue culture and genetic engineer¬ ing have to offer. The FAO has estimated that merely to keep pace with population rise an annual rate of increase of about three per cent in rice production will be needed to the end of this century. Thanks to the development of early maturing varieties we can now grow two to three crops of rice every year provided there is water and an adequate supply of nutrients. In fact, in IRRI experimental fields there is continuous cropping of rice leading to yields of more than twenty tons per hectare per year. In this intensive rice production system a hectare of land is divided into thirteen plots because the variety used takes thirteen weeks to mature from the date of planting. By staggered planting one crop is harvested every Monday. After harvesting the plot is ploughed and planted again on the follow¬ ing Friday. Thus there are as many harvests as there are weeks in the year. This is a good demonstration of the "green power" of the tropics where, thanks to the abundance of sunshine throughout the year, green plants can produce food through the process of photosynthesis. However, such continuous cropping of rice can lead to serious problems of pest epidemics and soil fertility depletion and must be accompanied by integrated pest management and balanced nutrient supply. An old Chinese saying vividly portrays the green power of tropical rice land. "A field can look gold, black and green on the same day". The gold represents the mature rice crop, which the farmer and his family harvest early in the morning. The same rice field looks black around noon because the family has already ploughed the field in preparation for the next crop. Late that afternoon the field looks green because the family has transplanted a new rice crop. No wonder that millions of people still regard rice as a unique gift from God to mankind. MONKOMBU S. SWAMINATHAN is a noted Indian scientist who played a leading role in the "green revolution" in Asia and has worked on a wide range of problems in plant genetics and agricultural research and development in the last 30 years. Since April 1982 he has been Director-General of the In¬ ternational Rice Research Institute, Los Baños, The Philippines. He was formerly Director- General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (1972-1979), Vice-Chairman of the Protein-Calorie Advisory Group of the United Nations (1972-1977), and Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Agriculture (1979-1980). He is the author of some 200 scientific papers published in inter¬ national journals.RICE IN MYTH AND LEGEND by Obayashi Taryo ALTHOUGH they have different histories, cultures and societies, all the countries of east and south¬ east Asia have rice as a common denominator. It is not simply that these peoples cultivate rice; they all have customs, rituals and myths concerning rice which serve as threads to bind them together. Rice culture is extremely impor¬ tant as the common inheritance of these regions. Myths concerning the origin of rice take many forms. Some have points in common with myths related to other crops. One of these, which is widely current in such parts of the region as Indonesia and Malaysia, tells how crops originated from the corpse of a murdered god or human being. Myths of this kind often relate that other crops originated at the same time as rice. In Java, according to some versions, fruit-bearing plants originated from the corpse of a young girl; dry land rice from the navel; coconut palms from the head and genitals; www --;:, j"j Above and below, harvest folk dances in the State of Gujarat, northwest India. ripened fruit dangled from both hands, and fruit originated from the legs and ripened in the ground. Among the Manggarai people of Flores Island, it is said that rice and maize originated from the corpse of a murdered child. According to the Japanese classic Kojiki ("Record of ancient mat¬ ters"), compiled in 712 AD, Susanoo slew the food goddess Ohogetsu-hime. Silkworms came from her head, rice seeds from both eyes, millet from both ears, red beans from her nose, wheat from her genitals, and soybeans from her buttocks. Many mountain peoples of the southeast Asian mainland and islands sacrifice domestic animals such as water buffalo and pigs as an agricultural ritual. Some plain- dwelling peoples of the region, such as the Lao of Laos, also sacrifice water buffalo. The motives underlying this practice are varied. It is believed that the flesh of the animal is presented to the gods in exchange for the gods" gift of an abundant rice harvest. It is also thought that magical power (mana) contained in animal blood promotes the growth of plants. Given the view that death is a premise of life, animal sacrifice has points in common with myths that relate the origin of crops from corpses. In the southeast Asian islands, myth and sacrifice frequently ac¬ company one another. Yet, on the mainland, despite the fact that animal sacrifice is widespread, myths which relate the origin of rice from corpses hardly ap¬ pear at all. \nother important form of rice cultiva¬ tion myth refers to the stealing of crop seeds. These myths are found not only in east and southeast Asia but are also widespread among the agricultural peoples of Africa and the Americas. Furthermore, these myths are not exclusively tied to riceIn a Burmese village, a sheaf of rice is of¬ fered to the guardian spirit of the com¬ munity. The miniature horses are vehicles in which the spirit is believed to ride. In a rice-field in Java (Indonesia) a woman binds into a sheaf the first heads of rice to be harvested. Next she will dress the sheaf in cotton print cloth and carry it home in her arms as if it were a baby. cultivation but are also applied to the cultivation of sorghum in Africa and to maize in America. In Samoa, taro origin myths also take this form. In parts of east Asia, amongst the mountain people of Taiwan, for example, this stealing motif is found in myths concerning the origins of millet. It is said that the ancestors of the Miao people of Sichuan, China, did not have the necessary seed to sow their fields. They set free a green bird which then flew up to the rice granary of the heaven god and returned with the heavenly rice seed and tare. A myth of the Minahassa region of Sulawesi (In¬ donesia) recounts how a man went up to heaven and returned to earth with unhulled rice concealed in a wound in his leg. A conspicuous feature of the rice cultiva¬ tion rituals of east and southeast Asia is the frequent appearance of the concept of a rice soul. The Lamet, slash-and-burn rice cultivators of Laos, constitute a represen¬ tative example of ancient rice cultivation rituals which are accompanied by this idea. They perform rituals which include strict taboos at each point in the cultivation pro¬ cess, and their concept of the rice soul is similar to those of many of the peoples in¬ habiting the islands of southeast Asia. The rice soul is especially important at harvest-time. The cutting proceeds in such a way that the rice soul does not escape but is sent away to the corner of the field. It flies from field to field, finally arriving at a sacred field near the hut. This sacred field is sown before the other fields and harvested after them. In the other fields, the kernel of rice is simply squeezed in one"s hand and the unhulled rice is removed. In the sacred field, however, the rice stalk is gently cut and bundled in sheaves which contain the rice soul. From these sheaves the unhulled rice is taken. It is then used to sow the sacred field the following year. If the rice soul escapes, then the rice will not bear fruit. Rice cultivation taboos and the concept of a rice soul are widely found in the archaic forms of southeast Asian rice cultivation rituals. In Japan these features are found notably in the Amami Islands. They are not at all prevalent in northern Japan, however. One special characteristic of the rice soul concept of many peoples is the extreme sen¬ sitivity and susceptibility to injury of the rice soul. It will quickly flee if injured. This idea extends as far west as the Munda people of central India. In Japan, one example of the rice soul concept is found in the eighth-century Bungo fudoki ("Gazetteer of Bungo Pro¬ vince, Kyushu"). It tells the story of an area called Tano, which in olden times was broad and fertile. The farmers of this district developed many rice paddies on this land which bore an abundant crop. The farmers made mochi (see article page 20) and used them as targets for their arrows. The injured mochi turned into a white bird and flew to the south. During that year the farmers died and their fields went to rack and ruin. The idea of the fleeing rice soul is also found among the Khmer, a wet rice cultivating people. They tell the following myth: in ancient times, when rice ripened, it fle\v through the sky and came to rest in a granary. Thus it did not have to be harvested. But on one occasion, a young husband and wife living near the granary made an unpleasant noise which startled the god of rice. They then uttered indiscreet words which offended the god. The god fled into a narrow opening in a mountain. Because of the absence of the god of rice, the people throughout the land starved. They tried various means of bringing the god back, but in vain. Finally, someone was chosen to serve as an envoy to persuade the god to return, and after many difficulties he accomplished his mission. A variety of animals appear in rice cultivation myths. A legend in which a crane is the bearer of rice is extremely widespread in Japan. Myths concerning some kind of rice-bearing bird are also prevalent on the mainland and islands of southeast Asia, and tales citing dogs as the bearers of rice are found from south China to Assam. One such legend, from the Han Chinese of Sichuan, speaks of the after¬ math of a great flood. The survivors of this flood were without crops and in a state of desperation. They noticed a dog crawling out of the flooded fields, and from the rice CONTINUED PAGE 13 Colour page Above, a field of rice ripens under a stormy Nepalese sky. Originally cultivated in the humid tropics as a semi-aquatic plant, rice can grow in a diversity of climates ranging from the hot deserts of Pakistan," Iran and Egypt to the high mountains of India and Nepal. Photo Marc Riboud © Magnum, Paris Below, Thai workers bagging rice in a river¬ side godown (warehouse) in Bangkok. Photo Mike Yamashita © Rapho, Paris 10On New Year"s Day, the chief of a Lisu village in northwest Thailandscatters rice on the assembled villagers, thereby bestowing on them the spiritual virtues traditionally associated with rice. Colour page Above, two Harijan women, with their children, outside their house which they have decorated with rice paste to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. The design represents sprays of rice with flowers. Photo © Prafulla Mohanti, Nanpur, India Below left, legend has it that the first rice to be brought to Japan was a red variety, and even today a red variety of rice is still cultivated in sacredpaddy fields belonging to the Takuzu Shrine, in Tsushima, and the Homan Shrine, in Tanegashima. Photo shows a scene from a famous ritual con¬ nected with the red rice of Tsushima. In the village of Tsutsu, in Tsushima, there are 15 old families who take it in turns to cultivate the sacred red rice and to elect one of their number as leader of the ritual. Each year, a tanemomidawara, an elaborate rice bale, is woven from the first red rice to be harvested and is hung up in the house of the leader of the ritual. In the middle of the night of the 10th day of the first month of the old calendar, the tanemomidawara is taken down, covered with a ceremonial robe, and carried in procession from the house of the leader of the ritual for the previous year to the house of the new leader. The villagers line the route and kneel to worship the sacred object as it passes preceded by a torch-bearer. Below right, rice cakes made from red and white rice. Photos © The Asian Cultural Centre for Unesco, Tokyo CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10 seed that clung to the dog"s tail they were able to begin rice cultivation. Their feelings of gratitude to this dog led them to give it a portion of the first meal after the harvest. In east and southeast Asia the connexion between the rice soul and the gods varies widely. In Java, for example, the female deity of rice (sri) is contrasted with the male deity wisnu or sedana. At harvest time these two gods are thought of as bride and groom. Consequently, when the rice buds appear it is thought that the rice is pregnant. When the rice is harvested, the rice goddess and her husband are transported to the rice granary. They enjoy their honeymoon night without being disturbed. Thus a new fertile crop is prepared for. In contrast to this, in Thailand, the rice deity goes to a shed and is requested to remain there until the following year. Among the Muong people of Viet Nam, rice is given to the ancestors as well as to the honoured spirits at the time of the New Year festival (let). Afterwards the rice is not only eaten but is also offered to the rice itself. Thus the rice becomes doubly sacred. All the gods such as the god of rice, the rice soul, and the god of the fields figure largely in these legends. In Japan the gods connected with rice cultivation are usually gods who do not always remain in the fields. They come to the fields only when the rice is growing. Gods of the mountain become gods of the field in spring, when they come down to the rice paddies. In autumn, after the harvest, they once again become mountain gods and return to the mountains for the winter. This conception of the seasonal comings and goings of the field gods is important in understanding Japanese rice cultivation beliefs. Although I have not come across a similar concept elsewhere in east and southeast Asia, in Laos there is the idea that the spirit of snakes dwells in the fields and puddles during the rainy season and moves to the rivers in the dry season. But times are changing. In east and southeast Asia rice cultivation rituals which have been performed in many areas and the widespread legends about the origin of rice cultivation are gradually disappearing with the advance of modernization and changes in farming techniques. The death of an elder means the loss of a legend and the discontinuation of one more annual event. It is the important task of anthropologists and folklorists in these regions to record the abundant content of these rice cultures and transmit them to future generations. OBAYASHI TARYO is professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Tokyo. A specialist in the cultural history of east and southeast Asia, he is the author of several books on mythology, ethnography, and an¬ cient Japanese cultural history. Professor Obayashi was a participant in the research project for Studies of Rice Cultivation gnd its Cultural Aspects in Asia, organized between 1978 and 1983 by the Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, Tokyo, with the assistance of Unesco. 13KRUSHNA the farmer by Prafulla Mohanti KRUSHNA Jena is my childhood friend. We went to school together but he left his studies when he was twelve to help his father with farming. He belongs to the community of farmers in my village of Nanpur in eastern India where the main crop is paddy rice. Krushna lives in a mud house with a thatched roof. He is married with five children, three sons and two daughters. His father died five years ago and his seventy- five-year-old mother lives with him. Krushna is about fifty but looks older. I remember he had a beautiful complexion. But now his skin is dark and withered, the result of working in the sun and the rain. "Rice farming is a hard task. To work with soil you have to become soil", he says. Krushna learned to farm by watching his father. He is considered a good farmer, and some villagers ask him to cultivate their land for them. Traditionally the Brahmins and those belonging to high castes are not expected to do manual work. Now the educated feel that working in the fields is degrading. So their land is cultivated by tenant farmers who get fifty per cent of the produce. Krushna has almost one and a quarter hectares of his own land but the plots are all scattered. Some are three kilometres away from his house. He also works as a tenant farmer for several families. The govern¬ ment has a plan for land consolidation and distribution to enable the farmers to have their land in one area. But the task is dif¬ ficult as not all the land is irrigated. The plots near the canal are the most valuable. Krushna starts ploughing his fields from the middle of April, which is the beginning of summer and the new year. The date is fixed by the village astrologer. The ploughing is done by bullocks using a wooden plough made by the village carpenter. There are no tractors; even if they were available it would be difficult to use them because the plots are so small. "For rice farming a bullock plough is the best", Krushna says. Ploughing is an art which his father taught him when he was ten. But in the sum¬ mer it gets so hot that the land cracks and ploughing becomes difficult. Some showers are needed to moisten the land. A regular supply of water is essential for rice farming but too much rain can damage the crop. There is a network of rivers but no proper irrigation. During the monsoon, which starts in July and continues till Oc- Below left, rice paste wall designs in the Indian village of Nanpur feature elephants, peacocks and lotus motifs. (See also colour photo page 12). Below right, Mahlia Buddha, the village deity ofNanpur, with his attendant. The deity is decorated with vermilion paste and a crown of flowers. tober, the rivers overflow. If the floodwater stays for a week it is good for the paddy, because it leaves a fertile silt which kills the weeds and stimulates the growth. But when the floodwater stays longer the paddy is totally destroyed. "My old mother is constantly praying to the gods for the right amount of rain to fall at the right time." By the middle of June the land has been prepared for cultivation. The farmers sow the seeds and pray for the rain to fall. They rest for three days, observing the popular festival of Raja. No work is done and the villagers eat and play. Raja was originally a peasant festival to celebrate the wetting of Mother Earth by the first raindrops of the monsoon. It symbolizes menstruation and fertility. It is a particularly enjoyable time for the unmarried girls. For three days they live together in one room, singing folk songs and playing on swings. They wear new saris and decorate their faces with sandalwood paste and their hair with sweet-scented tropical flowers. Every day Krushna gets up before dawn, washes his face and feeds his cattle with straw, husks and rice water, which his wife regularly stores in an earthen pot. She sweeps the yards and prepares breakfast for him and the family. Krushna"s breakfast consists of a bowl of watered rice with chut- nies and raw onions. He has a patch of land at the back of his house where he grows chillies and vegetables. Some days his 14mother makes rice cakes for the whole family. "We eat rice at every meal. In my childhood we did not eat any chapatis (unleavened, pancake-shaped bread) made of wheat flour. We only had puris (fried wheat cake) for feasts or festivals. But now wheat is cheaper than rice and many villagers have started eating it for their evening meals. At midday we eat boiled rice, dal (lentils) and vegetables. After feeding the family my wife puts whatever rice is left over in water and stores it in an earthen pot. It is left to ferment and is very popular during the summer. It is called pakhala bhata and is delicious when mixed with yoghurt and lemon juice and eaten with dried fish and fried spinach." After breakfast Krushna goes to his fields. Sidhia Malik the Harijan helps him. Sidhia has no land of his own and works as a tenant farmer. Until recently even the plot on which his house stands belonged to a high caste villager. Now the government has passed laws relating to land reform which gives the ownership of the land to Sidhia. He worked hard, saved some money and bought two bullocks. But one died sud¬ denly last year. He has not been able to buy another and borrows Krushna"s animals to plough the fields. Krushna stops work at noon. On the way back he bathes in the Krushna the farmer sitting with his son at the entrance to his house. Beside his feet is a sack of rice. river, washes his animals and gossips with his friends about farming. He says his prayers before eating his food and rests un¬ til the sun loses its strength, about three in the afternoon. He returns to the fields to work until it gets dark, around six in the evening when his wife lights the oil lamp to welcome the night. He fetches water from the well, feeds the animals and tethers them in their shed. While drinking a glass of tea with roasted rice sprinkled on it he tells his wife about the day"s work and listens to film music on the radio. Some evenings his friends join him and he discusses his daughter"s wed¬ ding with them. She is seventeen and has just left school. "It is not good to keep an unmarried daughter in the house", Krushna"s mother warns him again and again. But it is not easy to find a suitable boy. The parents demand dowries; wrist- watches, cycles, radios and gold ornaments. Now that television has come to the towns it has been included in the dowry. "If only my son could get a job my problems would be over." His eldest son is twenty-four and recently graduated in arts from the local college. So far he has not been successful in finding a job and sits at home doing nothing. "It"s difficult for me to get ready cash, we eat whatever we grow and very little is left over to sell. I educated my son so that he would be able to work in the town and send me money." If the rain does not fall at the right time to germinate the paddy the farmers get desperate. They have to buy more seeds, which are expensive. After each harvest a certain amount of paddy is kept aside to be used as seeds but often most of it is either eaten by rats and insects or cooked for food. Rice seedlings are cultivated specially for transplantation and the process needs a lot of care. First the seeds are sprayed with in¬ secticide and dried in the sun. Then they are soaked in water for twenty-four hours, taken out and kept in bamboo baskets. They are covered with straw and sprinkled with lukewarm water. Gunny bags are spread over them. After three or four days . the seeds begin to sprout. By then the farmers have prepared special patches of land with manures and the seeds are sown. The seedlings take three weeks to grow to a height of ten centimetres and are ready to be transplanted. In the meantime the fields are levelled, the soil must be like mud. The seedlings are planted in rows, fifteen cen¬ timetres apart. The rice plants need a constant supply of water, approximately four centimetres. Two weeks before harvest the fields are drained dry. "It takes four months from the day I plant the seeds until the day of the harvest. There are lots of problems. If the wind blows strongly at the time of flowering, the rice is damaged. Insects eat the plants and I have to spray them with insecticides, which are expensive. But we don"t use them after the paddy has come out." The intense green fields ripple in the breeze like green waves. Gradually the col¬ our changes to deep green and when the plants reach a height of a metre or so, they turn golden yellow. If it is a good crop the plants bend down under their own weight. "It gives me a lot of pleasure to see the fields full of crops. I"m glad that I"m a farmer so that my family can eat pure food grown by me. The food we buy is adul¬ terated. The traders mix sawdust with flour and white oil with cooking oil. In the winter months I grow lentils, potatoes and vegetables and sell some of them in the market. I like market days when I meet my friends from the other villages. I also grow a second crop of rice during the dry season." Krushna does not know what the green revolution is. The farmers are encouraged by the government to use high-yield rice, fertilizers and pesticides to produce a second crop. But it can only be achieved from November until May. A few acres of irrigated land are cultivated, the rest re¬ mains barren. Previously cow dung was the only form of manure, but the village women burned most of it as fuel. Fertilizers and pesticides are sold in the market place without any restriction. Most farmers are 15not aware of the harmful effects they can have on crops and health. The pesticides are so poisonous that they have killed off much wild life. The jackals have disappeared, the frogs who used to fill the night air with their croaking are gone. "I spray pesticides, covering my face with a cloth. I hire a pump from the govern¬ ment. It would be easier if I could have my own pump, but it costs a lot of money. The government has introduced new seeds pro¬ ducing more per hectare than the local seeds. The rice is white and cooks well, but there is no taste in it. "I grow different kinds of rice; some with long grains, some short, and all with different flavours and typical of our area. My mother insists on growing them. Other¬ wise we will lose them in a few years, she says." "When I harvest the rice in November the sky is blue and the sun is golden. I cut the paddy and leave it in the fields for a few days to dry. I then tie it into bunches and carry home the bundles on my head. I feel very proud. When the harvest is good the whole village smiles. "On Thursdays during the harvest season my wife cleans the house, gives the floors and walls a mud plaster and decorates them with rice paste to welcome Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. My daughters make garlands with sprays of paddy and put them around the house. I don"t go out to work and stay at home. My wife prepares an image of the Goddess Lakshmi by putting a bowl of rice in the middle of the room and decorating it with coins and flowers. The first rice from the field is offered to the Goddess and shared among the family. That night I can sleep well, but my prob¬ lems are not over. Whatever I get from the land is just about enough to maintain my family. With eight people to look after I have to buy clothes, medicines and pay for the education of my children. I can"t afford to buy a new shirt for myself. Floods and droughts occur regularly and I don"t get the return for the labour I put in." PRAFULLA MOHANTI is an Indian writer and painter. His paintings have been shown in many parts of the world, including Europe, the US, and Japan, as well as India. His classic book My Village, My Life (1973), an evocation of the Indian village where he was born and brought up, has been translated into Japanese, Norwegian and Danish. His pen- portrait of the English as seen through Indian eyes will be published next year by the Oxford University Press. PONGAL by Guy Deleury WHAT could be more usual for a farmer or villager of southern India than to boil his rice? What could be more common than the potbellied vessel in which the women of his family prepare the meals each day? Between the Equator and the Tropics, what could be more familiar than the Sun? And yet these are the three commonplace ingredients which, along with cows and oxen, form the centre of the annual cosmic festival of Pongal in the land of the Tamils. Some civilizations have tried hard to separate the sacred from the profane and to confine religion to the sacristy. The Hindu has a quite different approach. He creates his liturgies from the humblest objects and the activities of the daily round. For him the cosmos is an organism in which the tremb¬ ling of a blade of grass on earth affects the most distant stars. The castes gravitate around the village like planets around a sun, each in its own orbit. The caste system is a solar system, like every atom of the human body, the cycle of the seasons, and the revolutions of the Moon. Festivals are the nodal points at which all the vibrations of the Universe concentrate in a sound imbued with meaning. Pongal is the most notable example of such a festival. Every Hindu country has its own variant in which it expresses its specific identity. The festival of Ganpati in the land of the Marathas, the festival of Durga in Bengal, and the festival of Onam in Kerala are ex¬ amples of these manifestations. Pongal is the festival of the winter solstice, when the Sun returns to its nor¬ thern course; soon the days will begin to lengthen again. Even if today the solstice actually falls almost a month earlier, around 21 December, the ritual solstice is still observed on the same date as in the sixth century, perhaps because the Sun"s en¬ try into the constellation of Capricorn takes place at the same time as the harvest of the new rice. The date highlights the relation¬ ship between the Sun and rice, the ritual ex¬ tends the relationship to man and society. The Sun causes the rice to emerge from water and become food and life for man. The instruments of this two-phase transmutation are the oxen which work in the rice-fields and the pot in which the rice is cooked. The festival brings together these four participants in the new life: the Sun, rice, the cooking pot, and the oxas well as a fifth, village society. The festival may last two, three or four days; its length varies in different parts of Tamil Nadu. The first day is the vigil, known as bhogi or "enjoyment", of the 16During the Pongal festival celebrated in Tamil Nadu, southern India, oxen and cows become kings and queens fora day. Opposite page below, in the village of Mel Seval, Tirunelveli district, a woman cooks rice for the household cattle. On the ground can be seen the lines of the kolam, a propitiatory design traditionally traced in front of the house with white lime powder (see Unesco Courier, March 1984). Right, newly washed and garland¬ ed, cows and oxen wander freely through the village all day long. kind that is celebrated at the summer solstice, or diwali, the festival of lamps. This is the day when people cleanse themselves of the year gone by. The boys pick up any scraps of wood or pieces of basketwork that happen to be lying around; the outer walls of houses and temples are whitewashed. In the afternoon rice boiled in water is eaten. Sometimes sacrifices are made to Mariayamma, the goddess of epidemics; more generally there are rituals in honour of ancestor spirits. Old earthen¬ ware pots are smashed, and the potter gives new pots to his customers. Just as they do for the festivals of Durga in Bengal and of Ganpati in Maharastra, the potters work day and night for weeks beforehand to make the pottery that will be used during the festival. Today it is increasingly common for this pottery to be bought at the bazaar. In the past there was a nexus of links, governed by the jajmani system, between each family of potters and a number of families of village peasant-producers. Pongal was one of the festivals at which the links between village families of different castes were bolstered and reaffirmed. This was the purpose of the celebrations on the second day, known as the day of the great pongal or, in some cases, the pongal of the gods. Each family boiled its pot of rice and went, according to traditional rules of precedence, to offer portions of it on banana leaves to other families. Sometimes the high castes cooked their pongal in the morning and the other castes in the after¬ noon. The communal pongal was also boil¬ ed before the temples. On this day the favourite form of pongal is sugar pongal; its preparation is accompanied by a variety of customs involving the use of brown cane sugar, coconut, raisins, fried lentils, car¬ damom, saffron, and a hint of edible cam¬ phor. Each family was proud of .its own recipe, and for the children this delicacy is the very heart of the festival, along with the sugar cane and the new clothes. For the children are given fine stalks of sugar-cane to chew. We know that the In¬ dians invented sugar, since the very word can be traced back to Sanskrit. Pongal is also pre-eminently a day for sugar. In Maharastra, where the festival is called Makara-Sankrant (entry into Capricorn), tiny sesame pellets are given to elders and friends to whom the giver says, "take this sweet and tell me sweet things". By giving and receiving these titbits the villagers vow to put honey into all their relationships in the coming year. On that day or on the following day, red- ochre stripes representing Shiva are painted on the white walls of the temples of Vishnu. But this third day is primarily the pongal of the herds. Cows and oxen are the kings and queens of this feast-day. They are washed and beautified, their coats are decorated, rice-straw garlands are hung around their necks, their horns are trimmed, and a sacred cord of munj grass fibre dipped in yellow-red turmeric is hung between them. Thus bedecked the animals are left to wander at liberty through the village; sometimes a solemn procession is organized at which the rules of precedence of the village castes are respected. Then the beasts too are fed with perfumed and sugared pongal. Legend has it that cattle will only agree to leave their paradise to help men work the land on condition that once a year they will be feted and given a holiday. By honouring them, the village recognizes its debt towards the milk cows and draft animals. The castes of men and beasts must help each other out so that the cosmos can turn. Perhaps it is this cosmic aspect which gives significance to the bull running which takes place on the fourth day of pongal. The animals are specially chosen for their aggressiveness and strength; their horns are sharpened to make them more dangerous; gold or silver medals are attached to their foreheads. They are released one by one on a carefully marked out track winding through the middle of the village. In the midst of tumultuous shouting or anxious silence, young people try to snatch the medals from the bulls. The powerful vitali¬ ty of the bulls of the Sun is unleashed in the land of the Tamils on the day of the winter solstice, and they are dispatched on their northern trajectory. GUY DELEURY is a French author who has spent much of his life in India and has written widely about aspects of Indian thought and civilization. Notable among his published works are Renaître en Inde (1976) and Le Modèle Indou (1978), an essay on the struc¬ tures of Indian civilization past and present. His latest book, L"Inde en Fête, will appear in 1985 as part of an encyclopaedia of myths and religions (Lidis publisher, Paris). 17China"s 7,000-year-old crop by Hu Baoxin and Chang Shujia PADDY rice cultivation has a long history in China. A passage from The Book of Songs, which describes how "dates are gathered in August and rice harvested in October to make wines for the spring to celebrate your enjoyment of longevity", testifies that as early as 3,000 years ago under the Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese peo¬ ple in Shaanxi province harvested rice and made rice wine. But the cultivation of paddy rice can be traced much further back. Excavations in 1973-1974 in Hemudu village of Yuyao county, Zhe- jiang province, revealed that indica rice grown in the area of Hangzhou Bay has a history of at least 7,000 years. A high level of intensive paddy rice cultivation was achieved under the Han Dynasty (202 BC to 220 AD). Records of the transplantation of paddy rice can be found in the Simin Yueling (Farmer"s Almanac) written during this period, and by the 6th century, a number of out¬ standing, comprehensive, theoretical works on paddy rice cultivation had been written. According to Li Bozhong, "the tech¬ nique of rice-wheat multiple cropping was introduced in a few of the most developed districts approximately during the reign of the Emperor Gaozong and Empress Wu (650-704) during the Tang Dynasty (61 8 to 906 AD). It was general¬ ly adopted during the early and middle Tang Dynasty, mainly in the Changjiang Delta, the Chengdu Plain and along both banks of the Changjiang River". From the middle of the Tang Dynasty period, the Huanghe River Valley suf¬ fered from continuous wars and the feudal rulers depended more and more on revenues in kind from the south to defray their huge State expenditures. The point was reached when nine-tenths of the revenues collected from the whole coun¬ try came from the area south of the Changjiang River. Since, ¡n the area south of the Changjiang, it costs twenty to thirty per cent less to cultivate a paddy field than an equivalent area of dry land crop, the peasants tended to grow more paddy rice so as to increase their income. Under the feudal system, exploitation of tenants by the landlords was extreme¬ ly severe. Su Shi, a great writer of the Song Dynasty (960 to 1 279 AD) describ¬ ed how "income was divided into two halves between the landlord and the tenants". Rent was mainly collected in 18 kind, but by the end of the feudal period, money rent was also being collected and payment was being made in silver. However, the basis of the rent was still in kind as the sum of silver to be collected would be the price of a fixed amount of grain sold on the market. Rice is thought of as having always been the principal food of the Asian people. Although this is basically true to¬ day, during the long period of feudal rule in China, only the rich and middle-class families could afford to eat rice daily. The peasants who did the tilling were obliged to eke out a bare existence on wheat, barley, miscellaneous grains, potatoes and taros. Following the reclamation of the Changjiang River valley, new farming techniques including the use of ploughs, harrows and earth-breakers, and new cultivation techniques with emphasis on the raising of healthy rice seedlings were gradually introduced. Great im¬ provements were made in farming im¬ plements. Crooked shaft ploughs, earth- breakers and earth-cutters were in¬ vented. Irrigation implements using water-power to raise water automatical¬ ly, such as waterwheels, dragon-bone water lifts and windmill water carriers, came into widespread use. Many large-scale irrigation projects were undertaken, such as the famous Dujiang Yan Weir in Sichuan Province, the Ling Qu Canal in Guangxi Province, the Zhengguo Qu Canal in Shaanxi pro¬ vince, and the Zhangshui Qu Canal in Linzhang county, Hebei province. In the south, many small-scale irrigation systems were built. To increase the sources of fertilizer, many methods of collecting and making composts were devised, involving the use of dung from cattle-sheds, the rotting of various organic substances, the fermentation of cake manure, and the burning and baking of dung. Many varieties of improved strains of paddy rice were bred and selected. The method of selecting fine ears for breeding was first used under the Western Han Dynasty (202 BC to 9 AD) and is still employed by peasants today. For example in the 1940s Chen Yongkang, a well-known rice-grower of Songjiang county, Jiangsu province, succeeded in breeding a species of Japónica known as Lao Lai Qing which produced record yields. China also introduced advanced tech¬ niques and fine rice strains from foreign countries. For instance, Zhan Cheng rice, which was introduced from Viet Nam, was widespread in Fujian province as early as in the Northern Song Dynasty (960 to 1126 AD), and eventually established its superiority among the broad masses of rice producers in South China. Its outstanding resistance to drought earned it the nickname of the "drought-defeating" rice. Another Han dynasty wooden rice seeder, dating from the first century BC.A series of 18th-century Chinese engrav¬ ings illustrating the stages in the produc¬ tion of rice: (1) water is Introduced into the paddy field which is then harrowed to mix the water into the sun-baked topsoil; (2) rice seedlings are transplanted from the seed beds to the paddy field; (3) the water level is raised as the plants grow; (4) harvesting the crop; (5) sheaves are stacked in ricks; (6) threshing is often car¬ ried out on flooring of bamboo slats; (7) rice is ground to remove the hulls. popular feature was its short growth duration, which meant that it could be harvested before the onset of the con¬ tinuous heavy rains of autumn. Large-scale planting of paddy rice brought continuous increases in food production in southern China. In the lower reaches of the Changjiang River and the Taihu Lake Valley, two crops of rice