The oldest Chinese text on the crafts, preserved as the last section of the Rites of Zhou (Zhou li). Among chapters on wheelwrights, bronze-founders, bow-makers and potters it describes the work of the builder (jiangren): orienting a site by the sun and the pole star, and laying out the ideal royal city nine li square.
The Rites of Zhou describes an idealised government of the Zhou kings in six offices, named after heaven, earth and the four seasons. By the Han dynasty the sixth part, the Office of Winter, which dealt with works, had been lost, and scholars filled the gap with an independent treatise on the crafts: the Kaogong ji, the “Record of the Examination of Crafts”. Its language and its technical content suggest that it was compiled in the Warring States period, between the fifth and third centuries BC; many historians connect it with the eastern state of Qi.
It is a remarkably practical book. It opens with the claim that good work needs four things together (the right season, the right ground, fine material and skilled hands) and then gives, trade by trade, the proportions of chariot wheels, the alloys of bronze for bells, mirrors and blades, the curvature of bows, the sizes of ritual jades and the throwing of pots. Many of its rules are ratios, and several are still quoted by engineers.
The builder’s chapter is short but has been more influential than any other page in the history of Chinese planning. It explains how to level a site with water, how to set up a post and plumb-line, mark the shadow of the rising and setting sun with a circle and so find true north and south, and check the result against the pole star. It then describes the capital: a square of nine li on each side, with three gates on every side, nine roads running north–south and nine east–west, the ancestral temple on the left and the altar of soil and grain on the right, the court in front and the market behind. It closes with the ceremonial halls of three dynasties, the heights and batter of walls, the channels that drain fields, and the pitches of roofs: a third for thatch and a quarter for tile.
No Chinese capital was ever built exactly to this diagram, but emperors and planners returned to it again and again as a model of legitimate order. Yuan Dadu and Ming–Qing Beijing, with the Imperial Ancestral Temple to the east and the Altar of Soil and Grain to the west of the palace approach, are the closest realisations; Seoul and Kyoto follow its spirit.
The book, part by part
I The six classes of people and the four conditions of good work
Rulers, officials, craftsmen, merchants, farmers and women workers each have their part; a craftsman’s work is good only when season, ground, material and skill combine.
II Trades of wood, metal, leather, colour, polishing and clay
Thirty trades, from wheelwrights and chariot builders to bronze-founders (with six alloys of copper and tin), armourers, drum-makers, dyers, jade carvers, potters and bow-makers.
III The builder (jiangren): surveying and the capital
Levelling with water; finding the meridian with a gnomon, a circle and the pole star; the royal city nine li square with three gates a side, nine roads each way, temple left, altar right, court before and market behind.
Rules: The capital: nine li square, three gates a side, nine roads each way · Temple on the left, altar on the right; court in front, market behind · Orient by the sun and face the main hall south
IV The builder: halls, walls, channels and roofs
The ceremonial halls of the Xia, Shang and Zhou measured in their own modules; the proportions of walls and granaries; field drains of increasing size; the rise of thatched and tiled roofs.