The wooden ox and the stray horse are the same means of transportation, so it is more appropriate to call them the wooden ox. It is a four-legged wooden transport vehicle driven by human power. It has a dead weight of about 50 kilograms and a load of about 200 kilograms. Utilizing the lever principle to save effort, the weight on a person's shoulder changes regularly between 0 and 75 kilograms. It can walk on roads that real cattle can pass, such as mountains and muddy roads, which is incomparable to round-wheeled vehicles. When the road conditions are good, the round-wheeled cart is much more practical than the wooden ox and the horse. This is one of the main reasons why the wooden ox and the horse are not widely used and even lost. Keywords: Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms, wooden ox and flowing horse, means of transportation, four-legged walking, lever principle ⒈ Wooden ox and flowing horse Overview: Whether wooden ox and flowing horse exist, and whether the wooden ox and flowing horse recorded in ancient books are authentic, there is a lot of debate about this. The author uses the method of making wooden ox and flowing horse recorded in Volume 21 of "The Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms" Mainly, he conducted research based on relevant materials such as "Three Kingdoms" and "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", put forward his own opinions, drew drawings and created models. It is believed that the wooden cow and the flowing horse are authentic and trustworthy. The author is confident that he has solved the mystery of the wooden cow and the stray horse. Relevant experts, scholars and other comrades are invited to review and appraise it. Your advice is welcome. 1.1 According to the records in ancient books, real wooden cows and flowing horses can be made. According to the original text "Kong Ming made a wooden cow and flowing horses" in Volume 21 of "The Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the author can make a wooden cow and flowing horses, and there are several similar models. This article selects a model and draws the outline, name, dimensions and walking diagram of the wooden cow and flowing horse based on the names and data provided in the original text, and also makes a model. This model can carry loads and move forward and backward freely. This wooden cow and flowing horse model is made based on the appearance described in the original text of "The Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and the data provided. The names and sizes of the main parts are completely from the original text. Only a few names have been added for the needs of this article, and a few dimensions have been calculated. . The consistency between the model and the original text strongly confirms the authenticity of Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse. Please refer to Figure 1 "Schematic diagram of the appearance of a wooden ox and a flowing horse", Figure 2 "Schematic diagram of a wooden ox and a flowing horse walking", Figure 3 "Image of the parts of a wooden ox and a flowing horse", Figure 4 "Dimensions of a wooden ox and a flowing horse", and Figure 5 "Dimensions of the foot hole and axis hole of a wooden ox and a flowing horse". 1.2 The wooden cow and flowing horse have practical application value. The wooden cow and flowing horse in this model are four-legged transportation tools that look like real cows. Because it walks on four legs, it can travel on uneven roads and muddy roads. This is a road where round-wheeled (one-wheeled or four-wheeled) vehicles are difficult or impossible to travel. Because it walks on four legs, it is not easy to slip on slopes. It can automatically "brake" after stopping. These advantages make it suitable for mountain transportation. The use of wooden oxen and flowing horses is another big advantage. When transporting grain and grass during war, real oxen and horses consume grain and grass, so part of the transported grain and grass is consumed before it reaches the destination. Moreover, real cows and real horses consume grain and grass as usual when there is no transportation work. This is a major shortcoming of real cows and real horses transporting grain and grass. The longer the transportation time, the more food is consumed, and this shortcoming is more prominent. The use of wooden oxen and flowing horses to transport grain and grass does not consume grain and grass, which effectively overcomes the shortcomings of real oxen and real horses. This is another basis for the wooden oxen and flowing horses to replace real oxen and real horses in transporting grain and grass. Because wooden oxen and flowing horses are driven by human power, the person driving the oxen has to consume grain and grass. This is a shortcoming of human power to transport grain and grass. However, manpower transporting grain has its advantages: first, the cattle driver is also a warrior, which can protect grain and grass and reduce the number of specialized grain protection teams. The second is that the cattle drivers can be transferred to the combat troops when they are not tasked with transporting grain; the third is that it is very economical and cost-effective to use the casual combat troops to transport grain. Wooden cows and flowing horses can make "people less tired", which is another advantage. The design of the wooden cow and flowing horse applies the principle of lever labor saving. The weight carried by the driver of the cow is 0-30% of the total weight. When the total weight is 250 kilograms, the weight carried by the driver on the shoulders is 0-75 kilograms. This weight-bearing was not difficult for the ancients, and it was indeed a sign that "people don't have to work hard". However, compared with the weight of the round-wheeled vehicle traveling on flat ground, it is still too heavy. This is another reason why the wooden cow and the horse were not popularized and even lost. The above shows that wooden oxen and flowing horses can "advance and retreat freely" in mountainous areas, "people do not have to work hard", and "oxen do not need to eat". Therefore, it has practical application value in mountain transportation. 1.3 Wooden ox and flowing horse are one kind of means of transportation instead of two. One of the reasons is that ancient books rarely mention wooden ox or flowing horse individually, and most of them are collectively referred to as wooden ox and flowing horse. The second reason is that the original text lists separately the method of making a wooden cow and the method of making a flowing horse, but the method of making a wooden cow only describes the appearance of the wooden cow and does not mention the manufacturing data. On the contrary, the method of making a flowing horse only has manufacturing data, but no description of the appearance. If they were combined into one, they would form a whole, with both appearance description and manufacturing data. Only by considering the method of making the wooden ox and the flowing horse as the same means of transportation can the authenticity of the wooden ox and the flowing horse be confirmed. "Three Kingdoms" has the sentence "the number of sizes of flowing horses", which further illustrates that the latter part is just the "number of sizes". In the original article on how to build a wooden cow, the characteristic of a cow - its horns - is mentioned. In addition, the speed of movement is as slow as a cow but not as fast as a horse. It can be considered that the original design was a wooden cow, but it was only later called a flowing horse. The "Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse" Debate - What does the "Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse" made by Zhuge Liang during the Three Kingdoms period look like? Academic circles have always had different opinions. Wang Mian, a teacher at Xinjiang Institute of Technology, is engaged in research on ancient machinery. In May 1985, he claimed to have recreated a "wooden cow and flowing horse", attracting attention from all parties.
Tan Liangxiao, an expert on Three Kingdoms culture at the Wuhou Temple Museum in Chengdu, believes that what Wang Meng copied was not Zhuge Liang's "Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse". The two parties are constantly researching and exploring in their respective fields, but have never met. On March 8, when Wang Mian went to Chengdu to visit relatives, he made a special trip to visit Tan Liangxiao at Wuhou Temple and had an interesting conversation about the controversy 13 years ago. What should a wooden cow and a flowing horse look like? Wang: Liu Xianzhou, the founder of Chinese mechanical history, believed that the wooden cow and flowing horse were the deer carts of the Han and Jin Dynasties, which are now called wooden wheelbarrows. I don't agree with this view, but lean towards it being an unconventional machine. Tan: I also disagree with Liu Xianzhou’s point of view. The Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse is not a unicycle. I think it is a human-powered wooden four-wheeled vehicle. The unicycle has a high center of gravity and can easily roll over. Wang: I always feel that the "walking mechanical" idea that I first entered into when replicating the wooden cow and flowing horse was right. It has a similar shape and can move around, but it cannot bear weight. Tan: Your machine is so complex that it exceeds the capabilities of the ancients in the late Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms era, and the load-bearing problem has not been solved. According to historical records, the carrying capacity of a wooden ox is about 648 kilograms. The flow horse is made on the basis of a wooden ox. Its carrying capacity is less than that of a wooden ox, but its speed is faster. At that time, Sichuan was short of cattle and did not produce horses. In order to strengthen the transportation of military grain, if a tool with complicated machinery and a small load-bearing capacity was made, it would be just a decoration. Wang: My hometown is a rural area in Zhejiang. The roads nearby are very difficult and very muddy after it rains. People say that the road to Sichuan is difficult, so the plank road is just like that. Tan: It’s not what you think. There are several types of plank roads, the wide ones are about two meters. In ancient Sichuan, there was no need for stones to pave roads. The entire plank road was made of stone slabs and wooden boards. The plank roads in Hanzhong and Sichuan are relatively good plank roads, equivalent to the current "national highways". Wang: Then I made a mistake. I didn’t understand the path traveled by the wooden ox and the flowing horse. Why was the legend of "Wooden Cow and Flooded Horse" lost? Wang: Zu Chongzhi’s understanding of wooden ox and flowing horse is “a kind of strange weapon”. I think useful gadgets are generally not lost, but why didn’t Mu Niu Liu Ma leave even a drawing? Tan: Historically speaking, Zhuge Liang was a down-to-earth and down-to-earth man, and his inventions were relatively pragmatic. After Liu Bei's death, he had a heavy burden and had no time to think. He just wanted to use less manpower and transport more food. But the wooden ox and the flowing horse were not ideal advanced tools, and they were not praised. Unlike inventions such as the Eight Formation Diagrams, the Lien Slave, the Armor, and the Axe, they were not popularized, which was one of the reasons why they were lost. There should be drawings, but I didn't find them. Maybe the paper is not easy to preserve over time. Wang: Not praised? But why did Chen Shou write "Wooden Cow and Flooding Horse" into "Three Kingdoms"? Tan: That’s just an objective statement. First of all, it is certain that Zhuge Liang has improved the means of transportation, otherwise he would not have coined the new concept of "wooden ox and flowing horse". The specific aspects of improvement need to be further discussed. Wang: In "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", is Sima Yi's imitation of a wooden ox and a flowing horse believable? Tan: It’s impossible for Sima Yi to imitate The Wooden Ox and the Flowing Horse, that’s just a novel. He has the food himself and does not need to find a way to transport it. "Wooden Cow and Flowing Horse" is still a mystery. Wang: I am engaged in ancient machinery research. It was my interest in "Wooden Cow and Flowing Horse" when I was young. It is very challenging. The conversation helped me gain a lot of knowledge, but I can’t come to a conclusion about what a wooden cow or a stray horse is. Its replication cannot be limited to the small circles of academia. Tan: Since there are no records of the formal production of the "Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse" in ancient books, and no drawings have been handed down, it is very difficult to copy the "Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse". Wuhou Temple also asked engineers to draw pictures and try to copy it, and also collected many opinions, but the results were not ideal. Wang Mian's reproduction can be regarded as one of the many kinds of "wooden cows and lost horses" that exist in China today. Postscript: Wang Mian has devoted himself to the restoration of lost ancient Chinese machinery for more than 40 years. He has recreated the Luban wooden chariot and horse that have been lost for more than 2,000 years, and the ancient emperor's shudder placed on the right side of the seat as a warning. In 1985, Wang Mian's replica of the "Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse" was made of wooden and iron bars, which attracted attention at home and abroad. "China Machinery News" also conducted a special discussion on "What is a wooden cow and a stray horse?" in the first half of 1986. Many scholars have questioned the theory that "Wang Jian was the first person to successfully create and verify a wooden cow and a flowing horse" because ancient books record that Chongzhi, an outstanding scientist in ancient my country and the ancestor of the Southern Dynasty, recreated a wooden cow and flowing horse in the fifth century AD. However, Wang Mian’s views can enrich the study of wooden cows and flowing horses and activate people’s thinking. Wang Mian's replica of the "Wooden Cow and Flowing Horse" has attracted the attention of many merchants. Last year, he even went south to Guangzhou to enter the market for display. In recent years, Wang Yan has also been constantly searching for relevant experts and scholars in China to seek opinions from various sources.
I hope my answer can be helpful to you~