Imperial Preface to the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving (Continued)

...instructing the various craftsmen and so forth. Beside the Garden of Abundant Marsh original: Fengze Yuan, an imperial garden in the Forbidden City where the emperor personally practiced farming rituals,

I transformed dry land into furrows and fields. Using stream water to supplement the wells,

throughout the year I watched the constant movement and clatter of the well-sweeps jiegao: a traditional counterweighted apparatus for lifting water. My family

harvested dozens of varieties of common grains. Along the ridges, the elms and mulberries grew thick

and lush. In the cottages, we obtained cocoons and reeled the silk. The atmosphere was as serene as

the quiet dwellings of antiquity. Therefore, I captured these scenes along with the spirit of the autumn clouds,

to use them for instruction. The scholars say: only when the cloth

is finished and the field work complete can one eat grain throughout the three months of winter. And clothing—

this is also enough to move My heart to pity. Here, My gaze is even more

intent. Thus, I have commissioned twenty-three illustrations each for Tilling and Weaving.

I have also inscribed a poem for each illustration, to chant and

sing of their diligent labor, and to record it upon the images. This was done naturally,

so that people may realize the hardship of the farmers, whose hands and feet are calloused original: pianshou zhizu, a classic idiom for the physical toll of manual labor

from toil, and the exhaustion of the weaving women at their cocoons and looms.

All these circumstances are fully depicted. Furthermore, I ordered the blocks to be engraved for wide

circulation, to show them to my descendants, so that they may know that every grain—