710 mills and milling: Asia and the Pacific means to feed people, especially in Asia, where the population was growing rapidly By the second century water mills, which offered a more sophisticated milling process, were introduced in China Mills became an important symbol of political power in China and elsewhere as well as a source of conflict between local landowners, Buddhist monasteries, merchants, and the imperial authority in almost all regions of Asia By the first century, if not earlier, mills were widely used in China to process grain into flour However, they were not employed in weaving or fabric production in China, Japan, India, or elsewhere in Asia or Southeast Asia until the earlymodern period Instead, weaving was done by hand in small rural workshops Most villages and smaller towns in China built mills that were powered by human or animal labor to meet their immediate food needs Beginning with the technological revolution and advances in science that took place under the early Song Dynasty (960–1279), those communities fortunate enough to be located on a river or a powerful stream with a regular flow of water built mills In strategically located rural villages or along major roads people erected mills by combining the resources of the population or perhaps a local lord, who expected either a payment or a percentage of processed flour and financed the initial cost of construction The rural mills were fairly basic and minimal in size, reflecting the small population they served, and they could at times be located in an area as small as a 10-foot square Images and descriptions of urban mills, however, have survived in great numbers, and they allow a careful examination of the mills’ mechanical structures Using the depictions found in Chinese paintings, historians have a sense of how water-powered flour mills were laid out and organized for efficient production, particularly for the grinding of grains such as millet, wheat, and rice into flour A typical water mill might have at the side of the main structure a large, flat covered area where farmers would deposit the raw grain from sacks and baskets Using a series of sieves, the grain was then winnowed and the chaff removed Next, the separated grain was washed in river water, dried again, and brought into the central mill building, where it was ground between large circular-shaped horizontal milling stones These grinding stones were powered by a wooden shaft that was moved by a series of cogs and gears, which were connected to a horizontal waterwheel driven by the passing river water Following the grinding, the flour that had been produced in this process would be put through a sifter (powered by a second horizontal waterwheel) to remove bits of chaff, stone, and any other materials that had been incorporated into it during the milling process The sifted flour was set out on a second flat, covered area on the far side of the main building to dry thoroughly in the sun and air; this procedure curtailed the growth of mold or mildew while the flour was stored Last, the dried flour was bagged and carried by humans or loaded on carts and sold in marketplaces and to private customers, primarily in the local region While small local mills might be operated by a single individual, the larger imperial and commercial mills, especially those servicing the imperial court, regularly employed upward of 100 men Control over all significant courses of revenue was important to the Song Dynasty, which needed the steady income to finance domestic and foreign policies In the 960s the government established monopolies over both mills and over the associated wineshops that were often built in the shadows of the mills Over time the use of mills expanded, and by 1080 the Song state administration took a dominant role in the processing of raw tea leaves into powder Certain mills were licensed to grind the dry tea leaves into a fine powder that was then pressed into regularly shaped square cakes, which were easier to transport to long-distance markets than bags of powdered tea The processing and sale of tea were guaranteed to produce revenue for the Song administration Tea sales brought in an average of 400,000 strings of cash per year for the Song, each string consisting of 1,000 copper coins tied together by a cord through the coins’ centers To appreciate the significance of such a sum, consider that the average annual income of a local government official at that time was approximately 90 strings a year The efforts by the state to maintain the monopoly on mills continued until 1079, by which time it was too costly for the state to continue to run the mills, and control over them was returned to private hands, often those of the local elite Later dynasties were unable or uninterested in attempting to reestablish an imperial monopoly over the mills Since mills were established on lands controlled by Buddhist monasteries in China, Korea, and Japan, they helped the economies of both the local populations and the monasteries The efficient organization and the circular motion of the mill’s wheels and stones led Buddhist monks to see the mill’s wheels as representative of the Buddhist wheel of fate (dharma), or the Buddhist concept of eternal balance between moral behavior that keeps evil in check and of harmony in a state and universe that is properly ordered and run While commercial mills were widely known in China, they had a much smaller presence in Japan The technology that made large mills possible was brought into Japan from two sources—Japanese Buddhist monks who had learned the technology while traveling in China in the seventh century and Korea, where the Chinese-style of large-scale milling had