the China Experience: Shijing: HALLOA

HALLOA!

from Zhou Song

Halloa! King Cheng
Has called you here.
Prime your farm men
To sow the grains.

Horse-swift out tools:
Full thirty lis
Are yours to plough,
Ten thousand paired.

[NOTES]
This poem was written in time of King Cheng, the second King of Zhou(1115-1079B.C.), showing the kind of mass farming employing 10,000 hands then in existence, supervised by the King himself.

Zhou Song: Festal Hymns and Songs of The Early Zhou.

lis: The ancient li consisted of 300 mu, the mu being a unit of 100 paces square. Here "thirty lis" refers to private land.

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