Illustration:
ill. 3.8 (set: 3.7)
Date:
1964
Genre:
illustration, textbook
Material:
scan, paper, black-and-white; original source: print on paper, black-and-white
Source:
Nongye jishu Sanzijing 农业技术三字经 (Three character classic of agricultural techniques). Changchun: Jilin renmin, 1964:34.
Inscription:
上二遍，間好苗，保质量，最重要： 挑豆簇，手要准，防掉苗，别伤根。 开高粱，要看准，鋤串空，手要稳。 开苞米，别冒鋤，剃头苗，它还出。 大豆起，二层楼，快間苗，是火候。 剷谷子，少勒苗，勒过头，剩一条。 谷子苗，寸半高，早間苗，生长好。 二遍净，三遍跑，拿起壠，防雨涝。
Keywords:
practical learning, peasants, agriculture, countryside, information, studying, countertext, fertilizer, plants, pesticides, Three Character Classic, Sanzijing

Three Character Classic of Agricultural Techniques (Nongye jishu Sanzijing 农业技术三字经)

Illustrations also show exactly what corn looks like, when fertilizer is applied properly and when it is not, for example, and what are proper hoes and which way they should be held and used with particular plants. We also find exact instructions on how to apply pesticides and on how to treat those who have become ill from exposure to them (NYJSSZJ 1964, 42).

With its focus on all of these details, the text may appear to be, at first sight, quite far from preaching anything that could be called “Confucian morality.” Surprisingly, however, it also contains Confucian ideas: one of the most significant points of the text is its admonition to heed the words of the old and thus to combine old and new knowledge to best effect: “good experiences must be handed on” (学农活问老农好经验要继承) (NYJSSZJ 1964, 2). Reverence for the “old,” which is one of the central points in the original Three Character Classic, is not at all discarded, then, in this newer text. Another idea echoed here is the basic premise of the Great Learning, one of the canonical Four Books, that if one’s family is in order, then the country will be governed well (家齐而后国治). The quintessential phrase recurring throughout the text of this agricultural Three Character Classic is that the commune members will be wealthy (社员富) and the country will be strong (国家强) if all the things explained throughout the book are done well (e.g., NYJSSZJ 1964, 47, 59). Again, the text thus implicitly follows the logic of the Great Learning in arguing that to keep the family in order is to make the commune prosper, and to keep the commune in order is to ensure abundance and good government throughout the whole country.