Picturing Technology in China: From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century

Chinese contributions to science and technology are numerous, yet in premodern China there was neither the concept of "technology" nor a word for it. Images portraying technology fell into a wider category, tu, of representations meant for practical use. There was not a word for "art" either, although art – painting in particular – played a crucial role in Chinese culture. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that English has no record of the word "technology" before the mid-19th century either, a reminder of how inadequate it can be to judge the past with the standards of the present.