page_title: Science and technology of the Tang dynasty
section_title: Mechanical delights and automatons
hierarchical_section_title: Science and technology of the Tang dynasty / Mechanical delights and automatons
caption_attribution_description: A pair of Chinese Buddhist guardian statues made of earthenware and pigments, from the Tang Dynasty (618&#8211;907 AD), dated to the late 7th to first half of the 8th century. The caption for these artworks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art states: The foreign facial features of this pair of brilliantly sculpted guardian figures evidence the strong Western presence in Tang-dynasty China. Originating in the Lokapala deity of the Buddhist religion, which came to China from the West, this type of armored tomb guardian had an apotropaic function in Chinese burials.
context_page_description: The Tang dynasty of ancient China witnessed many advancements in Chinese science and technology, with various developments in woodblock printing, timekeeping, mechanical engineering, medicine, and structural engineering.
context_section_description: There were many other mechanical inventions during the Tang era. This included a 0.91 m (3 ft) tall mechanical wine server of the early 8th century that was in the shape of an artificial mountain, carved out of iron and rested on a lacquered-wooden tortoise frame. This intricate device used a hydraulic pump that siphoned wine out of metal dragon-headed faucets, as well as tilting bowls that were timed to dip wine down, by force of gravity when filled, into an artificial lake that had intricate iron leaves popping up as trays for placing party treats. Furthermore, as the historian Charles Benn describes it:
  Midway up the southern side of the mountain was a dragon...the beast opened its mouth and spit brew into a goblet seated on a large [iron] lotus leaf beneath. When the cup was 80% full, the dragon ceased spewing ale, and a guest immediately seized the goblet. If he was slow in draining the cup and returning it to the leaf, the door of a pavilion at the top of the mountain opened and a mechanical wine server, dressed in a cap and gown, emerged with a wooden bat in his hand. As soon as the guest returned the goblet, the dragon refilled it, the wine server withdrew, and the doors of the pavilion closed...A pump siphoned the ale that flowed into the ale pool through a hidden hole and returned the brew to the reservoir [holding more than 16 quarts/15 liters of wine] inside the mountain.
  — 
  Although the use of a teasing mechanical puppet in this wine-serving device was certainly ingenious, the use of mechanical puppets in China date back to the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) while Ma Jun in the 3rd century had an entire mechanical puppet theater operated by the rotation of a waterwheel. There was also an automatic wine-server known in the ancient Greco-Roman world, a design of Heron of Alexandria that employed an urn with an inner valve and a lever device similar to the one described above. There are many stories of automatons used in the Tang, including general Yang Wulian's wooden statue of a monk who stretched his hands out to collect contributions; when the amount of coins reached a certain weight, the mechanical figure moved his arms to deposit them in a satchel. This weight-and-lever mechanism was exactly like Heron's penny slot machine. Other devices included one by Wang Ju, whose "wooden otter" could allegedly catch fish; Needham suspects a spring trap of some kind was employed here.
caption: Wooden statues of tomb guardians; mechanical-driven wooden statues served as cup-bearers, wine-pourers, dancers, and others in this age.[28]
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