Shen Kuo's mission

Since Song Zhenzong, the Song Dynasty had been relying on sending large amounts of silver and silk every year to maintain a temporary compromise with the Liao Dynasty for several decades, but the Liao Dynasty deceived the Song Dynasty as weak and wanted to further encroach on the Song Dynasty's land. In 1075 A.D., the Liao Dynasty sent its minister Xiao Xi to Tokyo and asked for border demarcation.

Song Shenzong sent his minister to negotiate with Xiao Xi, but the two sides argued for several days without any result. Xiao Xi must have said that a 30-mile area around Huangwei Mountain (in the southwest of Yuanping, Shanxi Province) should belong to the Liao Dynasty. The minister sent by Song Shenzong to negotiate with him did not know the terrain of the area and knew that Xiao Xi's demand was unreasonable, but he could not refute him. So Emperor Shen Zong sent Shen Kuo to negotiate with him.

Shen Kuo, a native of Qiantang, Hangzhou, was an official who supported Wang Anshi's new law. Shen Kuo was not only conscientious and meticulous but also well versed in geography. He first went to the Privy Council and checked all the documents of the past border agreement from the archives and proved that the land should belong to the Song Dynasty. He reported to Song Shenzong, who was so happy to hear it that he asked Shen Kuo to draw a map and send it to Xiao Xi to see, so Xiao Xi had nothing to say.

Then the Song Emperor sent Shen Gui to Shangjing (the capital of the Liao Dynasty, south of present-day Barinzuo Banner in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region). Shen Kuo first collected a lot of geographical information and asked the officials in his entourage to memorize it. When he arrived at Shangjing, the Liao dynasty sent its chancellor Yang Yiku to negotiate with Shen Kuo about the border, and Shen Kuo and the officials answered the questions raised by the Liao side with evidence. When Yang Yiku saw that there were no loopholes to be exploited, he said with a stern face, "Do you want to break off friendly relations with us if you are so calculating even about this land?"

To maintain the security of the Song Dynasty's borders, Shen Gui attached great importance to topographic surveys. Once, Song Shen Zong sent him to Dingzhou (now Dingxian County in Hebei) to inspect the area. Pretending to be hunting there, he spent more than twenty days examining the topography of the border of Dingzhou in detail, and also made a three-dimensional model by kneading wood chips and melted wax. When he returned to Dingzhou, Shen Gui asked the carpenters to carve a wooden model based on his model and offered it to Song Shenzong. This three-dimensional map model was certainly clearer than the map drawn on paper.

Song Shen Zong was very interested in the map drawn by Shen Guo and the map model made by him. The next year, he asked Shen Guo to compile a map of the whole country. But soon after, Shen Guo was falsely accused and relegated by the court to Suizhou (present-day Suixian County, Hubei). There, although the environment was difficult, he insisted on drawing the unfinished map; later, he changed his official positions in several places, also examining geography on one side and revising the map on the other, and persisted for twelve years, finally completing one of the most accurate maps of the whole country at that time, the "Map of the World's Counties".

Shen Bu not only made outstanding achievements in geographic research but also was a scientist with a wide range of research interests. He was very proficient in astronomy, calendar, music, medicine, mathematics, and so on. He studied astronomy and the calendar at a very early stage. Later, when he took up the post of the Superintendent of Astronomy, he found that many of the people working there were uneducated and unskilled people who did not know how to observe with instruments. After he arrived at the Superintendent of Astronomy, he acquired additional astronomical instruments. To observe the position of the North Star, he used an armillary sphere every night for three months and finally calculated the correct position of the North Star.

In his later years, Shen Kuo lived idly in Mengxi Garden in Runzhou (now Zhenjiang, Jiangsu). He documented the results of his lifelong research and wrote a book called "Mengxi Penshu". In that book, in addition to recording the results of his research, he also recorded many creative inventions of the working people at that time, among which the particularly famous one was Bi Sheng's movable type printing technology.

Printing is one of the four great inventions of ancient China. Before the Northern Song Dynasty, there were already engraved plates for printing. But the carved board took a lot of work, and carve a good board, to change a word, you have to re-carve all. Shen Kuo saw an old craftsman Bi Sheng in his home in Qiantang, using a very fine clay, made into many small pieces, engraved with words, and put in the kiln to burn hard, becoming a movable character. With this type of movable type typesetting printing, than carved plate printing is much more convenient. When Shen Kuo saw this new thing, he was very interested, so he made detailed observations and understood, and recorded Bi Sheng's invention in his "Mengxi Penshu", and only after future generations read his book did they know the origin of movable type printing.