I am a female who lives during the Song Dynasty, my family, along with our relatives, moved from the north of the Yellow River to the south during a massive migration. I’m creating this plaque to document who I am, where I live, what kind of world this is and some significant items from this dynasty that will help people in the future to identify it.

Yellow River – the symbol represents where I live. My family is originally from the northern part of China. When I turned 10 (around 970), we decided to move to the southern part of the yellow river, where the majority of the people live. On the plaque, I drew a figure of the river with the orientation. From what I know, the Yellow River flows from West to East and I indicated the direction of the river using small arrows. For the direction for the mass migration, I indicated the move using bigger arrows with shading and I drew some small human figures near the arrows. The arrows show that we moved from the northern side of the Yellow River to the southern side of the Yellow River.

Bowl of Rice – the symbol represents what we eat. Since the majority of the population moved, our diet changed drastically. We used to live in the wheat and millet-producing region (indicated by the drawing on the north of the river), but then we moved to the rice-growing region of the Yangzi Valley. We were able to use new gates and waterwheels to flood and drain the rice fields when we need and we also planted new, improved type of rice. There were new strains of double-cropped rice in China from Vietnam but they tasted pretty bad and didn’t last long. But then we figured out a way to develop a hybrid of rice using that and increased the production of the rice significantly. A lot of the farmers were freed up to produce goods for market because they don’t have to spend so much time on the field any more.

Gunpowder Warfare – the symbol represents one of the inventions. The iron industry became huge. Thousands of workers used the iron to produce swards, armor and other weapons. Some people even figured out the formulas for explosives and they invented weapons called gunpowder and bombs. Since the iron industry is massive, the city of Qingzhou was able to manufacture a lot of strong iron cased bombshells per month in order to engage in the war with the Mongols.

Paper Money – the symbol represents one of the inventions. Because of the shortage of bronze coins, the government decided to replace the materials for coins with iron. However, the value of the iron didn’t match up with the value of the bronze and the government set the price for iron lower than the actual price. The common people were not content with this so there was chaos around the places. In response to those chaos, the local government developed a new form of money – paper money and they gradually replaced the iron coins because the paper money are very light and are great for long distance transactions.

Bound feet – the symbol represents the trend in fashion. A painful fashion trend became popular during my time. Girls started to bind their feet using cloth. They would force their toes inwards toward the sole but leave the large toe. This left them with very small feet and most of the time; women cannot walk in those shoes because it would be painful. As a result, I saw less and less women outside of their house. I think this fashion was conducted because the husbands are trying to turn their wives feet into a private part what only they could see. Since women could not walk outside the house without help, they are served only as the sexual item for their husbands.

ZIYU LIU is a senior at University of Rochester majoring in Financial Economics and Psychology. Ziyu is moving to New York City after college to work in an investment bank. She enjoys spending times with friends in her spare time. More by Ziyu