Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional stories - Why is the ancient land area of China called "mu"?

Why is the ancient land area of China called "mu"?

Mu is an area unit in early ancient China, which was specially used to measure the land area. Converted into today's square meters, an acre of land is about 666.67㎡.

The origin of the word mu is related to the mineral field system implemented in ancient Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Early people basically used pictographic characters to create characters, which can be seen from the word field, and it represents the mine field model very vividly. Fields crisscross, dividing the land into small squares, a bit like a chessboard, and farming in many ways. The dots and horizontal lines above are a bit like crops in the field, and Xiao Xinwei grows sturdily. A word is a picture, and that's it. This is also the original form of ancient farmland in China.

In Zhou Li, there is also a saying that six feet is a step, and hundreds of steps are an acre, which also gives us a more vivid understanding of this unit of measurement. Now, after the improvement of the measurement unit, the word mu has been used less in the text, but among the people, mu is still used to describe the land and divided into such units. On the one hand, we can see that folk traditions have their own vitality. On the other hand, we will also see that the development of society has also brought about unity and innovation in all aspects, including measurement units. The two seem to be contradictory, but in fact they can coexist and tolerate each other. Because we are a pluralistic society, we have always advocated the coexistence of multicultural traditions. Without human intervention, people will naturally make choices, no matter how convenient and practical they feel.

Similarly, people are familiar with the word half a catty. Idioms now used to describe each other's level. Now many people may also be surprised. Half a catty is the same as eight ounces, and it looks similar. This is not the same thing. Why can it be said that it is even? In fact, in the ancient measurement system, one catty was 16 Liang, and that half catty was equal to eight Liang, which was naturally equal. It can be seen that there are actually rich stories behind some words or idioms, and it is also interesting to dig down carefully.