Qindu Town (Qinzhen for short) is an ancient town in the easternmost part of Hu County, Shaanxi Province, located on the west bank of Fenghe River. As early as 2000 BC, King Wen of Zhou built the "Zhoufeng Palace" here. In 401 AD, Emperor Yao Xing of the Later Qin Dynasty led hundreds of civil and military officials from the capital Chang'an to Caotang Temple to listen to Kumarajiva's teachings. In order to facilitate travel, a ferry was specially set up on the west bank of Fenghe River. From then on, this place became an important water and land transportation route, and the place name "Qindu" came from this. Because it is located on the water and land transportation route from Guanzhong to Qinling Mountains and Bashu, it had a rough shape of a town in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. The commerce of Qindu Town has developed rapidly. According to the "Huxian Chronicles" of the Ming Dynasty, the commerce of Qindu Town was: "It is prosperous and there are many merchants from Shanxi and Henan." From the Ming and Qing Dynasties to the Republic of China, Qindu Town has maintained a relatively prosperous commercial activity and has become a distribution center for Beijing and Guangzhou groceries, local mountain products, grain, and cotton oil. In the old days, the streets were lined with all kinds of shops, including blacksmith shops, grocery shops, butcher shops, drug shops, scale shops, wine shops and restaurants. To this day, Qinzhen is still a rural regional commercial center radiating two counties (Huxian and Chang'an) in the east of Huxian. The long commercial history made Qinzhen one of the earliest areas to use beam balance. The beam balance is an important part of the three major pieces of measurement and scale in ancient my country (ruler, bucket, scale), a basic tool for the Chinese nation, an important tool for achieving fair trade, and the most important weighing instrument still used by people today. The craft of hand-made beam balance has a long history in China, dating back two thousand years. The beam balance had already appeared during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. In the Mo Jing Jing Xia, there is a precise discussion on the mechanical principle of the beam balance: "If you add weight to one side of the balance, it will definitely hang down. The weight is equal in weight. When they are weighed, the base is short and the mark is long. If the two are equal in weight, the mark must go down, and the mark is right. The long and heavy one goes down, and the short and light one goes up." When Qin Shihuang unified the weights and measures, he inscribed it on a stone weight, which was equivalent to 256.3 grams per catty, and engraved an imperial edict for the 26th year. In 1964, the "Gaonu Heshi" copper weight from the Warring States Period was unearthed at the site of the Afang Palace in Xi'an. This weight was engraved with inscriptions three times from the time it was cast to the first year of the reign of Qin II, and was used as a standard for a long time, indicating that Qin had a strict system for the manufacture of scales during the Warring States Period, reflecting that the unified weighing system was maintained from the Warring States Period to the Qin Dynasty, and was continuously improved and perfected during use. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it gradually evolved into a beam balance as the main weighing tool. The picture of holding a scale drawn by the Southern Dynasty painter Zhang Sengyou is the earliest image of a beam scale seen so far. The beam scale in the picture is almost exactly the same as today's beam scale, which fully proves that the beam scale had been completely finalized during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. This shows that in the more than one thousand years since then, in terms of basic form and principle, the beam scale still follows the form and principle formed since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, without major changes. According to folk legend, the wooden beam scale was invented by Lu Ban. According to the seven stars of the Big Dipper and the six stars of the Southern Dipper, 13 stars were engraved on the beam scale, and 13 taels were set as one catty. After Qin Shihuang unified the six kingdoms, he added three stars of "Fu Lu Shou", which was exactly sixteen stars, and changed one catty to 16 taels, and issued an edict to unify weights and measures. The folk saying about the stars on the scale is: no matter what business you do, if you give one tael less, you will lose one star, or reduce your fortune or life, so there is a saying that "if you are guilty on the scale, you will not be good, and if the scale is balanced, you will be a good person." This is exactly the reflection of ancient Chinese myths and legends and astrology in this art, and it also implies the concept of justice and reflects the deep emotional foundation of the beam balance among the people. The production of the beam balance and its long-term and widespread use have also derived a large number of language heritages. For example, the word "weighing" comes from the beam balance, "quan" originally means the weight, and "heng" originally means the beam; there are many proverbs and sayings in the local dialect that come from the beam balance, such as "If you don't know how to weigh flowers, you won't be able to manage the family" and "Your heart has eaten the scale hammer" (to describe people's greed), etc. At the same time, because the shape of the beam balance is like a dragon, some people regard the scale as a lucky thing and use it to suppress evil and worship it in the main hall. It can be seen that this art has important cultural value. It is impossible to verify when people started using scales in the market in Qinzhen. Gaofu Scale Shop is an early scale shop in Qindu Town, which was opened around the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty. According to Yang Weibin, the heir of Yang's Scale Shop, and his family, Yang's Scale Shop is an old shop passed down from ancestors in Qindu Town. In the 1920s, Yang Fengji learned the craft of nailing scales from Gao Fu, and opened his own "Yang's Nailing Scale" scale shop around 1930. Since then, the Yang family has passed down the craft from father to son for several generations. Until the 1980s, most of the beam scales used in the market and shops in Qindu Town were made by the Yang family. The wooden beam scales made by Yang's family are divided into three types: large, medium and small according to the length and weight of the beam. The large scale weighs 150 kilograms, and the small scale weighs 5 kilograms. It consists of three parts: the beam, the weight and the scale pan. Its production is an extremely delicate and rigorous manual work, including more than ten processes such as selecting wood, making the beam, putting on the scale hook and the lifting button, calibrating and marking the scale, inlaying copper flowers and dyeing the beam. Each process has strict rules and production techniques, and is handmade with special tools passed down from ancestors. In particular, calibration and marking are the core of its skills, which utilize the principle of levers and mathematical laws, reflecting and inheriting the scientific spirit and wisdom of ancient my country. In the past, the scales made by Yang Fengji were 16 liang scales, that is, 16 liang equals one jin. The scale is a rope and a knob, not a fixed weight. The 16 liang scale was used until the founding of New China. In the early 1950s, in order to strengthen the management of the measurement law system and implement the reform of measurement units, the state successively formulated the verification procedures and national standards for beam scales, and unified the scale system to 10 liang per jin. After collectivization, Yang's scale shop became public and became a nail scale store opened by the production team. In the 1960s, Yang Fengji passed on the scale-fixing skills to his son Yang Bowen, who changed the original one rope and one knob to two lifting ropes, improving the performance of the wooden beam scale. In the early 1980s, with the dissolution of the production team, the scale shop returned to the private ownership of the Yang family. As the economic system reform continues to deepen, the rural commodity economy is unprecedentedly active, and Yang's scale shop ushered in a golden period, selling five or six hundred beam scales a year. In the late 1990s, as electronic scales and weighing scales gradually became popular, fewer and fewer people used wooden beam scales. The craft of making wooden beam scales can no longer rely on the market to survive, and its endangered status is very serious. There are more and more people in the whole society who "don't know how to use scales". At present, the scale shop business is becoming increasingly sluggish, and only more than a hundred beam scales are made and sold each year. The original several scale shops in Qinzhen that made beam scales have closed down one after another, leaving only Yang's scale shop barely supporting it. In the early days, Yang's wooden beam scale production adhered to the ancient Chinese wooden beam scale production tradition. After the founding of New China, along with the continuous development of my country's weighing instrument management policy, its inheritance history condensed the development and evolution of my country's wooden beam scales from ancient times to the present. This skill has important historical value. The production of the beam scale is different from the traditional handicrafts based on sensibility and experience. It is based on rules and standards, pursues accuracy, and contains physical principles such as counting and lever mechanics. In particular, the 16-liang scale before the Republic of China created a hexadecimal mathematical carry mode. These characteristics make it have important scientific value. Due to its strong professionalism, there were fewer people who mastered this skill in the old days. It was generally passed down from generation to generation. It is a relatively special skill among traditional Chinese handicrafts. Now there are very few people who can master and inherit this skill. It is a witness to the ancient wisdom of the Chinese nation and occupies an important position in economic history. In real life, the use of the beam scale is more humane than that of the electronic scale. During the transaction, the seller shouted with a smile on his face, "Look, the scale is high", and the buyer looked at the high-raised beam and felt that he had really benefited a lot. He was happy to pay, which showed the humanistic character of both parties. The beam scale is easy to carry, and farmers in the mountains will also carry a beam scale to prevent being cheated in transactions. This proves that the beam scale still has its application value. In a certain sense, it is also a green measurement tool that retains the original ecology and sustainable development. Today, the Qinzhen Yang's beam scale making technique has been included in the third batch of Shaanxi Province's provincial intangible cultural heritage protection projects and has been effectively protected by government departments. (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.) (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.)