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Ancient Chinese Yin-Yang Fish Bowl Remains a Mystery

By Xin Guo

Epoch Times Staff Aug 16, 2007

Ancient Chinese science and technology were very advanced. The Ancient Chinese knew more about science and technology than any other culture. For instance, the yin-yang fish bowl that is part of the collection of the Hangzhou Museum in China's Zhejiang Province cannot be explained by modern science nor replicated by modern technology. It remains a mystery to the world.

Among the collections of the Hangzhou Museum, there is a bronze spouting bowl named the "Yin-Yang Fish Bowl." The bowl, which is about the size of a washbasin, has two handles and a decoration of four fish at the bottom. There are four clear parabolas drawn between the fish, just as those described in the Yi Jing (The Book of Changes). If you fill the bowl half-full of water and rub the handles with your palms, instantly the water in the bowl will tumble and the vibration will cause water to spout four two-foot-tall fountains from the mouth of each fish on the wall of the bowl. Moreover, the bowl will make the same sound as chanting the ancient divination words in the Yi Jing.

Bowl Cannot be Replicated by Any Modern Technology
Physicists from the U.S. and Japan have used all kinds of modern scientific instruments to examine and investigate the bowl trying to find out its construction principles of heat conductivity, sensoring, self-propelling, and spraying and making sound, but have not succeeded.

In October 1986, a replica bronze spouting bowl was made in the U.S. It looked identical to the yin-yang fish bowl but was a failure, as it could not function properly: It could not spout water, and the sound it made was very dull.

Modern science can only lament its insignificance before the miracles created by ancient Chinese technology and treat it as an unsolved mystery.

What were the principles upon which ancient people made the bronze fish bowl? As developed as it is today, why can't modern science and technology make a replica of a bronze ware bowl made by people in ancient times?

According to experts' analysis, modern science is analytical science. Characterized by high accuracy and strict quantification, it has reached the level of micro quantum technology. The so-called "Nami Technology" may very well represent the achievements of today's high-tech. Yet modern science has a fatal weakness: linearism. Linear science still dominates today's modern science and continues to apply a simplified approach to natural phenomena as always.

The real world and Mother Nature do not conform to linear principles, but in most cases non-linear theory instead. Modern science and technology are nothing but man-made simplification against the truth of Mother Nature.
Fountains of water that are similar to those in the bronze spouting fish bowl are called "solitary wave" or soliton phenomena. Different from ordinary waves, solitary waves do not disperse when occurring, and therefore can last a long time. The existence of solitary waves is a non-linear phenomenon.

Thus the construction principles of the yin-yang fish bowl are far beyond the scope of modern science, and it is therefore impossible for modern technology to replicate.