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Bi Maokang
Ming official from She county who served as censor and governor of Yunyang and in 1635 wrote the Illustrated Treatise on Weapons describing a flint-fired musket
In a workshop, a craftsman at a wooden vat lifts a bamboo-framed sheet from the pulp beside stacks of white paper and a tub of pulp, while others hang sheets to dry and work at a long table of carved printing blocks, and a water wheel turns outside the window.
Also known as Zi Menghou
Bi Maokang, courtesy name Menghou, came from She county in Huizhou and passed the metropolitan examination in 1598. Promoted from drafter in the Secretariat to censor, he argued that the Grand Secretariat should not be staffed only from the Hanlin Academy and asked for the rehabilitation of officials ruined for offending the powerful; he later inspected the Changlu salt works and the provinces of Shaanxi and Shandong and became vice prefect of Shuntian. In 1624 he was made governor of Yunyang, but censors allied with Wei Zhongxian soon had him removed. Recalled under Chongzhen as vice minister of war, he completed by order in 1635 an Illustrated Treatise on Weapons (Junqi tushuo) describing a musket fired by flint rather than a burning match. He later became vice minister of revenue in Nanjing and died at home after retiring. The History of the Ming (Mingshi) says he and his clansman Bi Maoliang were both respected and were known as the Two Bis.
Life and times
Dates 1571 CE–1645 CE