Dear colleagues,

Some time ago (probably in the last year) Thomas Chen published here a document, entitled "Highly established rules regarding weapons". The page was devoted to weapon in arsenals of Guangdong and listed several strange artillery pieces:

1. Maluan tongpao - Copper gun "stallion's balls"
2. Bancaopao - Gun made of soft wooden boards
3. Matipao - "Horse cuff" gun
4. Qianlima pao - Gun of a horse, [galloping] for 1000 li [per day]
5. Senguanpao - Gun with revolving tubes (barrels?)
6. Sendipao - Gun with revolving base (lock?)
7. Cunyingpao - Gun preserving in a barrack
8. Tongguanpao - Gun which penetrates everything
9. Huweipao - Gun "tiger's tail"
10. Matuipao - Gun "horse's leg"
11. Jingpingpao - Gun "vessel to wash arms [before Buddhist's liturgy]"
12. Balianpao - Gun "grasp and guard"


And the name of several of them includes hyerogliph "gong" (the "fire" on the left, "craftsman" in the right upper corner and "shell" in the lower right corner). It means "big cannon" in old texts. Is this hyerogliph used in modern texts? I did not find it in dictionaries except for one Korean dctionary based upon Kangxi era dictionary. What this gun looks like?

And one of these devices is called Baizi bianpao. Bianpao - it os clearly a kind of rocket. But what is baizi (100 pieces?)? Something like Roman candle?

Please help me to identify not only the proper translation but the appearance of these guns.

Best regards,

Alexey.

I'll check this out with Thomas.. hopefully he will be able to reply to this.