A water wheel for irrigation (foot powered), Autumn 1944 in Sichuan Province. Similar water wheels in Chengdu are featured in "Joseph Needham Photographs - Wartime China, 1942-1946" at: http://www.nri.org.uk/JN_wartime_photos/all.htm and "Traditional irrigation waterwheels at the Szechuan Agricultural Experiment Station, Chengtu". at https://www.hpcbristol.net/visual/nh01-045 . A photo of such water wheels at West China Union University during the War years is also displayed in the Campus Museum of modern Sichuan University, West Campus in Chengdu (this is the former Lamont Memorial Library building of WCUU, which closed in 1952). Cf. A1 028p5 and A1 030p3. Other examples can be found online. These seemed to capture the attention of western photographers - perhaps not just for their novelty, but also because there was a strong propaganda effort in the USA during the later 1930s and early 1940s to present China as a country that was slowly but surely modernizing. WCUU was at the forefront of that effort. Julius visited the campus of WCUU in later 1944 with Chaplain Capt. Jesse Leroy "Lee" Coburn and likely took or acquired these photos at the university. <  BACK