Wheelbarrow

A wheelbarrow is a small, hand-pushed vehicle for carrying loads, typically fitted with a single wheel and steered by one person using two handles at the back. Its design splits the load’s weight between the wheel and the user, allowing heavier and bulkier items to be moved than if the operator carried everything alone, which makes it a second-class lever. The name comes from “wheel” and “barrow,” with “barrow” tracing back to the Old English word “barew,” meaning a carrying device.

In China, the earliest clear evidence of a one-wheel cart appears in second-century Han dynasty artifacts: a tomb mural from 118 AD in Chengdu, Sichuan, shows a man pushing a wheelbarrow, and a stone relief from about 150 AD in the tomb of Shen Fujun, also in Sichuan, depicts the same. An earlier mural from 147 AD in Shandong illustrates Dong Yuan pushing his father in a single-wheel “luche” barrow. References from the 1st century BC and 1st century AD to a “deer cart” (luche) may also describe a wheelbarrow. The 5th-century *Book of Later Han* recounts that around 30 BC, the wife of imperial censor Bao Xuan helped him push a luche back to his village during their wedding. During the Red Eyebrows Rebellion (c. 20 AD), official Zhao Xi disguised himself and pushed his wife in a luche past brigands by claiming she was gravely ill. The first written description of a wheelbarrow appears in Liu Xiang’s *Lives of Famous Immortals*, where the mythical figure Ko Yu invents a “Wooden ox.” However, the *Records of the Three Kingdoms* (Sanguozhi), compiled by Chen Shou (233–297 AD), credits Prime Minister Zhuge Liang (181–234 AD) of Shu Han with inventing the wheelbarrow, noting its use in 231 AD for military supply transport against Cao Wei.

Later annotations by Pei Songzhi (430 AD) detail a large central wheel and axle with a wooden frame shaped like an ox. In the 11th century, Song scholar Gao Cheng wrote that the small wheelbarrow of his era, pulled by forward-pointing shafts, descended from Zhuge Liang’s wooden ox, and that the 3rd-century “gliding horse” wheelbarrow had backward-pointing shafts for pushing. Chinese wheelbarrows came in two types: after the 3rd century, the common type had a large central wheel, while earlier ones had a front wheel. The central-wheeled version could carry up to six passengers, distributing weight evenly between the wheel and the puller. European visitors from the 17th century onward noted this design, especially Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest of the Dutch East India Company, who in 1797 accurately described its capacity for heavy baggage. These wheelbarrows persisted into the 20th century, as seen in the “Piepkar,” a rail-mounted wheelbarrow on Sumatra’s Billiton Island. However, the European wheelbarrow’s lower carrying surface made it better for short-haul work, and traditional Chinese wheelbarrows remained widespread into the 1960s.

Chinese sailing carriages—land vehicles with sails—are recorded from the 6th century, but these were not wheelbarrows, and the date of the sail-assisted wheelbarrow is unknown. Engravings of such vehicles appear in van Braam Houckgeest’s 1797 book, where he wrote of seeing a “fleet” of large wheelbarrows near southern Shandong, each with a mast, sail, and rigging, drawn by a horse or mule.