For friends born in the 1970s and 1980s, a slingshot has contracted many childhood memories: a rubber band is tied to a V-shaped branch, and a bullet is wrapped in the middle of the rubber band. A child with such a simple slingshot in his hand can fly happily in the sky and play with it. There are also some children who love to play with slingshots since childhood, and because slingshots are attached to sports, they have become sports heroes who have created a new history of China's participation in the Olympic Games. A small slingshot carries many dreams.

In unofficial history's storytelling novels, the slingshot often becomes a heavyweight prop. For example, in Journey to the West, the fighting capacity is fast catching up with Erlang God of the Monkey King, and there is such a killer weapon as "slingshot". The Monkey King, who was killed by him when he made trouble in Heaven, was "stunned" by his slingshot. Nine head worm, who arrived home frantically, was also knocked off a head by Erlang's slingshot.

In the hunting activities of ancient nobles, "slingshot" was also an indispensable and important equipment. In a few words, the official's son Cui went out hunting with a valuable "water mill angle target slingshot". Zhao Yong, a painter of the Yuan Dynasty, described a strongman who shot birds with a slingshot in his "A Rain of Gunfire", which is recognized as an immortal classic in the history of China painting.

However, when it comes to ancient slingshots, many friends who play slingshots in modern times will also wonder: there was no rubber band material in ancient times, so what was used to make slingshots? In fact, as long as you look at the pictures of riding horses with bullets, you know that ancient slingshots are usually similar in shape to bows. According to the description of the classic "Shuo Yuan" in the Han Dynasty, "the bullet is shaped like a bow". The difference is that there is a pocket in the middle of the bow string of the slingshot to hold the projectile.

In ancient times when there was no rubber material, there were also special materials for making particles. Although the ancient slingshot was "shaped like a bow", the "stress" of the material was still different. According to the records in ancient books such as "Flower King Gong Ji" and "Tiangong Wu Kai", six kinds of materials were needed to build a bow in ancient times: stem, horn, glue, tendon, silk and lacquer. Every material should be made of wood, ox horn, beef tendon and fish intestines. You should not only strive for perfection, but also refine it repeatedly. Under the production conditions of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it often takes two or three years to make a good bow.

In contrast, the principle of making a "slingshot" that looks like a bow is similar to that of making a good bow, but the difference is that it is not so complicated: slingshots are often made of bamboo and wood, ordinary slingshots are made of bamboo, and slingshots dedicated to noble sons are often made of good wood. For example, Song Huizong, who was good at playing in the Song Dynasty, liked to make slingshots out of precious sandalwood. There are also "litchi wood" and "northern branch wood" produced in the south, which are also used to make slingshots. As for the projectiles used in slingshots, they are usually made of mud and stone, while expensive slingshots are mainly made of gold, silver and copper, and nobles make projectiles with jewels.

The most important thing is bowstring. In ancient times, good bowstring was often made of silk, beef tendon, fish glue and other materials. The materials of slingshots and bowstrings are relatively simple, and bamboo is generally used. For example, Bai Juyi mentioned in his poem that "Huijizhu" is a good material for making bowstrings, or bamboo shoots can also be used as materials. Fish glue is often used to make good bows and connect bowstrings.

Generally speaking, regardless of material selection or production, ancient slingshots are one grade worse than bows, and their lethality is of course much worse. However, when it comes to use, "slingshots" are never less than entertainment. Ordinary slingshots, originally used by folk farmers to drive away birds and protect crops, are well-made slingshots, which also have the effect of "sneak attack" in battles. They often become fierce "hidden weapons" in martial arts novels and often appear in places where "artifacts" gather in The Journey to the West's Romance of Gods. In the military field, slingshots that seem to be "not far away" often have "operational wonders."

For example, in the Han Dynasty, when the legendary hero Ban Chao led thirty-six warriors to reopen the Western Regions, he took a slingshot with him as a weapon to kill the enemy. During the city night patrol in Tang and Song Dynasties, patrolmen often carried slingshots. According to the Six Codes of Tang Dynasty, as long as a suspicious person is found, the patrolman can ask him questions, and as long as he asks them three times, he can shoot him with a slingshot. It can be called the ancient version of the "patrol regulations."

Even ancient guardians used slingshots as combat artifacts. Some scenes in martial arts novels are not exaggerated in actual battles in ancient times: some slingshots used by escorts in the Qing Dynasty reached the "four forces", and some even fired four or five projectiles at a time, which were called "renju bullets". Even if there is an "enemy siege, there is nothing to worry about."

Of course, the place where the ancients "played slingshots" the most was the playground. In addition to hunting in the mountains, young people in ancient times also like to play slingshots in the market and even gamble with slingshots. Sometimes slingshots are also commonly used in the field of divination for some people to ask good or bad luck. For example, there are many descriptions of "holding a golden pill" and "falling a bird with a golden pill" in the well-known Tang poems, and the scene of a projectile whistling has become the daily life of many ancient "second-rate youths".