Red lacquered wooden spool used for winding up the string of a kite. The spool is carved from one single piece of wood including two small balls inside which make a rattling sound when the kite is reeled in. Kites were first used for signaling in China by the army. Later they became children’s toys. In the old days bamboo whistles were attached to the kite which made sounds similar to that of the ‘zheng’, a stringed musical instrument. As a result kites were called ‘fengzheng’ which combined the word for ‘wind’ (feng) with the word for the instrument called ‘zheng’. The spool dates from the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1912) and was acquired in Hong Kong in 1991. Length 20 cm. Width 3.2 cm.