Three characters of “Tuolaji” = lit. “push-pull machine”,

Nobody knows exact origin – China, late 70’s

Creation meant: BIG mobility and productivity jump

Now, can: Plow far fields, transport crops and goods for friends/neighbors, transport people to next large town or market, etc.

Here can see plow : disconnect cargo cart  | take wheels off | put plow blades on | Altogether btwn 20 and 30 mins | Owners were envied for a long time, now despised in places:  Loud  |  unsafe  |  polluting

Regardless, this is “Granddaddy” of CRV’s, it can still be bought in rural areas (6000 kuai)

many types of vehicle evolved from this – we’ll talk about some shortly |

I move to Myanmar fulltime in ’09 | my job is to write surveys; build+ train research teams – design, manufacture, market affordable irrigation tech. | photo from Proximity Designs is of their most popular item: treadle water pump | My job: survey for diff. depts | Fave dept.: design, as ?’s most interesting to ask / enumerate | After 1.5 yrs., wanted design focus + get out into field more

Next job: soc. ent., locally design and manufacture ceramic water filters | in the field more often than not | inject HCD-research into local ceramics wkshops across Myanmar, our manuf. and dist. hubs | In-field, noticed 2 things: 1: resource-constrained creativity kept things moving & “filling in the gaps” – like repurposing and reusing materials 2: importance of tuolaji in rural life | TLJ in photo repurposed – guesses? Clues: our office depended on him, every week, vital to life

Water distribution in the dry season! | Out back of a tuolaji | drive belt for TLJ’s engine switched to power front-pump | water from river into rear tank, then TLJ tank to house’s tank | in this photo case: house tank on ground, gravity + apprentice does “heavy lifting” | One of my friends recommended (jokingly) propose to ride+research TLJ | Back in remote field office, when elec. shut at 8 & everyone retired upstairs to common sleep room, huddle under mosq. net to type research proposal until the flashlight battery died.

Proposed study: Dan Hill (designer/urbanist) “dark matter” – not real dark matter! (actually failed physics in High School, I’d be bad at really studying it)  but “metaphorical” dark matter | dark matter is his phrase for “the stuff designers have to engage with”, and “where real challenges to a design lay” – whether designing a service, product, policy, or vehicle mod | he calls it dark matter because even though it makes up 83% of the universe, it is invisible! | this “invisible stuff” listed here is beyond what many designers usually see/touch/consider | I wanted to academically “unpack” user-led, resource-constrained mod of CRV’s.

After months in China, realized: limiting myself w/ only TLJ, so branched out to other vehicles (and mods) |  Photo: “agricultural vehicle” or “nongyongche” in Mandarin | Reveal some dark matter and history around a modification for this | Learned this from users & repairers across Yunnan | Now, will relate it to you here: |  Picture yourself agri. vehicle driver, Yunnan province, early 2000’s | You can count paved roads in your county on one hand, mostly for connecting larger, faraway places (not smaller residential clusters that form the villages) | Few other agri. vehicle owners in surrounding villages, means good supply of jobs for you | Mostly driving for others: moving goods, crops, and agri. supplies | Photo: you also help w/ construction & infra proj. around village || NEXT SLIDE: As you drive to a typical job in your area around the early 2000’s, this would be the view out the windshield of your late-model agricultural vehicle. 

[Video footage of driving down unpaved dirt roads] Though your vehicle has covered cab (element protection), hydraulic rear bed (dumping and quick unloading), and stronger engine making it able to carry more and faster than traditional TLJ, + off-road and btwn. small villages where most jobs are, higher top speed irrelevant |  You must crawl along your county’s unpaved dirt rds. | Even going this slowly, your butt will hurt by the time you arrive (mine definitely did).

Photo: BUT: climbing those hills hard on engine, esp. with heat + cargo | Your diesel engine is water-cooled, so you need to constantly add water to it | you and the other few agri. vehicle drivers in area discuss fear of running low on water and burning up engine while somewhere remote.

Few drivers try techniques for better preserving water they already have | repurpose tire tubes by cutting and affixing to engine to catch splashes when going over bumps | not permanent solution, stop-gap measure at best.

Others carry large jerry cans of water in their cabs to add to engine, but this takes up valuable room for tools & spare parts | it also sploshes and bangs around cab, heavy + awkward to lift up + fill on hot engine, etc. | Jerry cans sucked, but overheating sucked more | Tried jerry-canning for a while, you are dissatisfied | but you’re resourceful, and experiment with different ways to hold water, and transport it to your engine. One of your early attempts might look like this...

You still want to easily get in/out of vehicle (jerry can too bulky), want something durable that can be welded on for security (plastic no good) | that’s how an expired fire extinguisher ended up retrofitted on to an agricultural vehicle’s side | water is added from the top, and one end of the tube you see hanging there is connected to the engine | and other is connected to the fire extinguisher.

Close up, where tube is attached and water dispensed by opening that valve… | gravity-fed, to the engine...

This later model was fabricated by a local vehicle workshop; had to develop it, as after all, there are only so many fire extinguishers.

Mimics the design, copies what we liked about the fire extinguisher! water was added on top, and gravity fed into engine with an attachable tube.

This other end of the tube runs into the engine from your vehicle’s tank (or fire extinguisher)

All well until 2006: start of five yr period where 1,298,740 km (807,000 miles) of rural roads repaired/paved across China | Think about that! | Drive back and forth, SH to BJ back to SH, daily, for one year and four months | Much of this paving was in the west – including those rutted dirt roads we saw earlier | many newly paved local rds let you + your fellow agri. vehicle drivers travel further distances faster | awful roads like the ones in the earlier video were quickly becoming a thing of the past. 

Look at you go! Compared to the road before, now you’re a regular speed demon! Unstoppable.

Big change in style for you + fellow drivers: longer distances, higher speeds | Soon, though, you realize a design flaw: descending steep, mtn rds with heavy loads causes your brake pads to heat up rapidly – and can sometimes even fail | you look at the other big trucks you now share the road with for inspiration, and see some of them using a system of applying water to brakes to cool them, and that gives you an idea.

Here is a motorized air pump’s air tank, repurposed by lashing it to your roof | You figured you need more water if your going to cool your brakepads, so why not try a larger tank? | door-mounting it would make it hard to get in/out | mounting it under the vehicle would mean it couldn’t be gravity powered, need to install a pump, complicating things.

So with this, water flows out of the back of the tank, down into vehicle’s cab…

… where it is controlled here | driver and passenger sides are controlled by these pairs of valves, | with these channeling water to brake pads on the front and rear tires (on this vehicle, there is also a channel to the engine, but that control is on the dashboard)...

…and water is dispensed and comes out right here || keeping the brakes from overheating [driver side front tire] | Mod catches on / disseminates quickly, due to drivers not just considering a “convenience”, but also a key safety feature | soon, potential buyers, after researching other local user’s vehicles, start to request water tanks from new vehicle dealers | Dealers are caught by surprise, and most don’t know what to do about it | Before, requests for the ability to add water to their engine tanks was uncommon | Now this user-develop innovation has quickly evolved to be an expected safety feature | A few dealers realized lost opp., and report customers’ demands to higher-ups however they can | Eventually, they add roof- water tanks with channels to brakes and engines as an option |

Today, water tank has evolved from “premium feature” to being standard for new agri. Vehicles in Yunnan. Photo: this driver illustrates interesting form for filling the engine’s water tank after having filled roof tank (remember this posture, it’ll be relevant later) |… of course, form of mod still evolving and improving, lead by users’ efforts and needs | Now that roof tank widely disseminated, more ideas for it can develop since it is in the hands of so many more people – a type of feedback loop |

Just one example of this: This driver’s vehicle came with a roof tank, but he’s older and, as he told me, “I don’t have the strength to be climbing up on the roof every time I need to add water to the tank” decided to figure out a way to add water more safely || That’s where this mod idea comes in, as seen before, constraint (physical, in this case) leads to creativity

(for example, there is no simple way to see what the water level in one’s roof-mounted tank is. Drivers I did ask re: knowing tank’s water level, one response was, “I know whenever I go over a big bump in the road and water doesn’t splash out of the tank and on to my windshield that I’m probably at less than half of a tank.” | Perhaps that will be next )

Think back to that risky pose of that driver crouched on the roof – here is a user-developed solution! || Driver connects hose to pipe on ground level, || opens valve, and water flows up and into the tank | | | No need to get up on roof | I have seen this a few times, but not very widely yet | This evolution will continue as long as these agri. vehicles are in use |

Here is a replay of that entire narrative, played out with all of the various actors and elements of the “Dark Matter” that influenced this particular mod’s evolution. This isn’t a perfect model – there are probably many more actors and factors besides this – this is just an example of the interplay. Also, this is incomplete in that there are numerous other modifications evolving simultaneously along with this water tank on this vehicle.

After observing+ living with + working alongside drivers, realized there were more impactful things I could be doing with my time than comparing water tanks on vehicles in Myanmar and China.

Shifted my role, away from looking at histories of modifications, and towards cataloguing present-day modifications, and the user behavior surrounding them. I want to create a resource that:

ONE: shares knowledge about vehicle modification

TWO: shares knowledge of drivers’ tools

THREE: presents found needs and design opportunities

Goal: share my findings in an engaging way that both inspires drivers and modifiers in China while showing the rest of the world that there’s an amazing amount of creativity in China, and that it isn’t all just shanzhai iPhones! | | |

For the first goal: as an example of knowledge sharing: Look at this three-wheel vehicle-based fish-vendor in Shanghai. Her different types of fish are laid out in front of her in separate plastic tubs, with a battery-powered air pump supplying oxygen to each through the tubes.

This mobile fish vendor is based in Chongqing, and he sells fish from a pool he’s constructed in the back of his vehicle. Consider the differences in their approaches, and what these different vendors would say to each other if they could swap ideas. Would one (or both!) change their design?

These vendors are on opposite sides of China, but they each have knowledge that might prove useful to the other.

2nd goal: share knowledge of drivers’ tools:

You can learn a lot by understanding what people carry, and a vehicle driver is no exception || Photo: Here’s a typically equipped under-seat toolbox in a rural vehicle in China, speaking to the tasks a driver has to deal with – the constraints they face, and perhaps even revealing some design opportunities:

Rope: for holding loose cargo, for towing or being towed if you are stuck or break down;

Bottle: for holding everything from drinking water, to engine lubricant, to diesel, (not at the same time, obviously);

PATCH + WRENCH + JACK: Your “tire kit”

Often drivers will carry an additional bag of tools, consisting of common screws, bolts, wires, and the tools to attach and remove them, but this is the minimum.

Does anything seem “missing”, in your opinion? WHAT WOULD YOU EXPECT? THINK TO YOUR OWN CAR AND WHAT YOU KEEP IN IT. I’m THINKING OF ONE THING IN PARTICULAR, HERE:

If you buy a car in America, where I’m from, your car probably came with jumper cables, - not most agricultural vehicles – (though that’s not to say they are “not needed”, just that I’ve come to discover that “to need” something is a relative term).

This is before dawn, middle of winter in rural Yunnan province. For 30 mins., we’ve been standing on the side of the road next to the only building around for miles, a closed Sinopec gas station. One of the vehicles in our convoy has stalled out - battery is too weak to restart it. The gas station might have jumper cables, but won’t open for hours; tried push-starting it, but cant get it going fast enough. We found a length of wire, but too short to connect the battery terminals, so for a while the other drivers tried what you see here: physically connecting the two vehicles’ battery terminals together, and then someone revving the charged engine. Caused sparks, and lots of swearing, but didn’t work.

Then, we hear the familiar churn of another diesel engine, and see a headlight beam far down the road: its another agri. vehicle, and we wave him down. we explain the problem, and ask whether he has jumper cables. He says no, but that he’s got a rope with him. The first driver replies “Sure, we have ropes, too, but what good will that do?” The other driver explains: Tie the dead vehicle to the rear of a live one, and goose it, with everyone who can pushing from behind. Sure enough, it works!

So nothing physically changed about the rope, but in our minds, the rope will now always be that much more useful!

I want to make this serendipitous experience into something easy to learn and reference, and let it spread LIKE THE WATER TANK IDEA to the many drivers who it could have saved time or money! Even if it just saves someone from freezing their butt off in the middle of January in front of a Sinopec station.

After observing many users for extended periods of time, I’ve discovered a few potential needs that will also be included in the conpendium. Inspiration for one idea came from watching two different vendors, in two very different contexts and at two opposite ends of China, performing a similar task and facing similar constraints. The first starts with a question: Why is this man sitting on this bucket? Guesses? Hints: He’s a vegetable seller.

This plastic bucket once held antifreeze, but is now this mobile vegetable seller's cash register. Besides holding small change, it also holds:

pen and a pad – uses it to write receipts out for the cooks on construction sites who buy vegetables from him to prepare for the workers

a cigarette lighter – cigarettes he keeps inside of his pocket, though

his cellphone (a "Sunup" brand) – “sometimes doesn’t hear it when he’s got it in his pocket.”

a bottle of drinking water (he keeps a separate water bottle in his vehicle, this one sans label, to sprinkle on particularly dirty vegetables to clean them). He's also written the names of several of the vegetables he sells most frequently around the inside of the bucket ("That's so I can remember how to write them when I write my receipts for the construction workers, or write the price signs out for customers... I'm not too good at remembering the characters.").

It seems the bucket's proximity to him varies directly with the number of people who are nearby - the greater the crowds considering his cabbage and green onions, the closer he keeps his bucket to himself. Asking him, he says its not ideal, but that he can’t store anything he needs in his vehicle since he’s not selling next to it (parked a few spaces away). He keeps larger than one kuai bills in a wad in his pocket, not the bucket. To make change, he first fishes around for the right bill in the wad in his jacket, then plucks loose one kuai bills out of the bucket.

“Would you use a cash register?” I ask. He’s afraid someone would take it if he had to go back to his vehicle to get more vegetables, and also says he likes the storage capacity of the bucket.

This watermelon vendor in Chongqing, selling out the rear of 3wv. After he weighs the customer’s chosen watermelon, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a huge wad of bills, | |and peels off what’s needed to make change, often dropping some in the process. He says he’s also afraid a cash register could be stolen, and also says he doesn’t like the space it would take up. However, as you can see, on his space-constrained rear bed, there’s something else that’s he’s got that he says he couldn’t work without: | | his scale (in this photo w/ a watermelon on it).

For both vendors, they set price by weight, with the varied weights of their produce meaning lots of handling small change. Both vendors therefore also rely on their scales, and keep them as close as their money (despite their not being as “valuable” or easily “stealable” as a cash register). Both vendors admit their present “wad” system is not ideal, but that it “works” (although impatient customers waiting in line may not agree). What if there was a non-electric means of organizing money that integrated smoothly with a produce vendors’ scale and had add’l storage spaces? What would that look like, and what would vendors think of it?

This would have been impossible without the many kind drivers, vendors, and repairers who let me live, work, ride with, and observe them as they went about their day over the course of this year.

Thanks also to the dedicated guides and research assistants. Of course, when setting out to research in an unfamiliar area, having assistants who know the physical and social terrain is invaluable. I learned a great deal from them as well.

Finally, thanks to you all, for giving me this chance to speak with you today, and for letting me tell you a bit about the resource-constrained CREATIVITY of THE LIVES OF CHINESE VEHICLE DRIVERS – THE TOOLS THEY USE, the ways they MODIFY THEIR VEHICLES, and potential future opportunities to design for them. THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION , DELIGHTED FOR ANY QUESTIONS?