By the early eleventh century, Chinese engineers in the coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang had developed vertical-axis windmills for pumping water to irrigate paddy fields and drain salt marshes, independently of Persian and later European windmill traditions. These horizontal-sail mills, suited to the variable coastal winds of eastern China, became essential infrastructure in the densely populated Yangtze Delta, supporting the agricultural surplus that underpinned Song dynasty prosperity and population growth. Their widespread adoption marked a significant phase of Chinese technological sophistication during one of history's most inventive periods.

Song dynasty poetry celebrated the agricultural landscape of the Yangtze Delta in exquisite detail, and wind — as seasonal signal and agricultural force — permeated the ci lyric form developed by poets such as Su Shi (Su Dongpo) and Li Qingzhao. The wind's role in rice agriculture gave it specific seasonal and emotional resonances in Chinese poetic tradition distinct from European wind metaphors, associating it with abundance, departure, and the turning of natural cycles. Su Shi's wind-drenched landscape poems remain among the most beloved in Chinese literary history.