Manual Labour

It is interesting to see that at Bayol prisoners were used for what is described as hard labour. This is the Chinese character xīn 辛, which means hot, laborious or bitter. It is used to describe any kind of hard manual labour, such as work in the fields, or, as in the story below, digging a trench and carrying the earth away.

My understanding is that this drawing is located near the character for hard labour. However, the precise location needs to be verified. The image appears to depict an engineering or building project. Firstly, we see a person tied, in other words a prisoner, and are told that he is lifting or digging. Then, we are told that he is digging a trench, and moving the soil away. Unfortunately, we are not told what the trench and/or earth will be used for. There are other symbols in the cave. Perhaps they contain more information.