Bill Skinner
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The painting, I think, is of an object that the painter has no idea how to work, so he used the line drawing and his imagination.
Yes, the Chinese had pulleys, they are way older than those weapons and date to at least the bronze age.
I think the bows would have been composite and the tips super recurved to keep the strings on. The faster the bow tips move, the faster the projectile, which usually translates to longer range. Pulleys would have added weight, which would have slowed the tips down.
The backwards bow would have also acted as a shock damper to keep the recoil from shaking the weapon apart and from over flexing the bow at the shot.
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