[edit] Ancient China

[edit] Geography

The geography of Ancient China is often described by geologists in a system of three steps:

The first step is to the far west near present day Tibet. With the highest mountains on earth around here the climate is quite cold and in the summer quite warm this place is widely considered inhospitable, from -40℃ (-40 F) in the winter to 37℃ (100 F) in the summer. Due to this there aren’t many villages and when found villages are quite small.

The next step is the middle of China. It’s covered with desert and a small amount of grassland. People here raise grazing cattle (Yak). There are some low hills but no snow. With cold winters and hot summers this area was never densely populated.

The final step is the East. This area is accounts for circa, 95% of modern and Ancient Chinese population. Two long rivers flow through here the Yellow and the Yangtze River. Here there was plenty of water for crops and agriculture flourished. In the North wheat was the main crap and in the South rice was more frequent.

[edit] Government

Ancient China had a very unique way of showing different time periods; each stage of China or each family that was in power was a distinctive dynasty. Also between each dynasty was an unstable age of divided provinces. The most well known of these periods was the Three Kingdoms epoch taking place for 60 years between the Han and the Jin Dynasty. During these periods fierce warfare took place between many nobles fighting for the throne. The Three Kingdoms was one of the bloodiest eras in Ancient China’s history thousands of people died fighting to sit at the highest seat in the grand palace at Xi’an.

The first dynasty was the Shang Dynasty it lasted from 1766 to 1122 BC some 600 years which was quite long for a dynasty. During this age the central government was weak and unstable. During this era Ancient China couldn’t officially be called a civilization due to the fact that some emperors reverted the country to nomad based from agriculture based due sometimes just because the emperor didn’t enjoy farming and wanted his people to hunt like him, but by the last 100 years of the Shang dynasty the country was fully agriculture supported.

The next dynasty was the Zhou dynasty. The Zhou people came from the west and overthrew the Shang, it lasted from 1122 BC to 256 BC near a thousand years making it the longest dynasty in history! During this time 2 out of the three greatest philosophers were born: Kong Fuzi (Confucius) founder of Confucianism and Laozi founder of Daoism. Also during this period iron was first used in China written script on bronze tablets first appeared though it was not the clerical script of the Han dynasty it was a great improvement of early writing in the Shang Dynasty. During this age the Mandate of Heaven was first implemented a King or Queen’s right to rule was supported by the Mandate of Heaven which was the notion that the ruler was the divine son of heaven but his dethronement would signal the people that he had lost his divine right to rule and was now not worth fighting for.

After the Shang came the Qin Dynasty which lasted a mere 20 years (221 to 206 BC). This era was a big change for china during the Qin Dynasty man was considered a beast that needed to be strictly controlled which led to an age in which legalism a branch of Confucianism dominated. All people were strictly kept in order and any crimes were not tolerated. This era’s simply put “claim to fame” was that it was the first centralized dynasty and marked the beginning of imperial china. At the Qin Dynasties height it had a population of over 40 million people, which was huge compared to the Shang or early Zhou Dynasties.

The Qin dynasty ended in 206 BC and there began the Han Dynasty. The Han dynasty was known for being a great period for the Ancient Chinese culture; music, drama and literature flourished during this time. A new system of government emerged during this time, a system of civil servants. Every half-year a great test was held at the palace in the capital city the most promising young scholars gathered to take the test that would decide what kind of job they got in the government. The highest scorers were given jobs at the palace itself were as the lowest were sometimes failed or sometimes put in low level jobs at the local level. Cheating was punished severely because of the importance placed on these tests. The civil servants that this test place would over see the constructions of roads, canals and schools. The local civil servants would record trade population and decide were crops should be sent and how much to store. The position of Civil Servant was coveted. During this period Chinese culture spread throughout Mongolia, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Also during this epoch the Silk Road became a major source of income for the merchant class (the Shang). The end of the Han dynasty came from a peasant rebellion because of corruption in government this led to the Three Kingdoms period.

The Next three dynasties the Sui, Tang, Song and Yuan were insignificant compared to the other dynasties and merely different royal families the only real development came in the Song dynasty when Chinese scientists discovered Steel.

The Ming and Qing dynasty lasted from 1368 -1911 and was an era in which the Mongolians ruled China besides that not many cultural developments were made.

[edit] Religion

During the Bronze Age most of China worshiped many gods and spirits. The most important of these being Ti or “Deity Above” He was believed to punish those that pleased him and punish those that didn’t. Ti was in charge of all the gods and goddesses in the pantheon. The gods and goddesses all represented something in nature for example the “God of Soil” etc. Some of the Emperors brought their servants with them to the after life. Priests and Priestess’s main job was to act as mediums between the Gods and Goddesses and the worshipers they specialized in sacrificing and ceremonies of specific Gods and Goddesses. A special type of medium was an Augur. An Augur asked questions of the Gods and Goddesses or read oracle bones.

After the Bronze Age, Three Doctrines or Ideologies became important Chinese Religions. Taoism and Confucianism were native to China and developed in isolation. The Three ideologies can also be viewed as philosophies but they also have a spiritual element, which is why they are classified as religions. The Third Doctrine, Buddhism was brought from China by traveling monks from India.

Confucius was alive during when the Chou dynasty (a part of the Zhou Dynasty) was decaying it was riddled with corruption. Confucius experienced the corruption firsthand as he held a position in government. He believed that decline was because the Chinese had abandoned old traditions and old concepts of honor, politeness morality and social roles had been forgotten; this is the base of Confucianism.

Confucianism filtered into different aspect of Chinese culture Confucius’ teachings became the basis for education in China and his writings became the classics that every child in China reads.

The basis of Taoism is the concept of Tao. Tao is translated as “the path” or “the way.” The term has no conclusive definition it refers to a wide force in nature and is the source of all things.

Taoism in its purest form calls followers to pursue Tao. This means he or she should not try to alter nature or force it to do what it was not meant to do. A follower must remain inactive and not make plans. A follower must not do anything contrary to Tao for example building a house or damming a river. Taoists were members of the educated wealthy elite. Some of the less privileged did learn about it but altered it to be more about magic and alchemy than the purest form of Taoism.

Siddharta Gautana founded Buddhism around 500 BC; He was later called The Enlightened One or the Buddha. Buddhism spread to China via the Silk Road. When it first arrived it was considered part of Taoism because of how similar Taoism and Buddhism are. How ever a number of Buddhist monks came from India to China and kept the religion from being incorporated into Taoism. Buddhism encourages followers to throw off self-interest. Through meditation and right living, a Buddhist can reach Nirvana or absence of suffering which was a similar concept to Tao.

All three religions were not intolerant of each other although they did not always agree. Many people were subscribers of more than one religion and all three subtly influenced each other.

[edit] Social Classes

In pre-Confucian time there were 4 noble classes the king on top followed by dukes then great men and finally scholars. Below the nobles were commoners and then slaves. During post-Confucian times the King was still at the top followed by scholars then farmers then craftsman and finally merchants and lastly soldiers.

[edit] Contributions to Society

The earliest inventions were the abicus, shadow clock, kites and Kongming Lantern. As an astronomically advanced civilization the Ancient Chinese first recorded observations of comets, solar eclipses and supernovae. The 4 greatest inventions of the Ancient Chinese were printing, papermaking, gunpowder and the compass. Ancient Chinese made great advances in metallurgy, For example 2300 years ago no one in Europe or the Middle East could melt one ounce of iron the meanwhile the Chinese were casting multi-ton iron objects it was not until the 1200s that the British were able to replicate this feat. More inventions of the Ancient Chinese include: The Compass (invented in china used to apply Feng Shui to buildings (Ba BooHua)) Paper (the first paper made by pounding linen) gunpowder (made by shamans trying to find a stone of immortality). The Chinese also learned how to drill for natural gas. They invented row crop farming, silk, porcelain, rudders, wheelbarrows and umbrellas.

[edit] Other

In Chinese architecture the visual impact of the width of the buildings was very important but the most important is the emphasis on the horizontal axis.

The projected hierarchy and importance and uses of buildings in traditional Chinese architecture are based on placement of buildings in a property/complex buildings with doors facing the front of the property are considered more important than those faces the sides.

For the commoners their houses tended to follow a set pattern: the centre of the building would be a shrine for the deities and the ancestors, which would also be used during festivities. On its two sides were bedrooms for the elders; the two wings of the building were for the junior members of the family, as well as the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen, although sometimes the living room could be very close to the center.

Certain architectural features that were reserved solely for buildings built for the Emperor of China one example is the use of yellow roof tiles yellow having been the Imperial color, yellow roof tiles still adorn most of the buildings within the Forbidden City. Only the Temple of Heaven, however, uses blue roof tiles to symbolize the sky

Buddhist architecture follows the imperial style. A large Buddhist monastery normally has a front hall, housing the statue of a Bodhisattva, followed by a great hall, housing the statues of the Buddhas. Accommodations for the monks and the nuns are located at the two sides. Some of greatest examples of this come from the 18th century temples of the Puning Temple and the Putuo Zongcheng Temple. Buddhist monasteries sometimes also have pagodas, which may house the relics of the Gautama Buddha; older pagodas tend to be four-sided, while later pagodas usually have eight-sides.

Vegetarianism is not uncommon or unusual in China, though, as is the case in the West, it is only practiced by a relatively small proportion of the population. The Chinese vegetarians do not eat a lot of tofu. Most Chinese vegetarians are Buddhists, following the Buddhist teachings about minimizing suffering. Chinese vegetarian dishes often contain large varieties of vegetables (e.g. bok Choy, shiitake mushroom, sprouts, corn) and some imitation meat.

Pork is generally preferred over beef in Chinese cuisine due to economic and aesthetic reasons; the pig is easy to feed and is not used for labor, and is so closely tied with the idea of domesticity that the character for "home" depicts a pig under a roof.

In most dishes in Chinese cuisine, food is prepared in bite-sized pieces (e.g. vegetable, meat, doufu), ready for direct picking up and eating. Traditionally, Chinese culture considered using knives and forks at the table barbaric due to fact that these implements are regarded as weapons. It was also considered ungracious to have guests work at cutting their own food. Fish are usually cooked and served whole, with diners directly pulling pieces from the fish with chopsticks to eat, unlike in some other cuisines where they are first filleted.