Chapter 4: Study Guide
Ancient Chinese
Civilization Developed
Lasting Traditions
I) Vocabulary:
1) Loess: Extraordinarily fertile soil.
2) Calligraphy: Artful form of writing originated by the Chinese
3) Silt: Fertile soil
4) Oracle Bones: bones used by Chinese priests, who wrote questions on the shoulder bones of cattle or the bottom of tortoise shells and then interpreted answers to the questions from patterns or cracks that developed when the bones were heated.
5) Mandate of Heaven: Right to rule that ancient Chinese rulers were believed to have received from the gods.
6) Civil Service: system that administers the government on a day-to-day basis; its members are usually appointed on the basis of competitive examinations.
II) Section 1: Geographic and cultural Features Helped Shape Chinese History
1) Neolithic people settled along Huang He River.
A) Huang He and Chang Jiang are the two most important rivers of China, together forming the Qin Ling, the divider between north and south China.
(i) North grows wheat as principal due to lack of rainfall; south, with more abundant rainfall, grows rice as principle crop.
B) Huang He is 2900 miles long, carries 10% to 40% of its weight in loess; it has a yellowish tint from the loess, extraordinary fertile silt. Huang He flooded a lot due to the loess building up on the bottom of the river, so dikes were built to stop the flooding. Every generation built them higher to beat the water; Nowadays, the dikes are 10 to 40 feet high. Sometimes the dikes break, flooding and destroying nearby farms and settlements, so they nicknamed it "China's Sorrow".
C) Chang Jiang is 3400 miles long; large ocean going ships can navigate 600 miles upstream to Wuhan, the smaller ones going about 1300 miles to Chongqing. Xi Jiang is 1200 miles long; ships navigate to 220 miles inland.
2) Gobi desert and other natural barriers kept Chinese culture isolated, thus creating a very distinctive culture. Foreigners would come to trade livestock, crops, and other things, but some nomads were hostile and attacked settlements. These barbarians were considered culturally inferior.
3) China has always been divided politically into two main sections
A) The first, China Proper (the heart of China), is the land that lies along the seacoast and stretches inland up the valleys of Huang He and Chang Jiang.
B) The second is the area that surrounds China Proper including Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Korea.
4) They thought of themselves and their land as the only civilized land and called it zhongguo, or the Middle Kingdom. They thought of themselves as the best civilization that ever existed. They said that even outsiders will at some time be absorbed into China’s flourishing nation. “China,” they said, “is a sea which salts all rivers that run into it.”
5) Two basic patterns create differences between Chinese civilizations and those of your own civilization, The dynastic cycle and cultural evolution.
A) The Dynastic cycle: Since the beginning of china’s recorded history until as early as the 1900s, a succession of dynasties ruled China. The first dynasty was the Shang that came to power about 1500 B.C.E. The last dynasty, the Qing (CHING), ruled China from A.D. 1644 to A.D. 1912. Some dynasties lasted only a few years; others held power for centuries. No matter how long they lasted, however, all went through a dynastic cycle consisting of several stages.
(i) The first stage involved the founding of the dynasty. By defeating military rivals in war, an individual leader gained control of China. The right to rule the country then became hereditary within the leader’s family, and a new dynasty emerged.
(ii) Next came a period of internal peace, expansion, and great power. The new dynasty began to function; collecting taxes and labor services from the people. The dynasty used it’s wealth to improve roads and irrigation systems, to support education and the arts, and to build splendid palaces to enhance it’s prestige.
(iii) Finally a period of regression marked by decline followed the period of great power. During this stage the rulers thought less of the people and more about living in luxury. It raised taxes whenever it could, created hardship among the people. The government stopped maintaining dikes and irrigation systems, increasing the risk of floods. The ruling dynasty gradually became unable to defend the frontiers of China, and nomadic invasions increased. When its decline reached a low point, with chaos and rebellion in many parts of the land, the dynasty collapsed. A new leady emerged, and another dynastic cycle began.
(a) So basically the 3 stages are:
® The creation of the dynasty fighting off the dynasty that ruled before them, and tries to start up from the beginning and to get the people to trust you to control China better then the previous ruler.
® Then there is the stage when everyone is rather ok with the government. They are collecting taxes and functioning well. This is the point where the dynasty reaches its peak.
® Then there is the period where it begins to decline the ruler thinks everything is all right so they raise taxes. They do very greedy things to benefit themselves. They tax the people in order to build items for themselves. They slow down production on the dikes, so floods continue to ravage the land. Soon they become too weak to fend off attacks from the outside that in most cases ends the dynasty.
(iv) Cultural evolution. Explains many other aspects of China’s history. Beneath the recurring pattern of events in politics was a continuous evolution, or development, of culture over the centuries. Some are the family, the farm, and the village developed their own patterns of change. During some stages of the dynastic cycle, the pace of cultural evolution quickened; during others, it slowed. Over the centuries, however, civilization in China maintained a steady pattern of growth as institutions and ideas became more complex.
III) Section 2: Chinese Civilization Flourished Under the Shang Dynasty:
1) Legends of China tell of Pan Gu, the first man who was of god-like power, worked for 18,000 years to make the universe. Legends also tell of hero-kings that rule for 100+ year periods that invented things like the wheel, marriage, painting, and music. Legends also tell of the Xia dynasty of the Huang He river region, ruling from approximately 2000BC to 1500 B.C.
A) Historians are unsure if the Xia ever existed, but in that 500-year period the Chinese made many advance, such as improved agricultural methods and beginning of a writing system. With writing, Chinese history became more concrete.
B) China's first historic dynasty was the Shang, beginning in the 1500 B.C. period. Evidence shows that the Shang were immigrants, and when they took over, no government existed at the time to regulate irrigation, drainage, and flood control. The Shang introduced irrigation and flood control and regulated these functions, therefore controlling the area.
(i) The Shang region was probably made up of approximately 1800 conquered city-states. The capitol moved around many times due to difficulty to defend or floods. During the last century of rule, the capitol was at present day Anyang.
2) Shang rulers established dynasties, or hereditary rules. The ruler distributed the land to his principle followers, and in return they pledged loyalty, performed certain services and paid dues. The less advanced people lived on the borders. The Shang used war chariots and bronze weaponry in conjunction with their military force to conquer most of northern and central China.
A) The Chinese believe in the Mandate of Heaven, or permission/right to rule for a monarch. They believed that if the gods were happy with the rule, they would reward with plentiful harvest or successful wars. If something went wrong, rebellion would break out and a new dynasty would overthrow the current. This was justified by saying the old dynasty lost their Mandate of Heaven.
B) Culture During the Shang Dynasty: Shang ruled from 1500BC to 1122BC, during this time the Chinese people refined their old methods, developed new ones, and prospered through trading.
(i) Shang excelled at agriculture; chief crops were barley and millet. Some rice was grown, but most was imported from the south. They also domesticated cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, dogs, and elephants (for war and some other kinds of work). Sometime during the Shang rule, people learned to raise silkworm, spin silk from their cocoons, and weave silk from the thread.
(ii) Not all of China was agriculture, though. Artisans and merchants lived in cities, earning a living by making clothing with silk or cords from hemp. Also, artisans made jade jewelry and inlaid turquoise with ivory and bone.
(a) The foundation for all Chinese ceramic art came from the Shang. They used kaolin, fine white clay, with the pottery wheel to shape items. They even glazed their pottery with a nice, shiny finish.
(b) Shang also excelled at bronze casting. They may have learned these techniques from the Middle East and Africa, but they had unique designs of their own. Most probably they imported copper and tin and made the bronze themselves to make both small and large bronze objects.
(iii) Astronomy and the calendar: The Shang developed a lunar calendar to track days for farming. The shortest period was 10 days, and 3 together (sometimes shortened by a day) made up a month. Six 10-day periods made up one cycle. Six cycles made up a year of 360 days. Sometimes the priest-astronomer would add days as needed to make up a full 365-day year. Because the calendar determined what time the harvest took place, and that success of the harvest determined the king's popularity, the priest-astronomers were very important.
(a) The astronomers were so skilled at predicting the eclipses of the moon that even a 24-hour error surprised them. Because of their skill, they were kept in charge of keeping other records, giving the Chinese "official records" very early in their history.
(iv) Language and writing: The Chinese are considered one of the few to create an original written language. The language consists of different 1-syllable words, and stringing different words together would combine to form a new word. For example, magnet is pull-iron-stone. Also, there weren't that much variation to words to use them in different situations. For example, a word can be used as plural or singular. Symbols, or pictures that represent what the word means represent the words. Later on, a phonetic sign, or sound sign, was added to tell how to pronounce each character.
(a) Even though it was an efficient language, to learn how to read well one would need to know 10,000+ characters. Thus, until a simplified version was developed, only a small percent of the population could read and write.
(b) The Chinese writing system wrote from up to down, right to left. Writing became an art, known as calligraphy, which is even practiced today.
® In order to learn the Chinese language it would take many years of studying. So out of around 10,000 people begin to study around 1% will actually learn the largest portion of the language. For those who could actually read they could easily become rich because much less then 1% of China could actually read their language and for someone who understood that language would be paid a LOT to do they’re written work.
(v) Religion in the Shang Period: The religion that developed during the Shang dynasty combined animism and ancestor worship. People believed in an all-powerful and kindly dragon that lived in the seas and rivers and could rise into the clouds. They believed that dragons fighting in the heavens caused the summer thunderstorms that brought rain. In time this good dragon became the symbol of Chinese Rulers.
(a) They had these huge religious festivals in the spring and autumn.
® In spring, the planting season, the ruler plowed the first furrow to ensure good crops.
® In autumn the people thanked the gods for the harvest
(b) In addition to animistic beliefs, the Chinese revered the elders and ancestors of their families. They believed that the families were both earth dwelling and spirit dwelling, believing that all members of the family- the living and the dead- were united forever through their religion.
® A child’s obligation to a parent was very important. In the Chinese language the symbol for honor and reverence owed to parents shows a son support his aged father as he walks.
(c) Priests played an important role in Chinese religion. Some were priest-astronomers; some foretold the future in order to learn the wishes of the spirits, especially of the spirits of ancestors.
® The priests wrote questions on oracle bones, the shoulder bones of cattle or the bottoms of tortoise shells, into which they read the pattern of cracks that formed to interpret the answers, which the priests then inscribed on the bone or shell. The inscriptions often included the name of the ruler who asked the questions. These recorded questions and answers have helped scholars solve many of the historical and cultural mysteries of the Shang dynasty.