Welcome to my report on anceint china

Introduction

Early history

The age Of Confucius

The Time of Unity

China is in Turmoil

The Time of Relative Peace and the End of the Tang Dynasty

Conclusion

Bibliography

Author's page

Introduction

In this report I shall be investigating the great civilization of Ancient China. First I shall be studying the very early culture on the Yellow River (about 4000-1000 BC.) Second I shall be studying the time of Confucius and the Zheng Dynasties (around 1000 to 200 B. C.) Third I shall be investigating the Qin and Han dynasties (from 220 BC.-190 A. D.) Fourth I shall talk about the period of anarchy and chaos during the Jin and Sui Dynasties between 200-617 AD. Last I shall be discussing the period of the Tang Dynasty (from 617-906 AD). I hope you enjoy my report.

Early History

    First let us explore of a very early Chinese village where we will find some very interesting things. When we come, there will be a large trench all around the town for purposes of keeping outsiders out. After traversing the trench we find a good number of dogs and pigs, and a smaller number of cattle, sheep, and goats. All of this livestock is almost solely for eating (even the dogs).
     In our town there are a large number of houses, either round, square or rectangular . All of them are made in the same fashion. To build a house from this time period these are your instructions: to start, excavate a hole in the ground where you want to build your house. Next you erect wooden posts the length of the height of the ceiling. Your next step is cover the above ground posts with wattle and daub being sure to leave a doorway. You then would build a twig roof with a smoke hole in it. Also make sure there are eaves that protrude beyond the wall of the house for rain protection. Last, plaster the roof with mud and build yourself a ramp to get down to the floor which is below ground level. When you reach the center of town there is a large communal house for the population whose houses would not fit elsewhere. The communal house was divided into many sections and each section has a hearth. When we get back to the edge of the town, we find the potters huts. Here all sorts of vessels were made from coils. The vessals have all sorts of different finishes on them and other sorts of fine workmanship. This concluds our tour.
    Apart from the animals we passed on our little tour, they mainly eat the millet that they cultivate on the loess plateaus. Loess is yellow dust that blew in from the steppes of Mongolia. It is the thickest in the midle reaches of the yellow river, and is constantly reshaping due to wind and water. (It would be impossible to make a good topographic map of a Loess plateau. Apart from the animals and the millet, they also eat cabbage, blackberries, hazelnuts, chestnuts, and pine nuts. Artisans made weapons such as stone knives and arrowheads. But they also made farming equipment like axes, sickles, and tips for digging sticks. The people wear hemp and silk. This town we have explored was called Banpo and was located on the Wei River (a major tributary of the Yellow river which is the longest river in China) and the culture was the Yangshao.
     Things were very similar to this until 3500 BC. At this point things got more prosperous and villages grew. Chickens were introduced as food, and the villages traded with each other. Potters were more skilled and made their vessels with slabs instead of coils. They were more martial, and the aristocracy started to show itself. Some aristocrats had private priests who's purpose in life was to predict the future. This culture was known as the Longsan. One of the main achievements of the Longshan was the diking of the Yellow River so they could cultivate the flood plain. It was performed by the erection of massive dikes, canals, and impoundments. The credit is usually given to a man named Yu the Great.
     Soon after, Yu founded the first dynasty of China. He called it the Xia. The Xia dynasty was much like the Longshan period, except on a grander scale. There were large walls built on foundations of packed earth around each town. There were also carved jade and cast bronze, besides the pottery. The Xia dynasty was a harsh one. It lasted for 439 years before the Shang dynasty captured the Xia's capital and took over the region. This marks the end of the very early history.

The Age of Confucius

    A large number of events took place in the age of Confcius. In 1,100 BC. the Zhou took over the Shang Dynasty. There was a big difference in the amount of land the two dynasties had in possession. The Shang had a reasonably compact piece of land around the Yellow River. The Zhou, however, made a large number of new conquests in the North and the South which they annexed to the original Shang territory. The Zhou had a good number of kingdoms, and the kings were all members of the imperial family. The Zhou dynasty was also quite hard on the peasant class, often treating them like slaves.
     A piece of drama took place in 771 BC. The event was that the current emperor, whose name was Yu, had a very incapable son from his principal wife, that he displaced in favor of one of his concubine's sons as heir to the throne. The followers of the prince of the principal wife took him away from the capital and installed him as emperor of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty with its capital in Luoyang. Luoyang, after that, would be the secondary capital after Chang'an throughout all of Ancient China. Soon after that, the Eastern Zhou fell apart proving the true prince's ineffectuality. The states that made up the Eastern Zhou (the Qi, Chu, Qin, and Jin) started to fight each other. The Qi came out to be the most powerful of the lot in wealth as well as leadership. They had salt flats on the sea (producing the rare mineral in bulk). They also had a good deal of iron ore which makes a cheaper and more effective sword than bronze. They were led by a nobleman named Duke Huan. One example of the Qi's power occured in 680 B.C. when the Chu attacked the north states. All of the north states went to the Qi for protection. In 656 BC. the Qi forced the Chu into making a treaty with the Zhou, promising to keep their peace with the rest of China. The duke was also the first overlord of a league of states he brought together.
    The next hundred years(650-550 BC.) were torn by anarchy and bitter warfare. One of the more nasty examples happened in 665 BC. when the Jin wanted to take over the Guo state. To get to the Guo, they had to pass through the state of Yu. They requested permission to pass through Yu, but the Yu didn't give it to them. The Jin marched through Yu, took Guo, and on their way back took Yu. This was good cause for Confucius, born in 552 B.C. in the state of Lu, to take up spiritual leadership. By the time he died in his late seventies, he had changed the way China and the rest of the world thought about things.
     Confucius provided many lessons teaching the correct way to live life and respect others. His so called "Golden Rule" about how to live your life is rather similar to one of the teachings of Christianity. It is: Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you. Another major part of Confucius' teachings is performing the rites. They include: the correct ways to interact with your superiors, burial, and sacrifice. One of the most important things he taught about government, is that, if you want to be an official, you must perform the rights and be kind and generous in both action and at heart.
    An alternative to Confucianism was the Taoism or the "Followers of the way". They were following Laotsu, another sage and contemporary of Confucius. The Way encourages a life of meditation and being one with nature, very similar to the teachings of Siddartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. To end back in politics things had begun to look up. By 221 B.C. the Qin dynasty took control of the warring states and pulled them into the first united China ever.

The Time of Unity

     In 221 BC. interesting things began to happen. Emperor Zheng of Qin had conquered the Qi, Chu, and the Jin, making the first truly united Chinese Empire. He renamed himself Qin Shi Huangdi, and commenced at once ruling his empire in a very harsh manner. He started by unifying currency, weights and measures, language, writing, etc. He had a large number of gargantuan building projects in which he enslaved workers and worked some of them to death. The most famous of his projects was the Great Wall of China which stretched from the Yellow Sea to Turkistan. It is 2,600 miles long, and was built from smaller walls erected by the warring states to keep each other out. Another huge building project was his own tomb, which is guarded by thousands of terra-cotta soldiers. There are also horses and chariots as part of this "Eternal Army". An equally important, but slightly smaller bit of building, was a twenty mile long canal connecting two major Yangtze River Valley waterways. It is called the magic canal, and is still used today. When Qin Shi Huangdi died, his minister and a troublesome eunuch arranged for the death of the heir apparent and put the younger son on the throne. Then the eunuch got tired of the emperor and killed him. The minister then installed another distant relative on the throne. This relative killed the eunuch and atained such unpopularity that the Qin Dynasty fell in 202 B.C.
    Two generals named Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, were in close contest for the empire. In the end, Liu won and set up his capital in Chang'an. This marked the beginning of the Han dynasty, one of the most effective in history.
    When Emperor Bang died in 195 B.C., one of his concubines, Dowager Empress Lü, arranged that her son would succeed Bang by killing the son of the primary wife. She ruled through two other sons for a period of 15 years until she died. She succeeded in making another line of members of the Han imperial family and brought another one of Liu Bang's sons to the throne. He ascended in 180 BC. and took the name of Liu Wendi. Wen's reign lasted through forty years of peace and prosperity.
    In 140 BC. there were 40 directly controlled imperial states and 25 kingdoms within the Han Dynasty. At that time the Emperor Wu Di ascended the throne and began to conduct one of the most effective reigns ever. From the time he ascended in 140 BC. and the time he died in 87 BC., many things had been accomplished. His main military focus was to get rid of the Xiongnu raiders who came south from Mongolia. The first time they attacked, they came down, damaged the Great Wall enough to get through, and proceeded to wreck havoc. The emperor followed them home, drove them too far away for them to attack any time soon, and added 300 miles to the great wall. He also expanded the dynasty into Korea, Manchuria, and Vietnam. One of his greatest expeditions was an attempt to find some allies to fight the Xiongnu. He decided to try to join with the Yuezhi people, and sent an official in 138 BC. to go find and negotiate the alliance. As soon as the official passed the Great Wall he was captured by the Xiongnu. He managed to bribe them into releasing him in ten days. He then traveled on along a path that would later become the Silk Road. He went almost all the way to Persia. When he got there and found the Yuezhi, he came out disappointed. The Yuezhi did not want to become allied with the Han and fight the Xiongnu. They were perfectly happy right where they were. A bit dejected about his failure, he went back by a more southerly route and still got captured by the Xiongnu. A year and a half later, eleven years after he had left, he returned with a Xiongnu wife and no allies. Wu was probably not particularly pleased about the officials deeds, but was very pleased with the tales he told of the trade opertunities in Bactria and Persia. The benefit of his travel was the institution of the silk road, one of the most important trading routes in the world. The Han dynasty continued to rule for many years to come.

This is a picture of the great Wall of China winding through the north of the country. Built with slave labor by Qin Shi Huongdi, emperor of the first united dynasty of the Qin from 221 B.C. Today the wall is a major turist attraction for visitors to Beiging. Amazingly this structure which streaches for 2,600 miles from the Yellow Sea to the preasent day country of Turkestan only took fuorteen years to build.

These are pictures of the Eternal Army, the guards of the tomb of the emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. All of theese figures are handcrafted out of Terra-cotta clay, and palced in the tomb to guard the emperor through the afterlife. Each soldier was originally painted with bright colors, and each carried real weapons. Each soldier has a sllightly different hight and a different face, as can be seen in the picture on the right. There were also a good number of horses a nd Chariots. The largest number of men are swordsmen, with archers all around the edges, and a chariot at the for front of some of the rows.

China is in Turmoil

    Trouble began to brew in 198 AD. when the last effective Han Emperor, Liu Lingdi, died. That event brought about the fall of the Han dynasty which was an event that sent China into anarchy once again. In 220 AD., three warlords divided China into thirds, and each one of them took a share. The kingdom to the south was Wu, to the west was Shu, and to the north was Wei. All three warlords claimed relationship to the Han imperial court. However the only ones who really were controlled were Wei and Shu. Shu's warlord was a distant relative of the emperors. Wei's, however, was directly related to a poet/warlord named Cao-Cao. Cao-Cao was ruling in fact in the name of the last Han emperor Liu Xiandi. When Cao-Cao died in 220 AD., Xiandi was forced to abdicate because he was incapable of ruling. This event formally brought down the Han dynasty.
    The court of Wei was ruled by Cao-Cao's son Cao Pei. Wei was the dominant of the three kingdoms, and there were so many noblemen around that the Wei installed a system called Jiupin Zhonzheng to regulate the flow of aristocrats clambering for an office in court. In 263 AD. the Wei took over the Shu and founded the Wei Dynasty. It only lasted for two years, when one of the great families usurped the throne and declared the Jin Dynasty. This took place in 265 AD. The first emperor of the Jin, Sima Yan, presided uneventfully until 280 AD., when he marched south and annexed the Wu. This brought about the first unified Dynasty in 60 years. When Sima Yan died in 290 AD. , the Jin dynasty all of a sudden became less powerful. The Jin left Luoyang in 317 AD. for Nanjing in the south. They left due to a "barbarian" king named Liu Yan, who came from the north and tried to topple the failing Jin dynasty. His campaign drove the Jin court south, but did not put an end to it. He set up the new Han dynasty in Luoyang and large numbers of people fled south to escape it. Jin managed to hold out until 420 AD. when they fell. China was then ruled by small, ineffective dynasties from that time on until 589 AD. During this time there was an astronomer and Mathematician named Zu Chongzi. His accomplishments were the drafting of the Daming Calendar, which was one of the most effective of the time. Another accomplishment was the calculation of ? as somwhere between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927. In 589 AD. another warlord named Yang Jian crushed the fractured dynasties, and made himself the first Emperor of the Sui dynasty. The Sui was often compared to the Qin dynasty due to its ruthlessness.
     The main religion of the late Han and Three Kingdoms period (220-263 A.D.) was Taoism. This religion had a good number of cults, one of which focused on inner hygiene. Some of its principals are still used today. There was also a group of aristocrats who spent a good bit of time practicing "Pure Conversation" about the Buddhist religion, a religion which concerns the teachings of the first enlightened one: Buddha Siddartha Gaoutama. These teachings concern the four noble truths, and the eight-fold path. It became an important religion about the same time the Jin was driven south. The imperial court was converted to Buddhism and by the time the Jin fell, there were about 1,768 monasteries and 24,000 monks and nuns. Durind the time of the Liang Dynasty (one of the more effective and stable of the small fractured dynasties, between the time of the Jin and the Sui dynasties), its emperor was so devoted to Buddhism, that he abolished Taoism. The Sui dynasty was also Buddhist, but the middle of the Sui marked the end of the time of turmoil, which implies that religion did not have all that much impact in politics at that time. This is because the small dynasties were also Buddhist, but only the Sui managed to take total control.

These are pictures of a great grotto full of figures sacred to the Buddhist faith. These caves are at a temple a short distance away from Luoyang at Longmen on the Yi River. It is called the Feng-xian Si shrine. on the left at center is a picture of Tuo-wen Tian guardian of the north. The diety is flanked by a bodhisatva or a diciple or attendent of one of the enlightened ones. At right is another picture of this same loccation. It contains a number more diciples and demi-gods attending the Buddha Vairocana.

This is a picture of the original buddha Siddarth Goutama. Its location is at the Tun Huang, caves which is part of a shrine in a large Buddhist complex. Both this and the pictures before show how important Buddhism was in the Sui dynasty and the times imediatly before that. The figure is molded from a mixture of mud, straw and camel dung. The next step was to be cated with clay whitewashed, and lastly painted.

The time of relative peace and the end of the Tang Dynasty

    In the year 584, the Emperor Wen of the Sui subdued an attack by the Turks and put another few hundred miles onto the Great Wall. The next emperor, who assumed the throne in 604, was nearly as harsh as the Qin dynasty. He was overthrown in 617 because of his unpopularity and three expensive and non-victorious military campaigns in a region in Koguryo. He was ousted by one of his own generals in 618. The general declared himself Emperor of the Tang Dynasty in the same year. He took the name of Gaozu. This marks the beginning of the most effective dynasty in China.
     In 629 AD. Gouzu was forced to abdicate by his son Taizong, after Taizong had murdered his brothers. Taizong assumed the thronein the same year. Though he had violent beginnings, he was often considered to be the best emperor china ever had. During his reign some very effective measures were put into law, including a system for keeping non-able people out of court offices. It even went so far as to keep a few scholars in court. Taizong was not particularly fondof Buddhism, but he went along with it and would tolerate any religion in Chang'an. His downfall, however, was another attempted attack against Koguryo. It failed about as badly as those of the last Sui Emperor. He died in 649 AD. after a peaceful twenty year reign. One of his Concubines named Wu Zhao would go on to make major mischief.
    Wu Zhao forced Taizong's son Gouzhong to make her his principal wife, and she then ruled through him. When he died in 683 AD., she installed the younger son on the throne, and again ruled through him. She forced him to abdicate in 690 AD. and proceeded to put herself on the throne as Empress Wu of the Zhao dynasty. One of her accomplishments was the final annexation of Koguryo. The Zhao dynasty was one of the harshest in history, ranking with the Qin and the Sui. Wu repealed a large number of Taizong's laws and systems and brought the Dynasty into decline. She died in her sleep fifteen years after the Zhao dynasty was declared. The Zhao dynasty was not continued.
     In 710 AD. Taizong's great grandson Xuanzong (r. 710-757 AD.), rebuilt the Tang dynasty. He ran it very well until he got tired of doing things and started to recede into the background. His court had in attendance two of the greatest poets of the age. Those were Li Bo and Du Fu. He also had in attendence a noted scientist and monk named Yi Xing. Some of his accomplishments were the building of an armilary sphere, a device for observing celestial phenonama, the measuring of the meridian, and the drafting of the Dayan Calandar. It was one of the most effective in history. When Xuanzong lost supreme control, two of his generals were waged in a tight combat for the post of prime minister. When a winner was decided, he caused a large amount of trouble. It resulted in the empire falling into turmoil again. When he became emperor, Xuonzong's son, Daizong tried unsuccessfully to gain control of the land. Remarkably the Tang Dynasty managed to hold on to the throne until 906 AD.
     Back in time a few hundred years to the time of the late Sui and the early Tang, a Buddhist monk also named Xuanzong decided to make a pilgrimage to India: the holy land of Buddhism. He was shown around by a very kindly prince, and he took a number of sacred texts home to Emperor Taizong. Taizong was patient because he wanted the texts as well as Xuanzong's story. He got both after Xuanzong had translated the texts out of the Sanskrit and written a book about India and his travels. Taizong and Xuonzong demonstrate how kindhearted the early Tang Emperors were.

This picture shows the Emperor Taizong wearing the robes of state in yellow silk with the pattern of the imperial dragon on it. This Emperor was the second of the Tang dynasty and the most effective as well. Assuming the throne in 626 AD. after the death of his father Gaozu by murder. (Which was inflicted by Taizong.) He was the arcitect of a good number of official doctrines, and met his downfall with an attempted invasion of the north Korean state of Koguro. He died in 649 AD.

From a pot of wine among the flowers I drank alone.

There was no one with

me-

Till , raising my cup, I asked the bright
moon

To bring me my shadow and make us
three.

Alas, the moon wasunable to drink,

And my shadow tagged me vacantly
But still for a while I had these friends

To cheer me through the end of

spring. . . .

I sang. The moon encouraged me.

I danced . My shadow tumbled after.

As long as I knew, we were boon

companions.

And then I was drunk, and we lost one

another.

This is a picture of the well known poet Li Bo being helped home after spending too long a time with a bottle of intoxicating liquid. He was, even though he was almost alcoholic, one of the best poets in the court of emperor Xuanzong., who reigned from 710-756 AD. He was said to have died in a river leaning over the side of a boat trying to kiss the moon's reflection. One of his poems goes like this, it is called Drinking Alone With The Moon. See the text next to the picture for a transaltion of it.

Conclusion

The Chinese had a very a srong and advanced culture. They fought with crossbows as early as 250 B.C. They were also the inventors of gun powder, and the frst to use it in battle. They had sufficient engineering to build something like the great wall in only seven years. They were the earliest peoplem to figure out the couse of eclipses and other interesting celestial phenonmena. China has lasted longer than ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, mainly Babylon. I hope you enjoyed reading my report.

Effective and Notable Emperors

Name of Emperor	Dynasty	Years of Reign
Yu	Xia	Unknown
Qin Shi Huangdi	Qin	221-210 BC.
Liu Bang	Han	202-195 BC.
Liu Wendi	Han	180-140 BC.
Liu Wu Di	Han	140-97 BC.
Sima Yan	Jin	190-256 AD.
Yang Jian	Sui	589-604 AD.
Taizong	Tang	629-649 AD.
Xuanzong	Tang	710-757 AD.

Map of ancient China

Name of Dynasty	Capital City	Years
Zhao	Hao	1,100-771 BC.
Eastern Zhao	Luoang	771-680 BC.
Qin	Chan'an	221-202 BC.
Han	Chang'an	206 BC.-220 AD.
Jin	Luoyang	165-317 AD.
Sui	Luoyang	589-617 AD.
Tang	Chang'an	624-906 AD.

This graphic shows a map of the western parts of Ancient China with the two principal cities and the major rivers on it. The table below shows the dynaty its capital city and the years of its existance.

Bibliography

http://www-Chaos.umd.edu/history/imperial.html

http://www- Chaos.umd.edu/history/imperial2.html

Author's Page

    My name is James. I play the cello in the Santa Cruz County Youth Symphony (I play inside first stand ). I also sing in Ragazzi the Peninsula Boys Chorus in San Carlos, California.
     I have a large number of relations on my mother's side, and a number that is a lot smaller on my father's side. On my mothers side, I have got the following living relatives. I have 1 aunt, 3 uncles, 10 first cousins, 8 second cousins, 2 great aunts, and 1 great great uncle. Not counting both grandparents and spouses. By grave contrast my living relatives on my father's side are only 2 second cousins, 1 first cousin and 2 uncles. However, one of the Second cousins is related only by marriage. The thing I like to do most in my spare time is read a book. Some of my favorite authors are Lloyd Alexander, J.R.R. Tolkien, and John Mortimor. However I like to go back to books I have already read.   One of the things I do with most of my time, which is not spare, is practicing the cello.
    My parents are both musicians as well. My mother is a professional musician. She plays the oboe and recorder. My father is amateur musician, with his job as a chemistry professor at University California Santa Cruz. To update you on some of my newer activities, I would like to add that I am now taking voice lessons from a man named Alan Cathcart. One of the results of that was the fact that I am in a group called Peninsula Tean Opera. Some of the roles I am playing are Hänsel in Hänsel and Gretel, Prayer and witches seane. And First Spirit in the suicide seane with Pamina (to mean not with Papageno, because there are two).

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