Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
China by hereditary right for 400 years. Y u is regarded as
the founder of China' s first dynasty: the Xia (Hsia).
Control by diminishing degree, according to distance
from the capital, has haunted Chinese history and, by as-
sociation, the history of East Asia. An important compo-
nent of the model of Chinese rule was the tributary zone.
People of this zone acknowledged Chinese sovereignty ,
through trade and giving gifts (paying tribute) to the Son
of Heaven, the official title of the Chinese emperor.
T Tribute payments were not always a one-way process.
China often paid tribute to barbarians to keep them at bay
or to employ their assistance in thwarting other barbarian
groups. The northern frontier was of constant concern.
The northern frontier formed a zone where opposing
ways of life—farming and herding—met and commin-
gled. Sometimes pasturage would give way to sedentary
farming. Historian Jacques Gernet (1983) observes, “The
problem of defense against incursions from the steppe
must be seen in a context which is as much cultural, po-
litical and economic as military , thanks to the phenomena
of assimilation, diplomatic combinations, and commer-
cial exchanges.” Here were allied tribes who collaborated
in the defense of the empire, outposts, forts and garrisons,
military colonies, lands developed by deportees, horse
breeding, and nomad encampments.
T Two types of troops were located in the frontier: farmer-
soldiers, known as “soldiers of the irrigation canals” or “sol-
diers of the granaries,” and soldiers on garrison duty in
forward posts. Each post could contact the other through a
system of signals: red and blue flags, smoke by day , and fires
by night. T Transmission of information was swift, and all was
recorded in writing. Precise information about troop move-
ments is given in texts as early as the second century BC .
Oracle Bones
The rulers of the ancient Shang Dynasty (originally
thought to be 1766-1122 BC , now 1600-1046, prac-
ticed divination by heating certain bones such as an-
imal scapulae (shoulder blades) and interpreting the
resultant cracks. Questions and interpretations were
often inscribed on the bone. These oracle bones
were first discovered by scholars in 1899 near the
last Shang capital at Anyang in the Wei River valley .
The character Huang Di was of particular importance.
Huang Di, the Y ellow Lord (emperor), constructed roads
and set up a bureaucracy to run his domain. He distrib-
uted grain at appropriate times and clarified knowledge of
heaven and nature. Educated Chinese believe that human-
ity reached a peak of order about 2350-2200 BC during the
reigns of subsequent emperors. This belief in human order
is a fundamental theme in Chinese thinking and behavior.
Another fundamental belief is that an ordinary person
can achieve great things and that the best government is
government by virtuous individuals. Shun is held as an ex-
ample of a man who rose from humble origins. The Con-
fucian thinker Mencius (ca 390-305 BC ) wrote that when
Shun “heard a single good word, witnessed a single good
deed, it was like water causing a breach in the dikes of the
Yangzi or Y ellow River. Nothing could withstand it.”
Water control has been central to China' s develop-
ment since the earliest of times. Shun appointed a man
named Y u, who assembled a massive labor force and
spent 13 years supervising water control and irrigation
works. Many of China' s unruly rivers, including the
Huang He, were rechanneled. Subsequently , agriculture
flourished. The concept of water management and agri-
cultural productivity as responsibilities of the ruler is an-
other salient theme in Chinese history .
Y u, the model of a competent minister, also surveyed
the empire, compiling information on soils, local prod-
ucts, and land revenues. He reported these in a lengthy
document called the Y u Gong (T (Tribute of Y u). The obli-
gation of ministers to report to and advise the ruler is an-
other important element of proper governance and social
order. As Shun said to Y u, “The mind of a man is per-
ilous; the mind of the T True Way is hard to discern. Con-
centrate! Be single minded! Hold fast to its center.” Y ears
later, Y u' s son came to power and his descendants ruled
The Ways of Writing Chinese
Chinese characters originated as pictograms, where
a symbol stood for an object. Over time, pictograms
evolved more complexly as ideograms, where sym-
bols represent ideas. There are thousands of Chinese
characters. T To be reasonably literate, you need to
know at least 10,000. Chinese is a tonal language.
Different dialects have different numbers of
tones. Mandarin has four tones while Cantonese has
nine, although most of the time only six are used.
The same sound, pronounced with different inflec-
tions, can mean different things or ideas. For instance
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