Chinese Historical Background- CHINA

1 [Jeffrey Angadol]

CHINA
People: CHINESE

China is one of the areas where civilization developed earliest. It has a recorded history
of nearly 5,000 years.

More than a million years ago, primitive human beings lived on the land now called
China. About 400,000 to 500,000 years ago, the Peking Man, a primitive man that lived in
Zhoukoudian southwest of Beijing, was able to walk with the body erect, to make and use simple
tools, and use fire. Six to seven thousand years ago, the people living in the Yellow River valley
supported themselves primarily with agriculture, while also raising livestock. More than 3,000
years ago these people began smelting bronze and using ironware.

In China, slave society began around the 21st century B.C. Over the next 1,700 years,
agriculture and animal husbandry developed greatly and the skills of silkworm-raising, raw-silk
reeling and silk-weaving spread widely. Bronze smelting and casting skills reached a relatively
high level, and iron smelting became increasingly sophisticated. The Chinese culture flourished,
as a great number of thinkers and philosophers emerged, most famously Confucius.

In 221 B.C., Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, established a
centralized, unified, multi-national feudal state. This period of feudal society continued until
after the Opium War in 1840. During these 2,000 years, China's economy and culture continued
to develop, bequeathing a rich heritage of science and technology, literature and the arts. The
four great inventions of ancient China - paper-making, printing, the compass and gunpowder -
have proved an enormous contribution to world civilization.

Chinese civilization peaked at Tang Dynasty (618-907) when Tang people traded with
people all over the world. This is why Chinese residing overseas often call themselves Tang Ren,
or the People of Tang.

In 1840, anxious to continue its opium trade in China, Britain started the Opium War
against China. After the war, the big foreign powers forcibly occupied "concessions" and divided
China into "spheres of influence"; thus, China was transformed into a semi-colonial, semi-feudal
society.

In 1911, the bourgeois democratic revolution (the Xinhai Revolution) led by Sun Yat-sen
abolished the feudal monarchy, and established the Republic of China, therefore starting the
modern history of China.

In 1949, Chinese Communist Party established the People's Republic of China, driving
Kumingtang Party to Taiwan Island.

In 1978, China adopted the Open Door policy, ending the 5000 thousand's history of self
seclusion.

Chinese Historical Background- CHINA
2 [Jeffrey Angadol]

China has been the goal of European merchants and adventurers since ancient times.
Civilization arose in China for the first time c. 3500 BC. not long before city states and the
written word also appeared in India and the Middle East. The first coherent Chinese Empire was
founded about 1500 BC. Chinese religious ideas are in some ways similar to those of India, in
that they too were based on ancient animistic beliefs that center around the cycles of seasons and
fertility of plants, animals, and human beings. The sun was seen as the center of worship, and the
Emperor came to be sanctified as the descendant of the Sun. Reverence for ancestors was and is
an important feature of Chinese beliefs. This link will take you to an image of an archaeological
site in Shanxi, where an imperial grave containing terra cotta effigies of the entire royal
entourage has been uncovered. Confucianism developed around the 6th c. BC.

It was centered around the idea of duty and right behavior, a philosophy that recognized
and supported the hierarchical nature of Chinese society. Confucianism emphasized a complex
bureaucratic and social class system of the Chinese Empire through a systematic moral and
social code. One's personal salvation could be achieved by submerging the individual good in the
greater good of the family and the State. It also stressed the family, particularly elders and
ancestors, as one's tie to the sacred. This emphasis on deference to ancestors and the state is a
profoundly conservative factor in Chinese culture, making tradition, and established ways of
expressing and structuring ideas almost irresistible.

Confucian visual symbolism drew upon ancient interpretations of plant and animal
imagery and mythology. This can be seen, for example, in the stylized animal and plant images
seen on the rank badges of civil servants, or on imperial robes.

Taoism, also dating from about the 6th century BC, taught that the individual should
surrender himself to the vastness of nature in order to find his true place in the world. By
learning to move with rather than against the forces of nature, it would be possible to find one's
"way," or Tao. The achievement of balance of natural forces is represented by the Yin-Yang
symbol, a preeminent Taoist image. TheTao Te Ching is the primary document of Taoist
teachings. The I Ching, or book of Changes, is a collection of moral teachings and commentaries
still widely read. It is popularly used as the basis for a system of divination. There have been a
number of translations of the I Ching, which has been popular in the West.

The preoccupation with nature, and the submerging of the individual in the whole of the
natural flow in the world had a profound effect on the development of painting in China. Chinese
landscape painting differs in many ways from Euro-American painting. For example, the small
scale of human figures in the landscape tends to emphasize the power of nature, and the
smallness of the individual in the natural world. This idea of the submersion of individual will to
the whole is shared by both Confucianism and Taoism, and the two philosophies have coexisted
comfortably.

Buddhism arrived in China from India in the 6th c. AD. In contrast with the Confucian
and Taoist concern with defining virtue with right living in this world, Buddhism offered an
inner path to spiritual peace through meditation and study. The Buddhism of India was modified
in China by contact with Confucianism and Taoism; a monastic tradition, borrowed from
Confucianism, was combined with the Taoist interest in the contemplation of nature. Although
Chinese Historical Background- CHINA
3 [Jeffrey Angadol]

Buddhism arose in India and shared some of the Hindu frame of reference, it also differed
from Hinduism in that it accepted the reality of suffering in this world rather than suggesting that
this world is an illusion. Instead Buddhism offered an individual path to salvation that came to be
known as the "Middle Way." The Middle Way avoided both the physical self indulgences of the
worldly, and also the extremes of the ascetic disciplines, spiritual or physical, practiced by Hindu
mystics. Instead, it offered an eight-fold path, a series of steps to be followed to achieve Nirvana,
or liberation of the soul from the wheel of life.

There are two main forms of Buddhism; Theravada (or Hinayana): This form stresses the
teachings of the historic Buddha. Monasticism is an important feature; many Buddhists spend at
least short periods of their life in a monastic retreat.

The other form, Mahayana, includes a pantheon of Buddhist saints, or Boddhisatvas--
those who have achieved enlightenment but have postponed Nirvana to assist with the suffering
of the world. This form is common in Japan, among other places. As it happens, here in Ithaca,
New York is the site of the North American Seat of the Namgyal Monastery and Institute,
founded at the direction of the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

Buddhist art, while it shares some features with the art of older religions, tends to stress
the teaching and meditation aspects of the faith. Buddha figures, sometimes immense (such as
the 44 foot high statue at Sheuxi)and images showing events in the life of Buddha or the saints
are most common.