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Hi everyone and welcome to Learn Chinese Now. China has a 5,000 year history, and today we are going to look at China's most important dynasties and historical periods in order. Early Chinese history starts with legend. China has a story about a great flood in a similar way that western civilization does, and after that a man named Yu was assigned by the last of the legendary sage emperors, Shun, to tame the waters. Yu dug channels to allow the water to flow out to the sea,
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and founded the Xia dynasty (夏朝) in approximately 2070 BC. many historians view the Xia as a legendary dynasty, since no archaeological sites in china believed to be Xia have yielded written records to confirm that they belong to the Xia dynasty. China's next dynasty is the Shang (商朝) The Shang are believed to have ruled from about 1600 to 1050 BC. A feature of the Shang is the bronze artifacts that have been discovered, from cups to steamers to cauldrons,
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the bronzes were believed to have been used in sacrificial rituals. These bronze artifacts got progressively bigger throughout the dynasty as technology improved. By the end of the dynasty they were making bronzes weighing up to 200 pounds. It is during the Shang that we see the earliest style of Chinese writing the oracle bone inscriptions (甲骨文) these are pictographs written on turtle shells that Shang kings used for divination.
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After the Shang degenerated into what is regarded as a period of decadence and low morality, a frontier state called Zhou rose up and conquered the Shang, starting the Zhou dynasty (周朝) It was during the Zhou that the idea of the Mandate of Heaven (天命) came into being. A king or dynasty could only rule if they maintained heaven's favor, if a king acted tyrannically heaven would give warnings in the form of natural disasters,
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if the king failed to heed these warnings the dynasty would descend into chaos. For the first half of the Zhou dynasty heaven seemed to be on the joking side, but the dynasty did eventually descend into chaos, beginning the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (春秋戰國)
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although it was chaotic it was during this period that a series of philosophers emerged. the most famous of which, Confucius, and his teachings of filial piety and the five Confucian virtues of Ren - benevolence, Yi - justice, li - rituals, Zhi - wisdom and Xin - faith would dominate the next two thousand years of Chinese culture. During the Spring and Autumn period, 722-481 BC, the Zhou king's power waned and few lords started making and breaking contracts,
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taking hostages and taking up arms. By the second half of this period, the Warring States period, 403 to 221 BC, the Zhou king's power was reduced to close to zero, and states started conquering each other one by one, until just seven states were left it was then that the Qin state in the west saw an opportunity and rose up to conquer all other six, unifying china once again under the Qin dynasty 221-206 BC the rulers of the Zhou dynasty had been called kings, (王) in Chinese.
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but the Qin's ruler invented a new term (皇帝) or emperor, a title which all subsequent dynastic rulers would use. this first emperor of the Qin, QinShiHuang was a brutal ruler. He solidified his unification through a unification of culture. unifying weights and measures, written language, currency, and even the width of roads throughout the empire. maintaining local currency or weights and measures was an act of treason. the Qin emperor is thought to have buried 460
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scholars alive in a mass grave as a warning against defiance. After the Qin emperor died, he had over 7000 terracotta warriors buried with him to protect him in the afterlife. This became one of the most famous relics from the Qin dynasty. But the harsh reign of the Qin didn't last long. After the first emperor died in 210 BC, the empire destabilized. 202 BC the Qin dynasty was defeated by Liu Bang who founded the Han dynasty (漢朝)
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Sometimes referred to as China's first golden age. the Han dynasty adopted Confucianism as the state philosophy, almost doubled its territory, and developed trade with central Asia and the Roman Empire along the silk road. It was a 400-year period of prosperity. After the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 AD, China would remain divided for several centuries. immediately after the Han fell, China entered the three kingdoms period, (三國時期) 220 to 265 AD.
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This was a period of battles between three contending powers it is the subject of the classic Chinese book Romance of the Three Kingdoms, (三國演義)
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Eventually the Wei state with twice the population of the other two prevailed, and unified China starting the short-lived Jin dynasty,
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However, the Jin dynasty was far from a period of stability. Palace intrigue led to a civil war between 291 and 306. The end of the Jin dynasty's control over all of china came when XiongNu tribesmen had settled in northern china and proved hard to govern. They decided to attack the capital Luo Yang in 311 AD, and they attacked Chang An in 316 AD. For the next hundred years, north China became a battleground,
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and many citizens fled southwards to Nan Jing where the Jin had set up a government in exile. 420 to 589 AD is known as the Northern and Southern dynasties period, (南北朝) China was divided between north and south. Throughout this whole period of division Buddhism which had originally been introduced to China during the Han dynasty increased in popularity. By the year 477 North China had over 6000 Buddhist temples and South China had close to 3000.
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Some Confucianists criticized Buddhist monks for not providing heirs to their family, however, Buddhists argued that having a member of the family walk the path to enlightenment brought blessings to all their relatives. Many rulers during this time actively supported and raised money for the building of Buddhist temples, such as WuDi of Liang, who once had himself held hostage until his court raised a huge sum of money to have him released.
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this money was then used to support Buddhist establishments. Finally in 581 AD, china was again unified by the Sui dynasty, (隋朝) The Sui emperor WenDi viewed himself as a Buddhist ruler, and used military force to defend the Buddhist faith. Him and his successor had ambitious plans to rebuild China, but this took its toll on the populace. Over one million men were called up for military service in a campaign against Korea for example.
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it was only four decades until the Sui dynasty was overthrown. The victor of this rebellion was a man named Li Yuan, a cousin of the second Sui emperor, who founded the Tang dynasty (唐朝) in 618 AD and would rule as emperor Gao Zu before abdicating to his son who ruled as emperor Tang Tai Zong. and so started China's golden age the Sui dynasty had started the civil service examination system, based on the Confucian classics. The Tang expanded on this, setting up schools,
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issuing state versions of the Confucian classics, complete with commentaries China now had a political system based more on merit rather than hereditary privilege, apart from the position of emperor, The Tang capital at Chang An was very cosmopolitan. The city and its suburbs had around 2 million inhabitants, the biggest city in the world at the time. China's three religions: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism thrived in Tang times.
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Chang An had hundreds of monasteries, temples, and some foreign churches. One of the most famous art forms to come out of Tang times was poetry. Two of the most famous Chinese poets Li Bai and Du Fu live during Tang times. Li Bai is known for his romanticism and drunken descriptions of the moon, while Du Fu was a realist poet who described the realities of the time. During Tang times, tea also went from being a medicinal tonic to the single most popular drink in China.
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this popularization was facilitated by Lu Yu who wrote the Cha Jing, or classic of tea. He would later be known as (茶聖) the sage of tea But nothing lasts forever. Eventually the Tang dynasty degenerated into local warlords battling for power. and in 960 AD, was replaced by the Song dynasty (宋朝)
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Although the Song dynasty started off strong with rapid economic development, it was militarily weak, and could not exert the same dominance in Asia as the Han and Tang dynasties did. In the year 1126, the Song capital Kaifung was attacked by Jurchens from the north. the emperor and 3000 members of the imperial family were captured and taken north. After Chinese forces regrouped further south, the emperor's youngest son was proclaimed the new emperor in Hang Zhou.
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After losing the north, the dynasty lasted a further century and a half. Yet on a cultural level the Song dynasty still flourished. Policies were less restrictive, markets in cities could open at night, tea houses sprung up, and there were storytellers, puppet shows, and poets writing in the new Song dynasty style (宋詞) The Song dynasty is known for its landscape paintings or Shan Shui Hua. Northern Song works often were huge grand scenes.
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After the loss of the north paintings were smaller leaving large expanses of canvas empty, which scholars generally believe to represent the loss of the Chinese heartland, and the feeling of emptiness that abounded after the Northern Song"s defeat. The Southern Song scholars viewed protecting Confucian values as protecting the essence of Chinese culture. In Song times, one of the most important commentaries on the confusion classics was published by the scholar Zhu Xi,
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this would later become the commentary on which all subsequent civil service examinations were based, up until the end of the civil service examination system in 1905. Even at the beginning of the song dynasty there was already a foreign state existing on territory to the north which had once been part of China. This was the Liao dynasty (遼朝) Formed by the Khitan people around the fall of the Tang dynasty, it lasted from 907 to 1125 AD. Not only did the Liao dynasty have a Chinese name,
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but also took on the Chinese imperial hereditary system, in contrast to the Khitan way of electing the chief of the clan. This dynasty started a trend of foreign rule that would eventually unite the whole of China under the Mongols. After the Liao was the Jin dynasty (金朝) also called (大金) or great Jin. This was the dynasty which defeated the Northern Song and pushed the Song imperial court south. It was founded by the Jurchen people whose descendants were
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the Manchus that later founded the Qing dynasty. the Jurchens first defeated the Liao and then turned on the Song. Having incorporated Chinese military experts into their army from defeated Chinese cities, they laid siege to Kaifeng the Song capital. The city was defended by 48,000 troops with crossbows and flamethrowers. Yes, the Chinese had figured out gunpowder by this time. Although they didn't use it to make guns like in the west,
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there were a wide variety of Chinese weapons that used fire. the Jurchens brought 30 catapults to launch huge stones towards the city, iron sheeting to bridge the moat, and siege towers higher than the city walls, from which they threw bombs down into the city. and so the Song capital fell. The Jin dynasty ruled over around 40 million people in north China and adopted many of the institutions of Chinese government.
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As the dynasty went on, the Jurchens started adopting more and more Chinese customs, such as language, dress, and rituals. Although this was disrupted after an assassination of the emperor by Jurchen officials protesting the assimilation to Chinese culture, by the end of the dynasty most Jurchens did indeed speak Chinese, wear Chinese clothes, adopt Chinese names, and many even married with the local population.
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In the late 12th century, there arose another contender for the rule of all china, the Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan. Although the Mongol conquest of the Song started after Genghis Khan's death, Genghis khan started what would become the largest contiguous land empire in history, stretching all the way from Korea to eastern Europe. It was Genghis's grandson Kublai who led the conquest of the song. The Jin dynasty had already been defeated, and in the year 1271,
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Kublai moved his capital from Mongolia to Beijing which at that time was called This year marks the start of the Yuan dynasty,
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Like the Liao and the Jin, the foreign invaders adopted a Chinese name for their empire. The conquest of the south took some time however, the Mongols had to build a fleet of boats, engaged in a five-year siege of the city of Xiang Yang in the Yangtze valley. And after crossing the Yangtze in 1275, the Song Empress Dowager managed to summon a force of 200,000 to fight the Mongols. But the Mongols were a fearsome enemy, and after slaughtering the entire population of the city of Chang Zhou,
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the Song Empress surrendered. The Mongols finally defeated the last Song loyalists in a naval battle in the year 1279. Under Yuan rule, Chinese were allowed to maintain most of their customs and religious practices. Although the Italian explorer Marco Polo noted that there was a lot of ethnic tension in China at the time, different races were subject to different taxation laws and were placed in a hierarchy.
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For example, a Chinese would be subject to severe penalties for fighting against Mongols, but a Mongol could get off with a mere fine if he killed the Chinese. Chinese were also forbidden from owning weapons. But at this time, China was considered the center of the world, Chinese culture was superior and the Emperor, the Son of Heaven. The Yuan emperors kept Chinese advisers and reinstated the imperial examination system in 1315.
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Although they did have quotas to make sure ethnic Chinese especially citizens of the former Song were outnumbered by Mongols and other races in the government. Since China was now tied to a Eurasian empire, more Europeans than ever before visited China, and Chinese culture and inventions such as printing and gunpowder spread west. Before long, Europeans with some knowledge of the exotic lands and cultures of the east, would start their own age of exploration,
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something which ethnic Chinese at the time, and in the centuries to come, were not too pleased about. In 1368, China was finally under the rule of an ethnic Chinese ruler again. and the Ming dynasty or (明朝) was founded. Emperor Taizu had started off as a commoner, living in poverty as a youth. His parents had died when he was 16. He spent time in a Buddhist temple before joining a rebel group he would later come to lead.
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He first took Nanjing and then took his army right to the Mongol capital at Beijing the Mongol ruler fled and Taizu established his dynasty. Taizu proved to be a very harsh ruler, conducting several purges of the elite and literati. However, the imperial examination system continued testing students knowledge of the four books, Confucius analects, Mencius, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Great Learning, as interpreted in the commentary of the scholar Zhu Xi.
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The Ming dynasty saw an explosion in publishing and vernacular literature, blue and white Ming porcelain became a hot commodity in Europe. In the religious sphere, out of China's three religions, early Ming emperors favored Taoism, and Taizu to outlaw Christianity. However later on, a wave of Jesuit missionaries brought knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, and geography to China. the most famous of which was Mateo Richie, who lived in Beijing from 1601 to 1610.
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Control of China's borders proved troublesome for the Ming emperors. the Great Wall you see today was built in Ming times to keep the Mongols out. China's coasts faced threats from smugglers and pirates, China's naval power increased substantially during the Ming. The explorer Zhenghe was dispatched by the emperor, to go on several voyages looking for tribute states for the Ming empire. Zhenghe got as far as the coast of east Africa.
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Despite the Chinese distrust of foreigners, many western powers had become major maritime forces in Asia, and international trade with these foreign powers flourished. Although the Ming always regarded the foreign powers as mere tribute states, and limited them to trading posts without access to the Chinese interior.
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But, by the 1600s, despite positive economic growth, the Ming government had grown too large and expensive. A drop in temperatures during this time led to a shorter growing season and a famine between the years of 1627 and 28. Gangs started ravaging the countryside, and the state didn't have the financial resources to react. The Ming started having trade problems with the Japanese and the Spanish which shut down major flows of silver into China, leading to further fiscal problems.
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As Ming society started to break down, different factions fought for power, the Ming's Mandate of Heaven had expired. In 1644 the warlord Li Zicheng marched on Beijing, and the Ming emperor committed suicide. But Li's rule of China hardly lasted. The Manchus, who had been building up their state and armies outside the great wall, marched on China. A Ming general named Wu Sangui who is tasked with guarding a great wall outpost, sided with the Manchus against Li and his rebels.
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So started the Qing dynasty,
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also called
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another period of alien rule for China. but a period that brought wealth, stability, and territorial expansion. At least until China was weakened by foreign powers in the 1800s. In 1645, the Qing rulers ordered all men in the empire to adopt the Manchu hairstyle. they had to get a haircut and start growing what was called a queue, within 10 days or faced death. This was to show their loyalty to the new dynasty. Most Chinese saw no option but to obey.
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It took several decades for the Qing to track down and crush the last Ming loyalists. Once emperor Kang Xi took power in 1669, China entered a period of stability that lasted 130 years, and saw only three emperors on the throne. Kang Xi and his grandson Qian Long each ruled for over 60 years. Kang Xi embraced Chinese culture, continuing the imperial examination system, allowing ethnic Chinese to have a place in the government,
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and ordering the completion of the Kang Xi dictionary of Chinese characters. Kang Xi also welcomed Jesuit missionaries to the court appointing them to the imperial board of astronomy. After the short reign of Kang Xi's son Yong Zheng, the emperor Qian Long took over starting another 60-year reign. Qian Long was a patron of the arts. In addition to studying and painting himself, he also amassed a huge collection of Chinese artwork at the palace
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he added his own poems and calligraphy to many paintings during this time china's territory expanded to include the whole of Tibet Xinjiang in the west, Mongolia, and the island of Taiwan, previously a Dutch colonial outpost. In the Qing period, Confucianism became more strict, scholar officials feared a similar unravelling of society that happened in the late Ming. But threats to Chinese society came from the outside as well as from within.
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The Chinese had previously limited western trade only to certain ports and limited westerners access to the interior of the country, regarding the western powers as mere tribute states. In 1793, the British sent lord McCartney to meet with the emperor Qian Long. McCartney came with gifts of scientific instruments, carpets, knives, glass objects, all meant to arouse Chinese interest in British manufactured goods. But Qian Long showed no interest,
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proclaiming in a letter to the king of England: we possess all things I have no use for your country's manufactures. By the year 1800, the British were purchasing about one-seventh of the tea produced in China, and paying for their tea using silver. This contributed about one-tenth of state revenue through the tax they paid on tea. However, since China refused to buy British goods, this led to a massive trade imbalance. British silver flowed into China and never came back.
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The British needed a product to balance out the relationship. This product came in the form of opium. The British East India Company transported opium from India to China, then brought tea from China back to Britain. The Qing court understood the perils of opium addiction and sought to outlaw the substance, but this led to further confrontation with the British, who possessed superior naval forces. And thus, the so-called Opium Wars
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led to several unfair treaties between the Qing dynasty and the British. The Qing were forced to open up more ports to British trade, they ceded the island of Hong Kong for the British to use as a colony, and the opium trade went on unaffected. Other European powers such as the French and the Germans, as well as the Russians and Japanese, all succeeded in occupying parts of Chinese territory, and forcing the Chinese to open up more ports for trade.
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The 1800s also sought several rebellions internally, the largest of which was the Taiping Rebellion. Faced with intrusion by western powers and rebellions from within, the Qing decided to try to use some aspects of western learning to strengthen the dynasty. The Self-strengthening Movement, was started. China started to industrialize build western weapons and warships, railroads factories, and promotes study of western science and mathematics. Yet this movement was ultimately unsuccessful.
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During a battle with the French in Vietnam in the 1880s. It took the French only an hour to destroy an entire fleet of new Chinese ships. By the end of the 1800s, Qing china had been utterly humiliated. Losing a war with Japan over Korea, they were forced to hand over Taiwan and Liaodong to the Japanese. This started a frenzy of other countries seizing territory for themselves in China. It was almost looking like China was going to be carved up by western powers the same way Africa was.
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In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion prompted a force of 20,000 allied soldiers from the western powers to march from Tianjin to Beijing and put down the rebellion and then loot the city. The Qing were ordered to pay twice the government's annual revenue as repatriation to the western powers. Amazingly the Qing managed to hold on to power into the beginning of the 20th century. But change was inevitable. In 1905, the centuries-old system of imperial service examinations was abolished,
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and the modern western style school system was set up. In 1912, the last Qing emperor abdicated, and China entered the modern era. An era that despite hopeful start, would lead to the worst destruction of traditional Chinese culture, and the largest loss of Chinese life in history. Scholars today look back on the imperial examination system based on Confucian values as one of the most advanced political systems in history. Some even feel bringing back aspects of Confucian learning
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would be essential to reinvigorating Chinese culture and reversing negative trends in modern Chinese society. If you stuck with this video all the way to the end, you must be a true scholar of Chinese history. A lot can be learned from China's 5,000 years of traditional culture. Many of the profound principles of Chinese philosophy could make our societies better today, and the written records are just sitting there, waiting to be discovered.
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Thanks for watching guys we'll see you next time!
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