History and Culture in China

Katie Rogers

Before this trip, my exposure to China and its history was pretty limited. I wasnt really

sure what to expect when I arrived because I hadnt heard much other than the typical

stereotypes. My first impression of China was that it is much more modern than I anticipated. Of

course it wasnt going to be too much different from the US in that sense. It felt like we were just

in another US city - aside from the signs being in Chinese - rather than being all the way across

the world.

One of the things that I found to be the most shocking was the lack of diversity I saw

among the people in the first few days of the trip. At home, I come from a town with huge

diversity, so Im used to seeing strong differences in peoples appearances. At the beginning of

the trip, I only noticed the similar characteristics in appearances, rather than any differences.

I definitely did not expect the standards of living within one city to vary so much. You

could pass super nice, modern buildings, only to pass cramped, run-down looking buildings only

a few minutes later. I also expected to see more traditional Chinese-style architecture and way

more people than we saw in the first couple of days in Shanghai.

 Daoism is one of the three major belief systems in Chinese culture, and it places an

emphasis on nature. One of the biggest difference between the US and China that I noticed first

in Shanghai was the amount of nature around the large cities. The nature and the manmade

buildings contrasted so much that they seemed to balance each other. Because of all the trees

everywhere, it never really felt like we were in a big city the way it does in the US.

Shanghai

Coming in to this trip, I expected the culture and environment to be extremely different

from what I am used to at home, but I was proved wrong. Even though Shanghai is one of the

larger cities, it still was more modern than I expected. The Pudong area, where the really

modern buildings are, looks like it couldve been found in New York or Chicago. The buildings

were sleek and tall. My favorite building was the pearl tower because it had the different pearl

spheres that made it more interesting and different from the straight, smooth lines of the other

modern buildings. The pearl tower had originally been the tallest building in Shanghai until

another one in the same area was designed by a Japanese architect. This led to the Chinese

deciding to build an even larger building just to one-up the Japanese architect.

Across the water from the Pudong area was the Bund. Here the buildings from the

concession made you feel like you had just crossed into Europe. These buildings were made

out of large stone, and it was clear that they had been built by the Europeans who had been in

Shanghai. The contrast of these two areas, along with the use of nature throughout the city,

made it seem very different from a big city in the US.

In Shanghai, we also visited the residence of Sun Yat-sen and Song Qingling. Sun Yat-

sen is regarded as the father of the Republic of China because he played a big role in the

revolution in 1911 which overthrew the dynastic system. His residence was located within the

old French concession. His wife, Song Qingling, was also a key figure in the revolution. We
also saw the site of the first congress of the CCP. This was where twelve members established

the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. The meeting place was located in the old French

concession area.

Before going to the Yu Garden, we stopped at a silk factory where we learned about the

process of raising silk worms and turning their cocoons into the silk thread used for clothing,

bedding, scarves, etc. It was really interesting to see each of the different stages of the silk

worms lives and how the thread was stretched and spun.

The Yu Garden in the old city was full of traditional architecture and nature. It was built

during the Ming Dynasty and was the largest at that time. Outside of the garden was the Yuyuan

Bazaar. This garden and the surrounding old town represented the picture I had of China in my

head before arriving. From inside the garden, you could see the modern skyscrapers towering

over the traditional architecture and natural scenery of the garden, and to see such different

styles next to each other showed how much history in China is embraced while still modernizing

the country.

The Jade Buddha Temple was unlike any other religious site I have ever seen. It was

huge, and the bright red and yellow/gold colors were so bold. The Buddha statues inside the

main temple were so beautiful. To top it off, the Jade Buddha was breathtaking; it was made out

of a single piece of jade. No pictures were allowed, but pictures and descriptions could never do

it justice.

Wuzhen

The water town of Wuzhen was the first time that I felt like we were in China. The mainly

dark buildings contrasted so beautifully with the green water, and the whole town had a

traditional feeling to it. We were able to see authentic indigo being spun and stamped. We also

went to a rice wine distillery. The culture of this town is so strong and preserved, and I think it
really allows visitors to experience the traditional way of life that is more expected than the more

modern life you see in big cities.

In the town square, there was a stage with a man performing a traditional Chinese

opera. Across the square from him was a Daoist temple. In contrast to the Jade Buddha

Temple, its color scheme was mainly yellow with green accents. In China, Buddhism, Daoism,

and Confucianism can all be combined because they are philosophies/ways of life rather than

strict religions. This Daoist temple represented this by having Buddhist statues sitting under the

Daoist figures, allowing Buddhists to pray there, too.

Wuzhen was more in the country than any other place we went, and that was made

evident by the increase in attention we received from the locals. From the start, our group would

get stared at or have multiple phones and cameras aimed at us, but it happened even more in

Wuzhen. In one of the exhibits, it felt like people were paying more attention to our group than to

the exhibit itself. Once one person stopped us for a photo, at least three more would jump in or

ask for one themselves.

Nanjing

In Nanjing, we visited the Memorial Museum for the Nanjing Massacre. While walking in,

visitors are greeted with a large statue of a mother, who had clearly been brutalized, holding her

dead child. After this statue are ten smaller statues that show even more of the horrors endured

by the victims in the weeks that the Japanese occupied Nanjing. 300,000 victims is written in

eleven languages on the wall near an opening with rocks that each represent one of the victims

from the massacre. When the memorial was built, imprints of those survivors who were still alive

were placed outside the site of the mass grave where 10,000 of the victims had been buried.

The Presidential Palace was an important place to visit too because it had been the

office of the Viceroy of the two lower Yangtze provinces during the Qing dynasty. In 1853, it
became the Palace of the Heavenly King of the Taiping Rebellion, which began in 1850. Hong

Xiuquan believed that he was the brother of Jesus and gained followers to revolt against the

government. The Presidential Palace was also home to the office of the Republic of Chinas

President from 1927.

Sun Yat-sens mausoleum was completed in 1929 and represents a bell, used to alert

the Chinese people to the revolution. There are 392 stepsto represent the population of China

at the timeto the top where the mausoleum sits.

We also visited the old examination site in Nanjing. This was the site of the provincial

level examinations in Jiangsu Province and was also the largest examination hall in ancient

China. In Chinese history, the examination system was crucial because it helped find the best of

the best for government positions. Families would give all they had to help their child succeed

as much as possible in the exams. There were three levels: district (superior talents), provincial

(promoted scholars), and jinshi. Having the examination system in place also allowed the

government to hire officials while avoiding nepotism or corruption.

Xian

The most important place that we visited in Xian were the terracotta warriors. These

warriors were created to protect Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, in the afterlife. The

warriors were found by farmers in the 1970s. Each warrior varies from the next in clothing or

physical appearances, so they are thought to have each been modeled after a real person. This

also suggests that, at that time in history, the average height of a male in China was around six

feet. Many of the warriors were destroyed or partially destroyed because of peasant revolts that

set fires, causing beams to collapse onto the clay soldiers.

The Tang Dynasty music and dance show was very beautiful and a great way to

experience traditional music. The costumes were so vibrant, and we got to see the traditional

musical instruments used. The show was definitely a highlight of our time in Xian; it was a
relaxing break from constantly moving around and a way to immerse ourselves into the culture

even more.

The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda was built during the Tang Dynasty. Buddhist monk

Xuanzang had traveled to India to compare Chinese and Indian Buddhism before returning to

Xian where he built the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Upon his return, he brought hundreds of

Sanskrit texts that, with the help of the emperor, he and other scholars were able to translate.

While we were there, the monks and other Buddhist followers were praying to the medical

Buddha. It was absolutely mesmerizing to listen to the monks chant.

After visiting the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, we toured the Northwest University of

Politics and Law. There, we learned about the history of the school and met with students. We

were split into four groups and had the chance to ask questions about whatever we were

interested in. It was so much fun to interact with them and learn about and compare their

campus life to ours. My group played a couple icebreaker games and talked about our life goals.

Looking back, I wish we could have spent more time meeting local students throughout the trip.

Yanan

On our way to Yanan, we visited the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor. It was the first

national cultural site to be protected by the government. Inside of the memorial, Sun Yat-sen,

Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek, and Deng Xiaoping left dedications for the Yellow Emperor.

Legend has it that the Yellow Emperor left nothing behind but his clothing when he ascended to

heaven.

The city of Yanan is very important to Chinese history because it became the

headquarters of the CCP in the mid-1930s after the Long March. This is where Communist party

members were trained and Mao Zedong resided for some time. Yanan remained the center of

the CCP operations until the CCP defeated the GMD in 1949. The Yanan Revolutionary

Memorial Hall is a large museum that depicts the history of the Chinese Communist Party; it
was mostly in Chinese, but there was information in English about the more important events.

Wangjiaping is the site of the headquarters of the 8th Route Army, and Zaoyuan gives visitors a

look into the cave houses that Mao and other CCP leaders resided.

One of the cultural differences that I found in Yanan was that the people in that region

traditionally lived in cave houses. The drive through the mountains to Yanan gave us the

chance to see the caves that are still being used up in the mountainside. There were also

preserved cave houses for the public to view that had been the residences of Mao and other

CCP leaders.

Beijing

Tiananmen Square is one of the largest city squares in the world, with the capacity of

one million people. Mao Zedongs Mausoleum, along with Chinas National Museum, and a

Monument of the Peoples Heroes are located within the square. The Monument of the Peoples

Heroes is a monument commemorating those who died for revolutionary causes in Chinas

recent history. Inside the mausoleum, Maos preserved body is on display for those who wish to

view it.

The Forbidden City was the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing Dynasties and is

now a palace museum. The Forbidden City is where the emperor and his family would live, and

it was used for ceremonies and government purposes. It is called the Forbidden City because it

was forbidden for peasants to enter into it. The whole city contains 980 buildings in the

traditional Chinese style. Each pillar is made of an entire tree, and four pillars make a room.

Rather than using nails to hold the structures together, the building materials were simply

stacked. Surrounding the city is a large moat and thick walls to help protect those inside.

Because the majority of the city was built out of wood, the threat of fires was pretty high. For
safety purposes, there were no trees allowed within the Forbidden City, only in the imperial

gardens.

The Temple of Heaven was used by emperors from the Ming and Qing dynasties to pray

to Heaven for good harvests. It was constructed in the fifteenth centuryaround the same time

as the Forbidden City. It wasnt until the early twentieth century that the temple was opened to

the public. As with the buildings in the Forbidden City, the main building in the Temple of

Heaven, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, is made completely of wood, without a single

nail. The original burned down after a lightning strike caught it on fire in the late 1800s. The

Circular Mound Altar is said to be the middle of the earth. The altar is made of three circular

levels of marble. The center of the altar is where the emperor would pray for good weather.

The Great Wall was more amazing than I couldve imagined. Hearing about it is cool

enough, but to actually be there and be able to climb it is something else. The section we went

to formed a circle, and if the enemies broke through it to the valley, then Beijing would be lost.

Originally the Great Wall was built by separate kingdoms, but when Qin Shi Huang unified

China, he ordered that they all be connected. Climbing the wall is not an easy feat, especially if

you dont enjoy heights, so its hard to even imagine the skill it took to build the wall. The

mountainside did not look very forgiving if someone were to fall off. To think that the Great Wall,

although being renovated throughout history, has survived for so long is incredible.

The Summer Palace was renovated for the Empress Dowager Cixis sixtieth birthday

with the intention of becoming her permanent residences after ending her career in politics. It

was here that she resided for some time. In order to keep control of Chinas politics after her

son died, she adopted her nephew, Guangxu, so that she could remain regent with him as the

emperor. He implemented the Hundred Days Reforms in 1898, and as a result, Cixi placed him

under house arrest. She poisoned Emperor Guangxu with arsenic the day before she died.

The Lama Temple, also known as the Yonghe Temple, is a Tibetan Buddhist temple and

monastery. It was built during the Qing Dynasty and became the residence of Prince Yong in
the eighteenth century. After it was converted into a lamasery for monks from Mongolia and

Tibet, it became the national Lama administration center. The most amazing part of the Lama

Temple is the twenty-six-meter-tall statue of the Maitreya Buddha, made out of a single piece of

wood, that stands in the Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses. Also at this temple, we were

taught by a monk how to properly pray to Buddha. After visiting all of the temples that we saw,

another big cultural difference that stood out was that there werent set times for people to go

pray at temple. All of the temples were also more colorfully elaborate than the churches that I

have seen in the US, Scotland, or Israel.

After spending the two and a half weeks in China, I have fallen in love with the culture. I

expected it to be way different from anything Ive experienced before, but in reality, the

differences werent as large as I thought they would be. While it didnt bug me as much by the

end of the trip, it was hard not to notice all of the people who would stop and take pictures of us

because they werent used to seeing foreigners. The attention given to foreigners was one of

the biggest cultural differences that I noticed on this trip. People never stop foreigners for

pictures in the US, either due to the exposure to diverse groups of people or to a better sense of

personal space. The cities and tourist destinations in particular were very crowded. I dont think I

expected to see so many Chinese tourists at each of the locations. In many places, there

werent many foreign visitorsthe Great Wall being an exception. After this trip, I think that I

would return to China if given the opportunity again.