DEJ – 1.

ROČNÍK - ČÍNA

ANCIENT CHINA
 China is very isolated, bordered by sea, mountains and desert
 Two rivers - the Yellow River (The Huang He) and the Yangtze River (the Chang
Jiang)

DYNASTIES
 Sia, Shang, Jin (ca. 2.200 – 1.025BC)

 Zhou Dynasty (1.025 – 221BC)

 Ch’in (Qin) Dynasty (221 – 206BC) dynasty of one Emperor Shih Huang-Ti
famous for:
 building of the Great Wall of China
 his tomb (Chinese Pyramid), guarded by Terracotta Army (7.000 life-size
statues of soldiers, horses, chariots)
 forbade teaching and learning history

THE HAN DYNASTY 209 B.C. – 187 A.C.

 Centralized, bureaucratic government
 period of prosperity, trade with the Roman Empire
 The Silk Road - trading with silk
 At its height - area of 1.5 million square miles and a population of 60 million
 the empire had expanded nearly to the bounds of present-day China
 Chinese became common written language throughout empire
 Empire fell apart; restored by Tang Dynasty in 618

SOCIETY:
1. the emperor
2. kings and governors
3. state officials, nobles, and scholars
4.peasant farmers
5. artisans and merchants
6. the soldiers
7. slaves

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TECHNOLOGY:
 Paper was invented in 105 A.D
 the collar harness for horses
 the Chinese perfected a plow that was more efficient because it had two blades
 they also improved iron tools, invented the wheelbarrow, and began to use water
mills to grind grain

CULTURE:
 The Chinese viewed anyone who was not Chinese as barbarians

PHILOSOPHY
 development of 100 schools of philosophy
 The most famous are: Jin & Jang – the world and life is based of the constant struggle
of two opposing principles, which cannot exist separately - form a unity.

DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING:
 In the Chinese method of writing, each character generally stands for one syllable
or unit of language.

 In contrast, there were practically no links between China’s spoken language and its
written language. One could read Chinese without being able to speak a word of it.

 The disadvantage of the Chinese system was the enormous number of written
characters to be memorized - a different one for each unit of language.

 A person needed to know over 1,500 characters to be barely literate. To be a true

scholar, one needed to know at least 10,000 characters. For centuries, this severely
limited the number of literate, educated Chinese.

 As a general rule, a nobleperson’s children learned to write, but peasant children

did not.