This Great Wall of China ran 2, miles across northern China to the sea. Almost 1, years later, it was reconstructed with stone during the Ming dynasty. To support his massive projects, the first emperor created a tax system that burdened everyone, especially the common people.

The emperor's land tax took up to 50 percent of a family's yearly grain production. Even more oppressive, however, was conscription.

In addition to military conscription, all males from 15 to 60 years of age had to work for fixed periods on local public works, such as building roads and repairing dikes. Those convicted of crimes or who could not pay their taxes were often transported faraway to labor on the emperor's projects like the Great Wall.

With many peasants away from the fields working on the emperor's projects, their crops frequently failed. According to one scholar at that time, the poor often "ate the food of dogs and swine. Shi Huangdi, however, preferred another school of thought called Legalism. The Legalists believed that people were basically motivated by self-interest and therefore had to be controlled by a strong ruler and stern punishments.

Han Fei-tzu, a Legalist and the tutor of Shi Huangdi, wrote, "The ruler alone should possess the power, wielding it like lightning or like thunder. The Qin Law Code set specified harsh punishments for particular crimes. Penalties for less serious violations included fines, beatings with a stick, hard labor on public works, and banishment to frontier regions. For more serious offenses, lawbreakers faced bodily mutilation by tattooing the face, flogging, cutting off the nose, amputating one or both feet, and castration.

The death penalty was reserved for the worst criminals, especially those who threatened the emperor or the state. Execution was normally by beheading. But in some cases, the criminal could be cut in two at the waist, boiled in a cauldron, or torn apart by horse-drawn chariots.

These scholars learn only from the old, not from the new, and employ their learning to oppose our rule and confuse the. This lowers the prestige of the [emperor] and leads to the formation of factions below.

It must be stopped. Let all historical records but those of Qin be destroyed. During the next few years, Shi Huangdi grew increasingly isolated.

He became obsessed with finding an elixir for immortality. He sent magicians to distant lands to find the elusive potion and toured the empire himself in search of it.

On his last tour, he seemed to descend into madness on his quest for everlasting life. He apparently took concoctions containing mercury and other poisonous substances, which ironically probably shortened his life. The Qin dynasty did not last long after Shi Huangdi was buried in his elaborate tomb guarded by thousands of clay soldiers. Peasant revolts erupted followed by rebellions led by lords from the six kingdoms Shi Huangdi had conquered.

If this library is buried with the emperor, and if it has not been destroyed by over 2, years of natural decay, it is likely to give us an entirely new understanding of ancient Chinese history.

Yet the many philosophical schools of the period —Confucianism and Legalism in particular — would continue to play an important role throughout Chinese history. Their suggestions emphasized ruthless policies and underhanded tactics. Yet, the Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years. When it was replaced by the Han dynasty, the new line of emperors decided that Confucians should replace the Legalists as advisers. The teachings of Confucius were very different.

Yet, as many Chinese people have been quick to point out, the ruthless power politics of the Legalists did not disappear. In fact, references to Confucianism have often been seen as a pretense, and Legalism as the enduring reality of politics in China. To reformist Chinese intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century, Confucianism came to symbolize everything that was wrong with the country. Emphasizing literary studies at the expense of science and technology, Confucianism had allegedly blocked economic development, and it was said to stifle creativity and entrepreneurship.

To these conclusions, the Chinese Communist Party added that Confucianism was a feudal doctrine, which gave ideological support to an exploitative landowning class. During the last stage of these campaigns, —, Confucius became an official enemy of the state. Read more: Kongzi and his institutes at p. In contrast to all previous Chinese leaders, Mao was not afraid to declare his admiration for the methods employed by the Legalists.

In fact, he quite explicitly modeled himself on Qin Shi Huang. Mao only criticized him for not being ruthless enough. Moreover, several of the dynasties were not Chinese at all, but established by foreign invaders.

Despite this political diversity, there is a striking continuity when it comes to cultural values. Most emperors embraced Confucian ideals and were active participants in the various rituals which Chinese culture prescribed — including ancestor worship and offerings to Heaven at various times of the day, month and year. In addition, a large and rule-bound bureaucracy helped to provide a sense of continuity from one dynasty to the next. The Han dynasty lasted for well over four hundred years.

While the First Emperor may have established many of the imperial institutions, it was during Han that those same institutions were consolidated and developed. The Han state organized a proper bureaucracy run by a professional class of administrators whose salaries were paid by taxing key commodities, such as salt. In a sharp break with the cynical doctrines of the Qin, the Han emperors made Confucianism into the official philosophy of the state. All administrators were supposed to read the Confucian classics and to serve the people with virtue and benevolence.

The emperor was placed at the head of the administrative system, but in practice his power was constrained by court conferences where his advisers made decisions by consensus.

The Han state took charge of society and organized economic activities, including the building of roads and canals. Large state monopolies were established for the production and sale of salt, iron and liquor. The coins minted during the Han dynasty helped expand trade, and they made it possible to pay taxes in cash rather than in kind. Han-era coins, with their distinctive square holes at the center, were to remain the standard means of payment until the Tang dynasty, three hundred years later.

Sogdian letters Sogdia was a Central Asian kingdom that flourished between the fourth and the ninth centuries CE.

The Sogdians are famous above all for their business acumen. They bought paper, copper, and silk in China and traded in Persian grapes and silverware, glass, alfalfa, corals, Buddhist images, Roman wool and amber from the Baltic.

They operated as financial intermediaries too, setting up business deals, organizing caravans, arranging for money to be transferred and invested. While most other merchants only traveled short distances, Sogdian communities could be found along the entire network of Asian trade routes. The Sogdian language was the universal language of commerce across the Eurasian landmass. In this way, they created a commercial empire which was far bigger than their own, rather small, Central Asian kingdom.

In , the British archaeologist Aurel Stein discovered a pouch of papers in the ruins of an old watch-tower in the Chinese city of Dunhuang, on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The letters turned out to be far older than anyone could have imagined — dating from early in the fourth century.

Unusually, the letters were not written by officials but by ordinary people. One of them, a wealthy Sogdian merchant, writes to his home office to give an account of a recent attack by Xiongnu forces; another merchant complains about the trustworthiness of his business partners Read more: The Xiongnu confederation below. The most touching letter, however, is from a woman, Mewnai, to her mother. She complains that her husband has deserted her and her young daughter and that they are not allowed to leave Dunhuang on their own.

Yet the letter was never delivered. For one reason or another, it was left in the watch-tower for over fifteen hundred years.

Although the Roman Empire and Han China had no direct connections with each other, the goods traded along these routes did. It was then that Chinese silk became a fashionable item among Roman elites and Roman glassware ended up in China.

Besides, many more items than silk were traded and there was never just one road. The caravan routes brought foreign people and ideas to China too, such as Buddhism, which has its origin in India.

Central Asia was not only a site of trade, but also of military engagements. The Han state was continuously harassed by a confederation of nomadic peoples known as the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu confederation The Xiongnu were a pastoral people who formed a state, or rather a loose confederation of tribes, on the steppes to the north and west of China, two thousand years ago.

The Xiongnu were the original Chinese example of an unsettled, uncivilized, nomadic people. The very first Chinese rulers made war on the Xiongnu.

However, the Xiongnu continued to cause trouble. In BCE, Emperor Gaozu, the founder of the Han dynasty, personally led a military campaign against them, but was ambushed and only barely escaped with his life. Instead, the Han emperors sought to pacify the Xiongnu by means of lavish gifts of silk, liquor, and rice, and they sent princesses to their leaders as brides.

Official treaties were brokered too — the first one signed in BCE — and, unusually for the Chinese, they were concluded on a basis of equality. However, each time the treaty was to be renewed, the Xiongnu asked for higher payments and in the end, the Chinese were effectively transformed into tribute bearers to Xiongnu, rather than the other way around. Dealing with people like this was humiliating, ineffective, and expensive. Furthermore, despite the various agreements, Xiongnu raids on Chinese settlements continued.

Eventually, however, the power of the Xiongnu declined. The Chinese exploited divisions within the confederacy, whose leaders never found an orderly way to settle matters of succession. In the end, a southern group of Xiongnu tribes defected to the imperial side.

The ethnic background of the Xiongnu is disputed — they may have been Turks, Mongols, Huns, or even Iranians. Recently, several Xiongnu burial sites have been excavated in Mongolia where archaeologists have found works of art, including small statues of tigers carrying dead prey and golden stags with the heads of eagles. Nomadic peoples would continue to make trouble for Chinese farmers and for the Chinese state for much of the subsequent two thousand years.

It was during Tang that arts like calligraphy and landscape painting were first developed, and when writers like Li Bai and Du Fu composed the poems which all subsequent generations of Chinese schoolchildren have been made to recite. Economically the country was thriving. China-wide markets in land, labor, and natural resources were developed, and many technical innovations took place, including paper-making, and woodblock printing. There was extensive mining and manufacturing of cast iron and even steel, and trade was brisk along the caravan routes.

It was during Tang that the system of entrance examinations was conclusively established. In order to get a job as a government official, you were required to pass a demanding test on Confucian philosophy and on the classics of Chinese literature.

It was no longer enough to come from an aristocratic family or to have money. This was, for example, the time when Japan, Korea, and Vietnam adopted a Chinese-style writing system and when Confucian philosophy and Chinese arts spread far and wide. During the Tang period it was very fashionable to be Chinese. At the same time, the Tang dynasty was wide open to the rest of the world, with foreign goods, fashions, and ideas entering China along the caravan routes.

Buddhism was a relatively recent arrival in China at the time and Chinese Buddhists often had to make do with poor translations of Buddhist scriptures. He traveled westward into Central Asia and then southward, through Afghanistan. Once Xuanzang reached his destination he spent the next thirteen years visiting various pilgrimage sites, studying with renowned teachers, and looking for manuscripts. When he eventually returned home in , he received a warm welcome. In Journey to the West, Xuanzang is given four traveling companions — a monkey, a pig, an ogre, and a white steed, who actually turns out to be a dragon prince.

Much of the book is set in the wildlands which separate China and India, where the deep gorges and tall mountains turn out to be populated with demons and animal spirits. Eventually, the traveling companions return home and are amply rewarded for their troubles. Xuanzang attains Buddhahood and Jubadie, the pig, gets to eat all the excess offerings that worshipers bring to the altars of Buddhist temples. Journey to the West is a comic adventure, but also — for those who prefer to read it that way — an allegory of a group of pilgrims who travel together towards enlightenment, where the success of one of them depends on the success of the others.

Chinese people dressed in foreign clothing and Chinese men married women from Central Asia. The Tang dynasty was a cosmopolitan empire where people from all over the world would mingle — Persian and Jewish traders, Arabic scholars and travelers, conjurers from Syria and acrobats from Bactria. A number of important technological inventions were made at this time, including gunpowder and the compass. Making creative use of the invention of paper-making technology, the Song were the first to issue bank notes.

Paper money helped spur trade, although it also caused inflation. This was when large manufacturing industries were established which produced consumer items for a market that included the whole of the country. The economic changes provided ordinary people with new opportunities. Poor people could rise in the world and rich people could become richer still. Often, members of the newly affluent middle class would establish themselves as patrons of the arts.

Scholars and connoisseurs of culture would gather in gardens and private retreats to view works of art or to recite poetry and drink tea, and there were lively, if more plebeian, entertainment quarters in all major cities. During the Song dynasty, literacy increased, books became readily available, and the study of the sciences, mathematics, and philosophy made great strides.

Like all Chinese dynasties they were menaced by tribes attacking them from the north, in this case by the Jurchen, a people from whom the Manchus would later claim their descent.

In , the Jurchen captured the Song capital of Kaifeng and forced the emperor to retire. In an audacious move, the Song elite relocated their court to the southern city of Hangzhou, just west of present-day Shanghai.

Although they had lost much of their territory, and the move was a source of great embarrassment, the economy continued to develop. The Song strengthened their navy and built ships that could travel to Southeast Asia and trade with the islands of present-day Indonesia. They strengthened their army too, and began using gunpowder as a weapon.

Yet the military setbacks continued. The Song dynasty came to a final end in when the Mongols under Kublai Khan overran Hangzhou, deposed the emperor and established a new dynasty, the Yuan, — Read more: The Mongol khanates at p. The Ming dynasty lasted until The Ming dynasty too enjoyed economic success. There was now a China-wide market for consumer goods such as fabrics and foodstuffs, as well as for prestige items like porcelain and furniture.

Since many of these items were produced in large number, many objects from the Ming period, such as vases and tea cups, are still with us today, fetching high prices at auctions around the world. During the Ming period, gardens became a fashionable setting for social and cultural life. In Hangzhou and in the neighboring city of Suzhou, rich merchants competed ferociously with each other in establishing and extending their gardens. Meanwhile, the Chinese state returned to its Confucian roots after the Mongolian interruption.

Administrators were once again selected according to their knowledge of the Confucian classics. The Ming rulers had little knowledge of the steppe and little appreciation for trade.

Or rather, the Ming dynasty was a time when the issue of foreign trade was hotly contested between various court factions.

The group most strongly in favor of trade were the eunuchs, the emasculated courtiers who made up the staff of the imperial palace.

The most successful trader among them was Zheng He, — He brought thousands of vessels with him on no fewer than seven far-flung journeys of exploration and trade which took his fleet to Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and even to the east coast of Africa see map on p.

A giraffe in Beijing The Chinese emperors were avid collectors of exotic animals. In their zoos, they had Asian species like elephants, tigers, and camels, and African species like zebras and gazelles.

In the imperial collection received its most exotic creature yet when a giraffe arrived in Beijing, all the way from East Africa. Considering how difficult it is to transport such a large animal such a long distance, we may well wonder how it got there. The animal was picked up by a ship sent from the fleet that Zheng He commanded in the Indian Ocean, and subsequently transported to Beijing.

When it arrived the giraffe caused general amazement. To Chinese ears, girin sounded very much like qilin, the Chinese name of the unicorn. Presenting it as a gift was a way for the officials to ingratiate themselves with the court.

The appearance of a qilin was regarded as proof of the virtue of the reigning emperor. Despite the excitement caused by the giraffe, all foreign trade and travel were outlawed by imperial decree only a decade later. New decrees in and restricted foreign commerce even further, and each new law had increasingly severe penalties attached to it.

Restricting international trade was a way for the Confucians to impose their outlook on the country, but it was also a way to enhance their power at the expense of their opponents at court. Yet, soon after Zheng He returned from these journeys, foreign travel was banned and all ocean-going ships destroyed. The Confucians at court, in their wisdom, decided that foreign contacts on this scale were too disruptive of the Chinese way of life.

Although the policy on foreign trade would continue to fluctuate in response to various power struggles, China increasingly closed itself off from the rest of the world. Yet, from the ground, the wall certainly has a very tangible presence. At Badaling, its most photographed section, conveniently located some 80 kilometers northwest of Beijing, there are millions of visitors every year.

The wall, tourist guides tell us, is all together 21, kilometers long and thereby the largest man-made structure in the world, although, alas, several sections of it are in a sad state of disrepair. It was then greatly extended in the late Ming dynasty. And yet we can, on good authority, reject these observations as incorrect. It is not just that the wall is invisible from outer space; the Great Wall of China itself does not exist!

Or rather, while walls of various kinds have been constructed in northern China at least since the sixth century BCE, they were never thought of as one coherent structure built with one purpose in mind. There are many walls, but no Great Wall. The ramparts that the First Emperor built quickly fell to ruin, and during the Tang and Song dynasties no similar fortifications were constructed.

This is why there are many gaps between the structures and why walls in several places run parallel to each other. This is also why it is quite impossible to say how long the wall actually is. GPS technology does not help us here, since we first have to decide what to measure.

It was built, beginning in the seventeenth century, in the minds of European readers of the letters which Jesuit missionaries in China began sending back. The Qing dynasty, —, which replaced the Ming, was the last imperial dynasty. It was established by the Manchu tribes which overran Beijing in , and who, in subsequent decades, proceeded to conquer the rest of the country.

In contrast to the Mongols, the Qing emperors adopted many institutions from their predecessors such as the bureaucracy and the entrance examinations, and also many customs, such as the elaborate rituals which the emperors were required to perform.

Yet the Qing were, at the same time, intensely proud of their Manchu heritage. In contrast, he criticized the complex, deep and scholarly nature of Confucianism, believing people could not easily comprehend it and that such rulers were out of touch. Han saw Confucianism as rigid and unchanging, unable to adapt to a constantly evolving world. One day a rabbit, racing across the field, bumped into the stump, broke its neck and died. The farmer laid aside his plow and took up watch beside the stump, hoping that he would get another in the same way.

The law therefore needed to adapt constantly to what was best and most effective, not endlessly following the same example that was successful once, but perhaps never again.

In summary, Han Fei conceptualized legalism as the strict rule of a centralized authority which imposed discipline on its subjects, meting out reward and punishment accordingly. This was not just for ordinary people, but for all levels of government. This had a profound effect on China.

These Three Huang and Five Di were considered perfect rulers, of immense power and very long lives. The word huang also meant "big", "great". The word di also referred to the Supreme God in Heaven, creator of the world. Thus, by joining these two words for the first time, Qin Shi Huang created a title on a par with his feat of uniting the seemingly endless Chinese realm, in fact uniting the world.

Ancient Chinese, like ancient Romans, believed their empire encompassed the whole world, a concept referred to as all under heaven. This word huangdi is rendered in most Western languages as " emperor", a word which also has a long history dating back to ancient Rome , and which Europeans deem superior to the word "king". He abolished posthumous names, by which former kings were known after their death, judging them inappropriate and contrary to filial piety, and decided that future generations would refer to him as the First Emperor Shi Huangdi.

His successor would be referred to as the Second Emperor Er Shi Huangdi , literally "second generation emperor" , the successor of his successor as the Third Emperor San Shi Huangdi , literally "third generation emperor" , and so on, for ten thousand generations, as the Imperial house was supposed to rule China for ten thousand generations.

The official name of the newly united China was still "State of Qin", as Qin had absorbed all the other states. Contemporaries called the emperor "First Emperor", dropping the phrase "of the State of Qin", which was obvious without saying.