Kaifeng

The songs I chose match the criteria in many ways. The 1st song is dark and more terrifying, much like I imagine discovering a tomb filled with thousands of clay men would feel. The 2nd song is about hard work and long days, which it would have taken to uncover such a large tomb. The 3rd song is about preparing for something big, and I think that this would be a big event. Best emperor criteria: educations, improvements for farmers, empathy, treatment of civilians, infrastructure Shi Huangdi: ⅖ Li Bang: ⅗ I would have preferred to live under Li Bang. He treated the peasants better than Shi Huangdi. It would have been a more peaceful life. I believe that one month of labor per year and military service is a fair trade for protection and security.…

there were more open trades with western world, as well as more developed internal trading routes; the commercialization has reached its peak in late imperial China. Although, Commercialization had changed China’s society in some way, but with more than two thousand years of Confucianism’s government centralization ideas and the scholars’ knowledge, the society in late imperial China still more shaped by the Confucian ethics until the western invasion and the fall of Qing dynasty. When…

Song Dynasty The last of the dynasties was the Song dynasty is divided into two separate periods: The Northern Song from 960-1126 A.D. and the Southern Song from 1126-1279 A.D. It was followed by the Yuan dynasty and it succeeded five dynasties and ten kingdoms. It was the first to issue paper money and bank notes. It was likewise the first to receive a permanent navy. Also, the first to use gunpowder and the first discernment of true north using a scope. It divided up into two discrete periods,…

Qingming Festival is the masterpiece of Zhang Zeduan who is a painting artist in the Song Dynasty. The painting vividly captures the thriving life of people from Bianjing (Kaifeng), capital of the Song Dynasty. The entire painting was painted in hand scroll format, deployed the method of scatter perspective mapping, and bringing in varied landscape and numerous human characters all dressed differently. Moreover, with the development of a population of more than one million, it was really a…

military, education, and religious practices. Under Taizong's successor, Gaozong (r. 649-683 CE), the country experienced further reforms when Gaozong wife Wu Zetian (624-705 CE) took control of the government. Wu Zetian is China's only female ruler, and even though she is still seen as a very controversial figure today, her reforms laid the foundation for the later success of the great emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756 CE). Under the reign of Xuanzong, China became the most prosperous country in…

infrastructure improvements in the early part of the dynasty. Even so, these projects and improvements established food granaries in order to control the prices in the market from crop taxation. Adding on, the people were burdened with expensive taxes and obligatory labor as well as being overstrained with the costs in the construction of numerous projects. These costly projects includes the construction of the Grand Canal and the reconstruction of the Great Wall of China. Political…

Overseas trade soon influenced other economies in other countries. Chinese ships carried various medals, textiles, fabrics and porcelain to places such as Aden and the Euphrates and in what is known today as Iraq. The upper classes were involved in, composing poetry, and writing calligraphy and hobbies that stimulated thoughts and expressions. Science marked advancements in many areas of study, including botany, astronomy,biology, mathematics, and more. “Shen Kuo was credited as the first…

china rule between to foreign conquests. The Mongol empire also followed the Manchu (Qing) Dynasty. 1368 is when Zhu took control of China and made Jin Ling known as Nanjing, the capital. In 1628 Li Zheng lead a peasant revolt against the Ming Dynasty. Li Zheng rallied the peasants with a promise he made, the promise was to divide land equally and eliminating the grain takes. 1420 was the year the 13 Tombs were built, the Tombs were built for the 13 emperors of the Ming Dynasty at Tianshou…

breaching and flooding. There have been many major floods recorded ever since the medieval times until today and almost all of them had an important impact on the Chinese society. From the most recent floods, the 3 majors and most catastrophic ones occurred in 1887, 1889 and 1933. Nevertheless, the most devastating one remains the 1931 flood which killed an estimated of 1,000,000 to 4,000,000 individuals (excluding famines and epidemics) and is the worst natural disaster ever recorded.…

considered Southern Song. The Jin-Song wars occurred between AD 1125-1234 in China. These battles consisted of a series of conflicts between the Jurchen Jin dynasty and the Song dynasty (now known as the Northern Song dynasty). The Song military was not very powerful and was actually hurt by a series of military failures, unfortunately timed with the Jin military’s easy defeat of the Liao dynasty. This made the Jin hesitant to return the land which had once belonged to Song back after…