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- $Unique_ID{how04772}
- $Pretitle{}
- $Title{World Civilizations: The Classical Period In World History
- Founding Of The Han Dynasty And The Beginnings Of China's Classical Age}
- $Subtitle{}
- $Author{Stearns, Peter N.;Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B.}
- $Affiliation{}
- $Subject{han
- chinese
- shi
- family
- imperial
- scholar-gentry
- women
- era
- local
- peasants}
- $Date{1992}
- $Log{}
- Title: World Civilizations: The Classical Period In World History
- Book: Chapter 5: Unification And The Consolidation Of Civilization In China
- Author: Stearns, Peter N.;Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B.
- Date: 1992
-
- Founding Of The Han Dynasty And The Beginnings Of China's Classical Age
-
- The sudden collapse of the Qin Empire threatened again to plunge China
- into incessant warfare and social strife. The pent-up anger produced by one
- and one-half decade of harsh state demands and repression flared into regional
- riots and rebellions throughout the former Qin territories. Vassal chiefs
- fought former Qin bureaucrats for local control, and some dreamed of founding
- a renewed empire. The unlikely winner of these many-sided contests for power
- was a man of peasant birth named Liu Bang. Liu Bang's early life scarcely
- suggests that he would become the founder of one of China's longest-lived and
- most illustrious dynasties. In his youth Liu Bang was lazy, uneducated, and
- without work. He was best known for his fondness of wine and women, tastes
- that remained pronounced throughout his life. In the years before the end of
- the Qin dynasty, Liu Bang, either because he had changed his shiftless ways or
- through clever maneuvers, had managed to establish himself as a village
- headman. In the confusion that followed the fall of the Qin, he built up a
- considerable following of soldiers, ex-bureaucrats, and disgruntled peasants.
-
- Liu Bang was apparently not much of a military commander; in fact, legend
- has it that he lost all the battles he fought for control of China except the
- last one. But he did have a gift for picking able subordinates and then giving
- them a real chance to exercise their talents. His skill at mediating between
- quarrelsome subordinates allowed him to hold his motley alliance of followers
- together, while the forces of his enemies dissolved in violent factional
- fights. In 202 B.C., after years of campaigning and negotiation, Liu Bang
- proclaimed himself the new emperor of China, thus founding the Han dynasty
- that would rule China, with a brief interruption, for the next 400 years.
-
- The Restoration Of Imperial Control
-
- For a time it looked like the new emperor, whose official name was Gaozu,
- would restore the system of vassalage that had formed the basis for royal
- administration in the Zhou era. He raised many of his followers to the ranks
- of the nobility, and rewarded them and existing lords, who had supported his
- efforts to win the throne, with grants of large estates. It soon became clear,
- however, that even his once-loyal followers were not above using the domains
- they had been granted to build up independent bases of power that could
- eventually threaten the dynasty itself. In addition to this threat, Liu Bang's
- determination to establish a more centralized imperial administration was
- promoted by the shi officials who attached themselves to his cause during his
- struggle for power and after he became emperor. Perhaps because Liu Bang was
- illiterate, he came to rely heavily on his shi advisors, even though he
- personally despised them. His efforts at bureaucratic centralization focused
- on enhancing their training and responsibilities. His successors would
- continue this trend as they moved aggressively to undercut the position of the
- regional vassals.
-
- Liu Bang's initiatives toward bureaucratic centralization were taken up
- by a number of strong and able rulers who succeeded him on the Han throne,
- most notably Han Wudi (140-87 B.C.). First, the larger fiefs granted to the
- highest nobles were broken up by a royal decree that required the domains of
- the vassals to be divided between all their sons at the time of their death
- rather than pass intact to their eldest son. At the same time, regular
- government appointees, especially regional governors and district magistrates,
- expanded their authority at the expense of local lords. In the time of Han
- Wudi, vassals were forbidden to bequeath their domains to heirs they adopted.
- When a noble died without legitimate offspring his estates were confiscated by
- the central government. Under a variety of pretexts, Han Wudi's administrators
- also seized the fiefs of many other vassals, who were relegated to the status
- of commoners. These measures were resisted violently by the regional lords,
- but in each case the military strength of the dynasty proved too great for the
- rebels. Attempted rebellion provided a superb reason to remove a vassal and
- add his lands to the imperial domains.
-
- Han Expansion
-
- The Han rulers also used the impressive military might at their disposal
- to enlarge the empire and neutralize external threats. The most formidable of
- the external enemies were the Hsiung-nu nomads who lived north of the Great
- Wall. From the time of the first Han emperor, these skilled horsemen of Mongol
- descent had raided and looted territories south of the wall. Liu Bang sought
- to buy them off with presents and by marrying one of his daughters to the
- paramount Hsiung-nu chieftain. By the time of Han Wudi it was clear that major
- expeditions would be necessary to put an end to the Hsiung-nu incursions. Han
- Wudi's forces defeated the nomads and annexed their pasturelands to the north
- and west of the Great Wall to the Han domains. But these great victories in
- the 120s B.C. provided only temporary relief. Under weaker Han rulers and when
- divisions arose within the empire, the Hsiung-nu and other nomadic raiders
- repeatedly managed to breach the defenses of the Great Wall and raid deep into
- Han territory.
-
- Han armies also expanded the empire to the east and south. In the east,
- the northern parts of Korea were conquered in 108 B.C. and were ruled by the
- Chinese for over 400 years. Conquests in the south extended Chinese
- civilization into the mountainous interior and down the coast of the South
- China Sea to Vietnam. The many different ethnic groups who lived in these
- areas either submitted to Han rule and assimilated to Chinese civilization or,
- like the various branches of the T'ai-speaking peoples, migrated farther south
- into present-day Burma, Thailand, and Laos. Small groups of these peoples
- continued to resist absorption by the Chinese. The southernmost of the
- resisting peoples were subjects of the kingdom the Chinese called Nam Viet.
- After many attempts, Han armies finally managed to conquer this state and
- establish control over the Vietnamese people in 111 B.C. The Chinese would
- maintain control of the area for over a thousand years and would play a major
- role in the spread of civilization to the Vietnamese people.
-
- The Revenge Of The Shi
-
- The majority of the shi, who were followers of Confucius and his
- disciples, had deeply resented the favoritism shown by Shi Huangdi for the
- Legalists. His thought control and book-burning campaigns, which had taken a
- heavy toll on the Confucian texts, enraged most of the shi and left them eager
- for a chance to strike back. The fall of the Qin provided just such an
- opportunity. At the urging of the advocates of the Confucian school, Liu Bang
- and his successors banned the works of the Legalists, and members of the
- school were hounded from the court and in some cases killed in local risings.
- The harsh law codes of the Qin were replaced by the milder edicts of the Han.
- Legalist ideas were eventually blended into the mix of philosophies and
- religious beliefs that came to make up China's official ideology.
-
- Confucianism in its varying forms soon became the dominant thought system
- in Chinese civilization. Its full ascendancy was delayed in the early Han era
- by the suspicions of rulers, such as Liu Bang who strongly favored Daoism, and
- the rivalry of non-Confucian thinkers. But by the end of the 2d century B.C.,
- the shi scholar-officials and the Confucian ideas they championed had won the
- preeminent place among the ruling classes of China that they would enjoy for
- much of the next 2000 years.
-
- While downgrading the Legalists, Han rulers after Liu Bang increasingly
- promoted the Confucian cause. A systematic effort was launched to locate
- Confucian texts that had been hidden away during the book-burning campaign.
- Lost texts were reconstructed from memory, and official versions of the
- Confucian classics were inscribed in stone by a team of scholars and artisans.
- A thorough knowledge of Confucian teachings became essential to employment and
- promotion in the Han administrative hierarchy. This prerequisite for success
- in Han politics was institutionalized by the founding of an imperial
- university at the capital at Xian in 124 B.C.
-
- By the end of the Han era there were over 30,000 students at this
- state-supported center, which was designed primarily to turn out trained
- bureaucrats. Many of its graduates went on to become the heads of government
- departments and the close advisors of emperors. Even while still at school,
- the offspring of shi families who flocked to Xian were known as an activist
- lot, prone to demonstrations and petitions to the emperor and government
- officials. In the decades after the imperial university was founded, similar
- institutions were set up in the provinces to recruit and educate local talent.
- Shi teachers flourished both in positions at the formal schools and as tutors
- for the sons of shi and aristocratic households bent on acquiring the
- education that was increasingly vital to careers in government.
-
- Education, Examinations, And Shi Dominance
-
- Though students studying at the imperial university were expected to
- master law and a choice of specialized fields, including history, astronomy,
- and music, all concentrated on the memorization and interpretation of the
- Confucian classics. These were given even greater emphasis when formal exams
- for government positions were established at the beginning of the last century
- B.C. The Chinese examination system marked the establishment of the first
- professional civil service in human history. Though exams were at first
- confined to the upper levels of government, local and regional exams were
- later established to identify and test local talent. Theoretically, any
- Chinese could take the exams. But no one could hope to pass them without a
- proper education, and education required considerable sums of money. This
- meant that members of established shi families, the old aristocracy, and local
- landlord households had a decisive advantage.
-
- Each elite family supported the brightest of its sons. They were tutored
- at home as children, then enrolled in local schools, where they mastered the
- Chinese characters and the Confucian texts. On occasion a particularly bright
- child from a peasant household was adopted by a shi or landlord family and
- given the support he needed to do well on the exams and advance in the
- bureaucracy.
-
- Though in general individuals from the lower classes lacked a proper
- education and the means to get it, a number of exceptional examples are
- recounted by Chinese historians of enterprising farmers or merchants who rose
- to high administrative posts. In one instance at the end of the 2d century
- B.C., a dismissed police official, who had resorted to pig breeding to support
- himself, had in his later years so impressed the emperor with his responses to
- the examiners' questions that he was eventually elevated to the post of
- imperial chancellor.
-
- Merchants, who had the resources to get a good education, were prohibited
- from taking the exams. By virtue of their wealth and moneymaking talents, some
- prominent merchants were given official positions in times when the Han rulers
- were hard-pressed for money. But posts, such as those involving the
- administration of the salt and iron mining monopolies, were usually low level
- and often reverted to shi degree holders or noble appointees once the crisis
- had passed.
-
- In addition to the fact that education and success on the exams were
- monopolized by elite families, opportunities for government jobs were limited
- by the fact that only a small percentage of jobs were allotted by competitive
- examination. Though the Han rulers sought to put an end to hereditary rank, in
- fact many political positions automatically passed from father to son. Many
- offices were appointive, and an individual's chance of winning an office
- depended on personal links to the emperor or high official who distributed the
- political spoils. In later dynasties the percentage of offices earned by
- success in the examinations increased steadily at the expense of those
- appointed or won by connections. But in the Han era offices that were won by
- passing exams remained relatively limited. Despite this fact, the Han system
- nurtured a revolutionary idea - that administrative office and the exercise of
- political power ought to depend on personal merit and effort rather than birth
- alone.
-
- Family And Society In Classical China
-
- The growing influence of the shi in government circles was also felt in
- Chinese social life as a whole. In effect, three main social strata came to be
- recognized by those who wrote the official documents and histories: the
- literate shi, the ordinary but free subjects, and the underclass referred to
- as the "mean people." Within each of these large groupings there were
- important occupational and status divisions. The shi ranged, for example, from
- the powerful families that served the imperial household to local tutors and
- petty clerks stationed in frontier provinces. The common people included
- groups that we would identify as separate classes. The majority were peasants,
- but even they differed greatly in wealth and social status. Some controlled
- large amounts of land, lived in extended family compounds, and aspired to
- provide their sons with the education that would elevate the family to shi
- status. These large landowners were the target of Han decrees requiring that a
- father divide his property equally between his sons. These measures prevented
- local notables from amassing too much land and wealth, and thus becoming a
- potential political threat to the dynasty.
-
- The Emergence Of The Scholar-Gentry
-
- e Increasingly, local landlord families were linked by marriage or the
- success of their sons to the shi. This combination gave rise to what was a new
- class configuration, the scholar-gentry, which superseded the shi. As their
- dual label suggests, the scholar-gentry upheld their position through both
- their landholdings in the rural areas and the political posts they won in the
- bureaucracy, which was housed mainly in the towns. Families tended to maintain
- branches in both areas. Wealth from landholding provided the means to educate
- the brightest males, who increased the family's fortunes by winning lucrative
- administrative positions. Well-placed family members in the town looked after
- the interests of their rural elders and cousins when it came to things, such
- as tax quotas, military protection, or civil litigation. If bandits or nomads
- raided the area where the rural branch of the family resided, they could take
- refuge with their relatives in town. When towns became the object of warring
- armies, the city dwellers fled to the countryside. This double base and mutual
- support made for remarkable durability. Some families played major roles for
- centuries in Chinese politics and society. Some lasted for thousands of years
- - far longer than any imperial dynasty.
-
- In both town and country, scholar-gentry families lived in large walled
- compounds, which often had separate buildings for each unit of the extended
- family. Surviving clay figurines of gentry homes show that they were
- multi-storied structures with stucco or wooden walls and tiled roofs. Most
- compounds included an inner garden where children could play and their elders
- could chat and enjoy nature. In times of peace, scholar-gentry families lived
- the good life. Family granaries ensured a ready supply of good food, and
- numerous household servants took care of tedious chores, such as cleaning,
- cooking, and washing clothes. Male and female members of the family dressed in
- silks, which commoners, including merchants, were not permitted to wear (at
- least in public). A family's standing in the official and social hierarchy was
- further advertised by the color of the emblems and ribbons males were
- permitted to wear.
-
- When a member of a scholar-gentry household who held an administrative
- position left the compound for work or a night on the town, he rode in a
- horse-drawn carriage that, like his clothing, was of a size and design that
- indicated his government rank. Both male and female members of the family
- enjoyed the deference of the common people. Merchants plied them with their
- finest goods, servants scurried to do their bidding, and peasants bowed
- politely as they passed in their carriages. A commoner who forgot his place
- could expect to be chided by his peers or roughed up by the toughs that most
- gentry families employed to look after their physical safety.
-
- Class And Gender Roles
-
- There is considerable evidence that women, particularly those from
- powerful scholar-gentry households, enjoyed more freedom and status in the Han
- era than they were to have in later periods of Chinese history. Because
- marriages, especially among the elite, were arranged with family alliances
- rather than romantic concerns in mind, young men had as little say in the
- choice of their future spouses as women. Though the woman's father paid a
- dowry to the family of his son-in-law and his daughter went to her husband's
- house to live, the young bride could usually rely on her powerful relatives to
- ensure that she was well-treated in her new home. She was often allowed to
- take along her servants and even a sister as live-in companions. Widowed women
- were permitted to remarry, and all women participated in family ceremonies.
- Perhaps most important, women of upper-class families were often tutored in
- writing, the arts, and music. There were a number of important female poets in
- the Han era and at least one prominent court historian was a woman.
-
- Despite these promising trends, women at all social levels remained
- subordinated to men. Family households were run by the older males, and though
- women could inherit, male children normally received the greater share of
- family property. The following verse from the Book of Poetry, which indicates
- the appropriate responses to the birth into an aristocratic family of a son
- and daughter, clearly illustrates the preference for and consequent privileges
- of males:
-
- Sons shall be born to him - They will be put to sleep on couches;
- They will be clothed in robes;
- They will have scepters to play with;
- Their cry will be loud.
- (Hereafter) they will be resplendent with red knee-covers,
- The (future) king, the princes of the land.
-
- Daughters shall be born to him - They will be put to sleep on the ground;
- They will be clothed in wrappers;
- They will have tiles to play with.
- It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do good.
- Only about the liquor and the food will they have to think,
- And to cause no sorrow to their parents.
-
- Political positions were reserved for males, though women could sometimes
- exert powerful influence from behind the throne. But this backstage plotting
- and scheming at the court merely served to confirm the view of the Confucian
- scholars that women were unfit for politics. Again, their shortcomings are
- bluntly set forth in the Book of Poetry:
-
- A woman with a long tongue
- Is a stepping-stone to disorder.
- Disorder does not come down from Heaven -
- It is produced by women.
- Those from whom come no lessons, no instruction,
- Are women and eunuchs.
-
- At the level of the scholar-gentry, young married women were subjected to
- the demands and criticisms of notoriously domineering mothers-in-law. This was
- less of a problem among the lower classes where residence in extended
- households was not common. But women from peasant families were expected to
- cook, clean house, and labor long hours in the fields. Some found social
- outlets and even a degree of financial independence as market women in nearby
- towns, but all were legally subordinated to their fathers and husbands. At all
- class levels, women were expected to marry and, whatever their individual
- talents, their most vital social function remained bearing children,
- preferably male children.
-
- Peasant Life
-
- Ordinary cultivators held varying amounts of land, but few produced more
- than they needed to subsist and pay taxes. Moderately prosperous farmers sold
- their surplus to traders or their agents, or in a local market town. Most
- peasants who had a decent-sized plot of land lived well. But many peasants had
- little or no land of their own and were forced to labor for well-to-do
- landlords in order to earn a meager living. Peasants with plots that were too
- small to support their families complained t
- Han officials that they "did not
- have enough husks and beans to eat and [that] their coarse clothing was not in
- good condition." Those who worked the land of others as tenants or landless
- laborers were even more miserable. According to an official description, they
- "wore the coverings of oxen and horses and ate the food of dogs and pigs."
-
- Key Chinese inventions, such as the shoulder collar (which permitted
- horses to pull greater loads) and the wheelbarrow, eased the physical burdens
- placed on farmers at all levels. These devices, expanding irrigation networks,
- improved iron tools, and new cropping patterns made for larger agricultural
- yields that were mostly consumed by upper-class groups and the town
- populations. The governing classes required all peasants to devote a
- designated number of days each year to labor on public works. In addition,
- peasants were liable to conscription for the imperial armies.
-
- The existence of available, arable land in many areas, particularly the
- south, relieved population pressure and provided frontier outlets where
- hard-pressed laborers could clear land and start life anew. Some peasants took
- to banditry in the rugged hill country or the forested zones that still
- existed in large parts of the Yellow and Yangtze river basins. Others scraped
- by as beggars in provincial towns or lived with vagabonds who traveled the
- roads of the empire in search of temporary employment or vulnerable merchants
- and country houses to rob. Many more peasants joined secret societies, which
- provided financial support in times of shortage and physical protection in
- case of disputes with other cultivators or local notables. The most famous of
- the secret societies was called the Red Eyebrows because painted eyebrows
- served as its badge of membership. Usually the activities of the secret
- societies were localized, but in times of great social stress, groups, such as
- the Red Eyebrows, could play major roles in widespread popular insurrections.
-
- The Han Capital
-
- The urban growth that had been one of the most notable social
- developments in the Late Zhou era continued unabated in the Han period. The
- new capital city at Xian took on the basic features of Chinese imperial cities
- from that time forward. Laid out on a somewhat distorted grid, Xian had a
- number of great roadways that gave access to and defined the main quarters of
- the city. Much of the city was protected by long earth and brick walls broken
- at regular intervals by towers and gates. Estimates of Xian's population range
- from about 100,000, which probably refer to those people living within the
- walls, to 250,000, which probably include those people living outside the
- walls and in neighboring villages.
-
- The emperor resided in an inner or forbidden city, which only his family,
- servants, and closest advisors were permitted to enter. The inner city was an
- impressive complex of palaces, towers, and decorated gateways. Each palace
- included audience halls and banquet rooms, large gardens and fish ponds, and
- luxurious living quarters for the emperor, his wife and many concubines, and
- their numerous children. To the west of Xian beyond the city walls a large
- pleasure garden was laid out for the imperial family, which included, among
- other things, one of the earliest known zoos.
-
- The forbidden city was surrounded by administrative buildings and the
- palaces of the most powerful aristocratic and scholar-gentry households. Under
- later dynasties, this zone would become a distinct imperial city within the
- capital. Some of the imperial palaces and government buildings were made of
- stone or brick, but many were made of clay covered with brightly colored
- plaster. Most were roofed with the glazed tiles with upturned edges that would
- become characteristic of Chinese architecture in the following millennia. The
- structures in the inner city were a good deal more imposing than the buildings
- in the rest of the capital, which were made of wood or stamped earth. Palace
- buildings, ordinary houses, and the city as a whole were oriented to the
- south, which, as the direction where the sun reached the highest point in the
- sky, was considered most auspicious.
-
- Towns And Traders
-
- The Han capital at Xian was only one of many imposing cities found in
- China in this era. It is likely that China was the most urbanized civilization
- in the world at this time, a fact that tells us much about the productivity of
- its agricultural sector. There were large numbers of towns with over ten
- thousand people and several towns, such as Xian, with populations in the tens
- of thousands. Most towns were walled, and many were administrative centers
- dominated by the multi-story residences and offices of imperial officials and
- scholar-gentry notables. But other towns grew up around mining and
- manufacturing centers, and many were centers of trade, which continued to grow
- in the Han era. This growth was greatly advanced by Han military expansion to
- the west and south. It resulted in the establishment of new overland trade
- routes into central Asia and south China. Overseas links were also established
- with northern Vietnam, the rest of Southeast Asia, and westward to the rich
- trading towns of coastal India.
-
- Large mercantile firms controlled these long-distance trading networks.
- They grew wealthy from the transport and sale of bulk items, such as grain and
- horses, as well as from supplying the elite classes with exotic luxury items,
- such as incense, fragrant woods, and rhinoceros horn, which when ground into
- an edible powder was believed to enhance male potency. Merchant families also
- made great fortunes by lending money and investing in mining, ship
- construction, sheep raising, and less legitimate enterprises such as gambling
- halls, brothels, and grave robbing.
-
- Though the merchant classes became wealthier and more numerous, they
- found it increasingly difficult to translate profits into political power or
- social status. Fearing their rivalry, the scholar-gentry induced successive
- Han rulers to issue laws that restricted merchant activities and privileges.
- Under most Han rulers, for example, merchants were not permitted to hold
- administrative posts, though they often exerted considerable local influence.
- They were not allowed to own carriages, carry weapons, or wear silk clothing.
- Scholar-gentry writers consistently classed merchants below the peasants in
- terms of their social usefulness, arguing that peasants produced food and
- essential services, while traders produced nothing bwt rather lived off the
- labor of others. The merchants, however, enjoyed a living standard that was
- higher than that of most of the peasants and artisans. In addition, they could
- very often translate wealth into considerable political clout, at least at the
- local level.
-
- A Genius For Invention And Artisan Production
-
- Long before the Han, the Chinese had displayed a special aptitude for
- invention and technological innovation. They had built massive irrigation
- systems, canal networks, and fortifications and devised cropping techniques
- that remained for millennia some of the most productive known to humanity. In
- the centuries of Han rule, however, their talent for invention reached new
- heights, and with it rose the excellence of their artisan production. There is
- little doubt that China was the most technologically innovative and advanced
- of all the classical civilizations.
-
- At the level of the elite, the introduction of the brush pen and paper at
- the end of the 2d century B.C. greatly facilitated the administrative work of
- the scholar-gentry and advanced their literary and artistic production. The
- Han Chinese also developed watermills to grind grain and power artisan
- workshops, and rudders and compasses to steer and guide ships (though in the
- Han era compasses were employed primarily for divination and not used by
- sailors until the 9th century A.D.). They devised ingenious mining techniques
- to allow them to fully exploit the iron and copper resources that hrd become
- critical to warfare and domestic artisan production. From this point until the
- 15th and 16th centuries, Chinese shipbuilding techniques were among the most
- advanced in the world. In the centuries of Han rule, silk making was carried
- to new levels of refinement, and techniques for making lacquerware and
- porcelain were pioneered, which allowed China to remain a leader in ceramics
- until well into the modern era.
-
- All these advances, of course, promoted the growth of the artisan,
- manufacturing classes. Artisans tended to be clustered in special sectors of
- Chinese towns but, in some regions, villages devoted almost exclusively to
- crafts such as silkweaving or pottery manufacture existed. Skilled artisans
- were in high demand and probably had a higher living standard than most
- peasants, though the scholar-gentry accorded them a lower official social
- status. Again, the ideal and reality did not necessarily correspond, for some
- members of the artisan classes amassed wealth and were allowed to carry
- weapons, ride horses, and wear silk clothing. In addition, evidence of
- scholar-gentry scientific experimentation suggests considerable interaction
- between members of the scholar-gentry elite and the artisan classes. The
- development of paper, the compass, and elaborate astronomical equipment would
- not have been possible without artisan skills and cooperation.
-
- The Arts And Sciences In The Han Era
-
- Chinese art during the classical period was largely decorative, stressing
- careful detail and expert craftsmanship. Artistic styles often reflected the
- precision and geometric qualities of the many symbols of Chinese writing, and
- indeed calligraphy itself became a highly prized art form. Chinese painting
- was much less developed than it was to become under later Chinese dynasties.
- But the bronzes and ceramic figurines, bowls, and vases produced in this era
- set a very high standard for later Chinese artists. Important work was also
- done in jade and ivory carving and woven silk screens. Han artwork provides
- some of our most vivid insights into the fashions and life-styles of the
- Chinese in the classical era, from the aristocracy to the peasants. Most of
- the monumental building was concentrated on the ongoing construction of the
- Great Wall and on the palaces and tombs of the imperial city. But the
- extensive irrigation works that crisscrossed the countryside and the long
- walls, multi-tiered towers, and elaborate gates that became prominent features
- of China's many towns were engineering and architectural feats.
-
- In the sciences, the Chinese were more drawn to experimentation with
- practical applications than grand theorizing. By 444 B.C. court astronomers
- had developed an accurate calendar based on a year of 365.5 days. Later
- astronomers calculated the movements of the planets Saturn and Jupiter, and
- observed sunspots - more than 1500 years before comparable observations were
- made in Europe. The main purpose of Chinese astronomy was to make celestial
- phenomena predictable, as part of a wider interest in ensuring harmony between
- heaven and earth. In astronomy and other areas, Chinese scientists steadily
- improved their instruments, even inventing a kind of seismograph to register
- the strength of earthquakes. The Chinese were also active in medical research.
- They made great strides in the diagnosis of diseases and in the prescription
- of herbal remedies and drugs to cure them. Recent evidence suggests that
- physicians in the Han era had begun to explore the principles of acupuncture,
- which remains the most distinctive and one of the most beneficial Chinese
- contributions to the advance of medicine.
-
- Chinese mathematics also stressed the practical. Daoism encouraged some
- interest in studying the orderly processes of nature, but most research
- focused on how things work. For example, Chinese scholars studied the
- mathematics of music in ways that promoted advances in acoustics. They also
- sought to work out standards for the measurement of distance, volume, and
- weight. This kind of scientific and mathematical learning won substantial
- backing from the government and was generally approved by the shi
- scholar-officials. These achievements in the arts and sciences added to the
- richness and diversity of the classical heritage of Chinese civilization.
- Educated Chinese could concentrate their careers on political, artistic, or
- scientific-technological pursuits, or they could shift from one field to the
- next at various points in their lives.
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