History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0477/04772.txt

Text File | 1992-10-12 | 34KB | 548 lines

$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.