Chapter 8 8 Great Wall of China

Eight Great Walls of China 1 Ever since Zhu Pin arrived in China, he has longed to see the Great Wall of China.For him and for all others, the Great Wall, one of the wonders of the world, is a symbol of the vast and ancient China.Standing on the Great Wall you can feel and almost see ancient China floating before your eyes.On an Easter morning, a comfortable day suitable for a trip to the countryside, Zhu Pin took a special train from Mentougou, a few miles outside of Beijing, to this historic site, a journey of about two or three hours. The founder of the Great Wall, Qin Shihuang, was China's Hitler. He ruled China for thirty-seven years, from 246 BC to 210 BC, about 200 years earlier than Curis Caesar. Qin Shihuang created the most powerful empire at that time.But he is by no means the founder of ancient China.And Confucius lived in the Zhou Dynasty, which was a great period in Chinese history, and Qin Shihuang was a latecomer.When Confucius was born, the great ancient China had a history of 1,500 years.

The recorded history of China should start from the Yellow Emperor more than 4,000 years ago, from 2698 BC to 2597 BC. Earlier than this is the legendary tree-dwelling people and fire-takers. The names of those protagonists are in The prehistoric years are symbolized by memory.But from the Yellow Emperor onwards, there is a clear lineage of successor rulers, and the whole history is credible, although mysterious legends are intertwined with earlier history, similar to St. George's relationship with the dragon in British history. The Yellow Emperor is a symbol of the origin of Chinese civilization. His name is closely related to the origin of commerce, writing, arithmetic, medicine, state system, and even the cultivation of mulberry and sericulture, although it is hard to believe that these happened at the same time.There is no doubt that all these achievements have been achieved gradually over a considerable period of time.

Confucius idealized the ancient emperors—Yao and Shun—who reigned from 2357 to 2206 BC.Hereditary government began in the Xia Dynasty in 2205 BC, during which time bronzes appeared.Through the engravings on bronze wares, we can find the earliest form of writing.These first appeared in what is now Henan Province and its surrounding areas.Ancient Chinese civilization originated south of the Yellow River, and during the subsequent Shang Dynasty, the great power of wizards was well documented—fortunately, from the beginning of the 20th century, numerous oracle bone inscriptions came to light. There are many records.

Then a new force appeared in the northwest, and the famous Zhou Dynasty began.Nominally it existed for a very long time, almost nine hundred years (1122 BC to 247 BC), which is the classical period of China.During this creative period, philosophy developed and ideas flourished.At the same time, the slave system was broken, and the emerging powerful vassal states checked and balanced each other for power and territory, and the commercial vassals had far-reaching influence.Marquises, earls, and lords gradually gained power, so that by the time of Confucius, the place where he lived was ruled by an "emperor" as small as two towns today.

Confucius was born in the 6th century BC.It is amazing that the founders of the three major religions in China were all born in this century.Confucius lived from 551 BC to 479 BC and Sakyamuni lived in India from 563 BC to 483 BC, or possibly from 557 BC to 477 BC.In other words, they lived in this world almost at the same time, and Sakyamuni was born a few years earlier. (Socrates - the great thinker of ancient Greece was born in 469 BC, almost at the time of Sakyamuni's death.) Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, was traditionally said to be twenty years older than Confucius, and the young Confucius I once asked Laozi about wisdom.

In the hundreds of years after Confucius, there was a major intellectual development, as did a wealthy business class.Commercial princes can finance hundreds of intellectuals; they have their own swordsmen and warriors who can help save or destroy a regime.Intellectuals debated in their houses, and the more they debated, the more their minds deviated from Confucianism and unraveled all kinds of obscurations beneath their ideas.Some advocated the use of strict laws to rule the country (Legalism); some believed in the paternal love of God (Yin-Yang School) and the brotherhood of human beings (Mozi and Mohism); Advocates that everyone must work; some people doubt civilization and progress, are skeptics, and advocate a return to nature (Lao Tzu and Taoism).

During this period, the biggest opponent of Confucianism was not Taoism, but the followers of Mozi.They theoretically believed not only in universal love but also in the paternal love of God; they advocated devotion, poverty, abstinence, and gratuitous helping of others.They opposed all forms of life and red tape that formed Confucian rituals. It was also an age of chivalry.There is a strong sense of honor, devotion, and loyalty among the samurai, who go through fire and water to avenge their dead friends, and finally face death in peace. It was a great time of political intertwining, wars and alliances, and a time of disarmament, when minds were aroused to seek the proper way of life.Six years before the birth of Confucius, a famous disarmament conference was held, at which an intellectual Su Qin tried his best to promote the conference for peace.The atmosphere was very much like an Allied meeting today.Twelve small countries sent representatives to participate, and the two most powerful countries feared being excluded. Both countries feared that the other would become a hegemon.So the two big countries participated, and at the meeting those small countries sat together, and the representatives of the two big countries refused to sit in the same room with them.Those delegates came to meetings with heavily armed guards in case someone broke their promises.

During Confucius' lifetime, there were seventy-two "countries" or vassal states.After two or three centuries, only seven kingdoms remained.Those small vassal states have been annexed by big powers.After six, five, four, and finally only two vassal states left.At this time, a powerful force appeared in the northwest-Qin Dynasty.A great war lasted for two or three years, and finally Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of Qin and the builder of the Great Wall of China, defeated his opponent and unified the country. In many respects, the most basic patterns of Chinese life—family institutions, religion, and philosophy—were already in place by the end of the Zhou dynasty.Despite China's cultural richness, it is politically divided.The dream of a unified China is now a reality, but in some respects it is still hateful.Confucians especially hated Qin Shihuang because he ordered all Confucian classics to be burned, and he even set a trap for hundreds of intellectuals who criticized his kingdom and their maverick ways.Qin Shihuang played a trick to get them to meet in a canyon, and as a result, a stone rolled down from above and crushed them to death.After the collapse of the Qin Dynasty, Confucian classics were still handed down, because many classics were hidden in the walls of houses, and many old intellectuals still remembered the contents of the books in their hearts.

Eight Great Walls of China 2 After Qin Shihuang conquered all of China, he began to think about his rule.During his reign, people from the Central Plains were sent to rule in places as far south as Guangdong.He simplified Chinese characters and unified the system of roads, which were mainly military passages for his chariots and infantry.He established a brutal empire, the tools of agriculture were melted into weapons, and the people could not secretly manufacture their own weapons.This system was implemented to such an extreme that in the end, three families had to share a kitchen knife.He ordered that those who whispered in the market place should be punished by law.He believed that in this way a rebellion would be impossible.Long live his empire.

Qin Shihuang issued an order to let one-third of the people in the country build the Great Wall.Millions of people sacrificed their lives building the Great Wall.There is one of the most popular legends, which is related to a woman named Meng Jiang.During their honeymoon, her husband was taken away and never heard from again.In desperation, she resolves to find her husband alone, goes through all kinds of hardships, and crosses the mountain where tigers are often infested under the protection of a god.At last she reached the Great Wall, and the only news she got was that her husband had been dead for some time.The husband's remains were unrecognizable amidst a mass of abandoned bones.Determined to find her husband's remains, Meng Jiangnv cut her own wrist and prayed that her blood would be splashed on her husband's remains. People felt great sympathy for this lonely young woman.Meng Jiangnu thought that after she found her husband's remains, she burst into tears and mourned, and finally the gods also moved their hearts to her.Immediately, the Great Wall went up and down, lightning flashed, thunder and rain poured down, and Meng Jiangnu's tears merged into a river, breaking down the section of the Great Wall where Meng Jiangnu was standing.This is the story of Meng Jiangnu crying down the Great Wall.

This story continues to be circulated in folk Huagu opera and on the stage. In a sense, the Great Wall represents Meng Jiangnu's tears and people's hatred of dictatorship.Without the use of metal weapons, it seems impossible to rebel.But is this the case?The dictator was so hated that the empire he dreamed of for generations fell apart the year he died.It perished completely seven years after his death.It's like a house made of paper.But how did the rebellion begin?At first people rose up.Bamboo poles are the only weapons people have.As Qin Shihuang's rule lost popular support, even his own soldiers turned against him and joined the rebels, who quickly grew in strength. Before Qin Shihuang died, he lived in fear of being assassinated. He lived in thirty-six palaces connected by underground passages, often moving from one bedroom to another, every night, just like his paranoia .According to historical records, during a cruise hundreds of miles away from the capital Xianyang, Qin Shihuang died of a cold.His death was kept secret until his coffin arrived in the capital.Due to the heat, the remains of the emperor began to rot.To mask the smell of decay, cartloads of dead fish and rotting shellfish were placed next to the emperor's coffin by his cronies.When the coffin arrived in the capital, everyone murmured: "The emperor has gone to heaven!" The glory of Qin Shihuang, the great dictator, disappeared. However, the Great Wall built by Qin Shihuang is still a miracle that attracts the attention of the world.There stood the Great Wall, twenty-five feet high and twenty feet wide, winding along the ridges of the Sung Mountains.The upper part of the Great Wall is a flat stone road, on which the army can be easily and quickly mobilized, and ten people can walk side by side.The protective walls on both sides of the city wall are like medieval cities and castles in Europe.The fortified city walls provided protection in an age of fighting with swords, spears and bows.After the advent of guns, protective walls were useless, and bullets could easily penetrate the walls.There are many different types of walls in Europe today, and so is the Great Wall. However, historically, the Great Wall has played an important role as a national defense system against the invasion of northern barbarians.The Great Wall can always occupy the highest peak of a mountain ridge and obtain a favorable position with a wide view.The Great Wall provides a convenient means of connection for the movement of troops between different battlefields.Even as late as the Ming Dynasty, there was a fort every hundred yards.During the day the signal of enemy invasion was smoke, at night it was rockets. Zhu Pin couldn't help being immersed in his imagination. He leaned against the protective wall, and his eyes followed the twists and turns of the Great Wall, extending to the farthest horizon.Imaginatively filled his mind, he tried his best to have a panoramic view of the Great Wall, a mass of solid wall bricks and earth that winds from Shanhaiguan on China's east coast to the Gobi Desert in the west.The Great Wall is about fifteen miles long.The majesty of the Great Wall is impressive, and the Hoover Dam is known to be just over a fifth of a mile in length. For hundreds of years, the Great Wall was the borderline to northern China, and north of the Great Wall were numerous Mongol and Manchu tribes, Hu and Tatars—all of whom were collectively known by the Han Chinese as the Di, or Northern Tribes.To the south of the Great Wall is China.There was always the danger of invasion from the north, and these tribes were eager to seize the rich lands and salivated at the warm and humid plains of China.Historically this is a Chinese problem.Without a good army, the defensive value of the Great Wall is sometimes lost, and certain northern tribes break through the Great Wall's defenses from time to time.China had a strong army and drove those tribes north of the Great Wall. China itself is a landlocked country, and like the United States, China is in a place with a favorable climate and, until recently, geographically isolated.The east of China is the China Sea; the west is the Tibetan Plateau and the Pamir Plateau, which almost no one can pass except adventurers; Nomadic tribes with a lower level of education than the Chinese.Those tribes that have ties to China and have seen and lived in the great empire hold China in high esteem, as in Si.In the fifth and sixth centuries, those northern invaders revered China as much.They quickly learned the Chinese way of life, and Chinese food, silk clothes and household styles quickly assimilated them. But the tribes in the north are still powerful. These nomads are sturdy and strong, and they are good at equestrianism.They are constantly threatening China and building and repairing the Great Wall from time to time just to defend against them.This is why China's political center is always in the north.The chosen capitals of great dynasties such as the Zhou, Han and Tang dynasties were all in Xi'an in the northwest.The capital of the Song Dynasty was Luoyang, just south of the crooked Yellow River.The capital of the Ming Dynasty was Beijing. In the north, the Yellow River Valley is the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilization.Confucius lived in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, inland not far from Qingdao.Even in the time of Confucius, there were still barbaric tribes living in the eastern part of the peninsula.People living in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River were considered barbarians.They wear short coarse clothes and tattoos, and are said to be good at water sports.After Qin Shihuang's death, the great Han Dynasty was established and pushed Chinese civilization further south and westward into China's Turkic region. The Han Dynasty was as prosperous as Rome in the same period. It witnessed the conquest and expansion of China, witnessed the rapid development of stone carving art, and witnessed the invention of paper.During the Zhou Dynasty, silk, ivory and Chinese lacquer were fully developed.Traditions of chivalry and hero worship continued at this time.In the middle of the Han Dynasty—about the time when Western Christianity was rising—Buddhism was introduced to China by overseas Indian missionaries. Some missionaries went to Guangzhou via the Turkic region and some by sea.Buddhism became the third largest religion in China, and the introduction of Buddhism marked the first time that China had a significant connection with the outside world. Politically, the Han Dynasty was the beginning of the Chinese Empire, as its existence more or less influenced the next two millennia.Even today, Chinese people proudly refer to themselves as "Han people." Compared with the alien races that were assimilated during the dynasty, Han gradually implies the meaning of "racial Chinese". Also in the word "Tang" there is such a meaning.After the Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty ruled for about four hundred years and reached the largest extent of the Chinese Empire.For more than a hundred years, the territory of the Tang Dynasty was located westward in Tajikistan, the Soviet Union today, close to the Caspian Sea.The Chinese princess married the leader of Tibet and brought Tibet, the silk, tea and culture of the Central Plains into Tibet.To the south the Tang border extended to Indochina, and the Chinese Empire to the islands of Nepal and Indonesia.Chinese immigrants living abroad—particularly those from southern China, like most Chinese businessmen in the United States—still see them as Tang people (called Tang people in Cantonese) and their homeland as Tang people. native land. From the third century to the seventh century, the Tang Dynasty appeared, and Buddhism became more and more important in the Tang Dynasty.Ancient poetry was highly prosperous, literary criticism and painting started, and sculpture developed by leaps and bounds (under the influence of Buddhism).Not only after the invention of tea, people were not only interested in tea during this period, but also had a natural close "chat" with tea. "Talking" was not just a casual act but was historically seen as an important feature of the fourth century. "Let's talk" suggests that there is a definite class of leisure, and that those people are free in spirit (above politics).It's very popular for those people to gently brush their beards while shaking the cattail fans made of long silky ponytails, immersed in the art, reality and purpose of life, and the vanity of life.Taoism that returns to nature is very popular.Calligraphy, or beautiful writing, became an art form that continues to this day.In the carvings of giant Buddhas and Buddhist scenes in Yungang Grottoes and Longmen Grottoes, Chinese sculpture art reached a peak. With Tang's great expansion westward and southward, Chinese culture also flourished.This is a great era of poetry, because the greatest Chinese poets such as Li Bai and Du Fu were born. They both lived in the eighth century, and they were born in ten years successively.Buddhism is popular in the folk, and Taoism is popular in the court.The imperial examination system was established at this time. This was also a period of frequent contact with the Arab world, as the borders of the Arab Empire to the east met the western borders of the Chinese Empire. The Tang Dynasty maintained a tolerant and peaceful attitude towards all religions, and Christians and Muslims could worship in their own churches and mosques.In the capital city, there is a special area as a Persian settlement.A Persian king, who had left the rising center of Arab power, came to live and die here in the Tang capital of Xi'an.It should also be mentioned that the great Chinese traveler Xuan Lei crossed the Pamirs, arrived in Afghanistan and India, and returned to his motherland seventeen years later to become a Sanskrit scholar.He and some colleagues translated more than 600 volumes of Buddhist classics. In the Tang Dynasty, gunpowder was invented, the nautical compass was perfected by the eleventh century, and the invention of printing (tenth century), which became known to Europe through Arab merchants.It is also possible that alchemy (alchemy is well documented in Chinese texts from the fourth century), papermaking and poker spread to the West through the Arabs. Interestingly, the ever-improving nautical compass.As sometimes people emphasize that the compass was invented in the time of the Yellow Emperor, this is not true.But the amazing properties of lodestones were known in the third and fourth centuries BC.Qin Shihuang was afraid of being assassinated, and his bedroom door was made of magnets so that anyone with a concealed weapon would be detected.There is explicit reference to a compass cup in the first century, and by the third century a mechanical structure known as a "compass" existed.Always accompanied by the emperor's entourage, it takes the form of a wooden statuette with its pointer facing south.But this is purely a mechanical device and coordinated with the drive wheels.Instruments for automatically recording journeys were invented in the fifth century.The first complete documentation of the nautical compass appears in the eleventh century, which describes the artificial manufacture of a compass from a lodestone, but it is highly probable that this invention was already well known to Tang sailors. Before Genghis Khan led the Mongol invasion, the last great Han Dynasty was the Song Dynasty.This dynasty made some significant contributions to Chinese culture.First, a new school of Confucian philosophy was introduced and developed under the influence of philosophizing Buddhism, which shaped the thinking mode of Chinese intellectuals and influenced modern times.Confucianism became more psychological, focusing on the desires of the mind.It is also more conceptual and unitary, and it is based on a belief in universal reason, known as li.This is Neo-Confucianism, or philosophy of reason.Chinese painting also flourished during this period, and the invention of enamel led to the widespread use of porcelain as an art form.Song Dynasty porcelain is famous for its pure white and delicate form.Multi-color porcelain was developed in the later Ming Dynasty.