It’s pretty much impossible to cover the history of this country in three hours, but the professor definitely tried in the last class of the week, "A Concise History of China." It's even harder to summarize it in a blog post, so here are just some random bits of information:
-Early on, people were isolated by geography (sea, tropical jungles, Himalayas and Gobi desert), so the population was mostly concentrated in the east (and still is)
-The need for government came before 900AD. Farming was threatened by national disasters and the 2nd largest river kept changing its path (26 times from 602 BC to 1950). Plus invaders came after their silk, tea, iron, gold, etc.
-An artificial river from north to south was created to connect the 5 river systems that flowed west to east and make water transportation more efficient. It was built between 581-618, and it has been said that 3 million people died during the construction of it.
-Initially there were four classes – scholar, farmer, artisan and merchant. (I was amused that the business man was at the bottom of the totem pole) Education was the only way to move up the ladder, and this was through the civil service examination. This was the beginning of the emphasis on education that you still can see today.
-During the (Mongol) Yuan dynasty, the rulers took a practical approach to the classes. The more you offered society, the higher your class. I think the farmers were at the top. Scholars, on the other hand, were not perceived as adding value. Therefore, they were at the bottom, just above beggars. It turns out that prostitutes were just above scholars in that system!
-1840-1945 has been described as a century of failures (or humiliation) with the Opium Wars, Sino-French War, and the Sino-Japanese war. The list goes on. During this time they lost land, lives, and loads of silver. I think the Communist Party claims that they ended this period.
-At about this point in the class the three hours were up, so recent history (China after 1949), and what interested me the most, was quickly skimmed over. I wanted to hear more about the Cultural Revolution and the transition to the Reform and Open Policy. How was Mao Zedong able to make so many intellectuals move to the countryside to do manual work? From what I understand, he was trying to address the Great Famine of 1959-1961 by creating more farmers. As a result, “universities and colleges did not turn out qualified graduates for more than a decade."
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