Chapter 8 Flashcards
What assertion was made in an article in the British newspaper the Guardian in June 2006?
“China will be the next superpower”
China’s huge population, its booming economy, its massive trade surplus with the US, its entry into world oil markets, its military potential, and growing presence of global affairs suggest China was headed for a major role in the 21st Century.
Which people were considered “barbarians” to the Chinese?
Northern nomads, which frequently posed a military threat and on occasion even conquered and ruled parts of China.
The collapse of the Han dynasty around 220 C.E. ushered in what?
Ushered in more than three centuries of political fragmentation in China and signaled the rise of powerful and locally entrenched aristocratic families.
The fall of the Han dynasty also meant the incursion of what?
The incursion of northern nomads, many of whom learned Chinese, dressed like Chinese, married into Chinese families, and governed northern regions of the country in a Chinese fashion
What discredited Confucianism and opened the door to a greater acceptance of Buddhism and Daoism among the elite?
The condition of disunity, unnatural in the eyes of many thoughtful Chinese during the collapse of the Han Dynasty and the influx of Northern Nomads.
During the centuries of the collapse of the Han Dynasty which region witnessed substantial Chinese migration?
Migration southward toward the Yangzi River Valley, a movement of people that gave southern China some 60 percent of the country’s population by 1000.
What accompanied the movement of the Chinese people towards the Yangzi River Valley?
their intensive agriculture, which set in motion a vast environmental transformation, which marked the destruction of the old-growth forests that once covered much of the country and the retreat of elephants
Around 800 C.E. what Chinese official and writer lamented what was happening?
Liu Zongyuan, writing about the forests on fire and not even a shrub remaining from the destruction, where animals used to thrive but now nothing grows or lives.
Under what dynasty did China regain unity in 589?
Under the Sui dynasty
How did the Sui emperors solidify unity in China?
By a vast extension of the country’s canal system, stretching some 1,200 miles in length and described by one scholar as “an engineering feat without parallel in the world of its time.”
What did the canals under the Sui dynasty link?
It linked northern and southern China economically and contributed much to the prosperity that followed.
Which two dynasties followed the Sui?
the Tang and the Song dynasties which build on the Sui foundations of renewed unity.
Under the Tang and Song dynasty, what did their patterns establish in Chinese life that endured into the 20th century?
Culturally, the era has long been regarded as a “golden age” of arts and literature, setting standards of excellence in poetry, landscape painting, and ceramics
What is Neo-Confucianism?
An effort to revive Confucian thinking while incorporating into it some of the insights of Buddhism and Daoism which came around during the Song dynasty
What were the six major ministries during the Tang and Song dynasties?
Personnel, finance, rites, army, justice, and public work
What accompanied the six major ministries?
the Censorate, which was an agency that exercised surveillance over the rest of the government, checking on the character and competence of public officials
How did they staff the Censorate?
the examination system was revived and made more elaborate, facilitated by the ability to print books for the first time in world history.
How did selecting officials based on merit place a challenge?
Was a challenge to established aristocratic families’ hold on public office, Never the less, a good amount of official positions went to the sons of the privileged, even if they had not passed the exam.
Who did the great families of large landowners continue to encroach upon?
They continued to encroach on peasant plots, which was a recurring pattern in rural China from ancient times to present despite the state’s periodic efforts to redistribute land in favor of the peasantry
The political and cultural achievements of Song dynasty China was regarded as what?
an “economic revolution” that made the Song dynasty “by far the richest, most skilled, and most populous country on earth.”
What did many Chinese cities have a population of?
Over 100,000 people making China the most urbanized country in the world.
What was the population of the Song dynasty capital of Hangzhou?
It was home to more than a million people.
What did a Chinese observer in 1235 provide in his vivid description of Hangzhou?
They are Specialized markets abounded for meats, herbs vegetables, books, rice, and much more.
“Luxuriant inns,” marked by a red lantern, feature prostitutes, and wine chambers. Also, specialized agencies managed elaborate dinner parties for the wealthy, complete with a Perfume and Medicine Office to “help sober up the guests.
What did the Italian visitor Marco Polo describe Hangzhou later in the thirteen century as?
as “beyond dispute the finest and noblest [city] in the world.”
Under the influence of steppe nomads, whose women led less restricted lives, elite Chinese women of the Tang dynasty era, at least in the north, had participated in what?
had participated in social life with greater freedom than in earlier times.
By the Song dynasty, however, a reviving Confucianism and rapid economic growth tightened what?
seemed to tighten patriarchal restrictions on women and to restore some of the earlier Han dynasty notions of female submission and passivity
How did the Song dynasty historian and scholar Sima Guang sum up the subordination of women to men?
“The boy leads the girl, the girl follows the boy; the duty of husbands to be resolute and wives to be docile begins with this.”
For men, masculinity came to be defined less in terms of horseback riding, athleticism, and the warrior values of northern nomads and more in terms of what?
In terms of the refined pursuits of calligraphy, scholarship, painting, and poetry.
The most compelling expression of a tightening patriarchy lay in foot binding, apparently beginning with whom?
Beginning among dancers and courtesans in the tenth or eleventh century C.E., this practice involved the tight wrapping of young girls’ feet, usually breaking the bones of the foot and causing intense pain
During and after the Song dynasty, foot binding found acceptance among elite families and later spread in Chinese society becoming associated with what?
Associated with new images of female beauty and eroticism that emphasized small size, frailty, and deference and served to keep women restricted to the “inner quarters,” where Confucian tradition asserted that they belonged
Foot binding also served to distinguish what?
Chinese women from their “barbarian” counterparts and elite women from commoners and peasants.
A rapidly commercializing economy undermined the position of whom in the textile industry?
for Women, urban workshops and state factories, run by men, increasingly took over the skilled tasks of weaving textiles, especially silk, which had previously been the work of rural women in their homes. Becuase of this they had lost the more lucrative income-generating work of weaving silk fabrics.
But as women’s economic role in textile production declined, other opportunities beckoned in an increasingly prosperous Song China. In the cities …
women operated restaurants, sold fish and vegetables, and worked as maids, cooks, and dressmakers.
The growing prosperity of elite families funneled increasing numbers of women into roles like…
concubines, entertainers, courtesans, and prostitutes. Their ready availability surely reduced the ability of wives to negotiate as equals with their husbands, setting women against one another and creating endless household jealousies
The Song dynasty witnessed positive trends in the lives of women like…
the property rights expanded, allowing women to control their own dowries and to inherit property from their families. Furthermore, lower-ranking but ambitious officials strongly urged the education of women, so that they might more effectively raise their sons and increase the family’s fortune
China’s most enduring and intense interaction with foreigners came from the north, involving whom?
Many nomadic pastoral or semi-agricultural peoples of the steppes
