China Flashcards
One reason we should learn about Chinese civilization is that in today’s world around ___% of the world’s population lives in China
25
As we have learned, all the primary civilizations developed along rivers, and in China the two key rivers are the ___ and the ___.
Yellow, Yanzi
Which key values of Chinese civilization are mentioned by Wood, and in another column, list some of the Western counterparts:
Moral orders sustained by virtue
harmony on earth
ritual reverence for ancestors
control in direction
In Chinese the word for ___ means civilization.
writing
The first great “path” of Chinese civilization is a philosophy developed by ___.
Confucious
Confucius lived from ___ to ___ B.C.
551, 479
Confucius maintained that the ideal state would feature a ___ order, sustained with ___ (defined as ___).He also said that people must be taught how to be ___.
moral, virtue, concern for others, good
There is no deity in Confucianism, it is not a ___.
religion
The U.S. Constitution is 225 years old - Confucius lived ___ years ago,.
2500
The second great “path” of Chinese civilization is religion known as ___.
Buddhismq
Buddhism came to China from the country of ___ and it tends to emphasize the principles of ___ and detachment from the ___ world.
India, self-renunciation, material
During the 11th century A.D. the ___dynasty ruled during China’s ___ Age. It was during this time that knowledge of ___ was required to enter government service, and inventions appeared such as:
Sung, Golden, Confucianism; paper money, compass, movable type
In the 13th century a Venetian named ___ visited China. He admired many aspects of Chinese civilization and said that the Chinese could have conquered the ___ if they had wanted to.
Marco Polo, world
___ later read Marco Polo’s journals and they inspired his explorations in the 1400s.
Columbus
In the 15th century the ___ Dynasty made a conscious decision to cancel voyages of ___ and made substantial additions to the Great ___.
Ming, exploration, Wall
The Chinese “missed” ___/____ revolutions of the 18th century.
Copernical/Scientific
In the 19th century Western countries suffered from a ___ deficit with China.
trade
Great Britain decided to mass produce ___ and flood Chinese markets with the lower priced drug.
Opium
When China objected the result was the ___ wars that China lost in 1842.
Opium
China was forced to open itself to western ___ and Great Britain took possession of ___.
trade, Hong Kong
From the Chinese perspective, what is the mandate of Heaven?
Regime change: rulers/dynasties have authority to rule as long as they rule in the interests of people => Chinese version of social contract
In comparison to India and the Middle East, China developed in relative ___.
isolation
Most importantly, China’s isolation had an impact on the ___ writing system that they developed.
logographic
China occupies much of the ___zone in terms of climate , and the northern region is drained by the ___ River, and the dominant soil is called ___ (Sioux City, Iowa is situated along hills of it as well.)
Temperate, Yellow, Loess
The ___ River is the dominant feature of South China
Yangzi
From about 10,000 BC ___ was practiced in China, and by 5,000 BC Neolithic ___ ___ started to appear.
agriculture, village settlements.
During this Neolithic period a system of ___ aimed at communicating with ancestors or gods based on interpreting cracks induced by heat in cattle bones developed.
divination
From 1500 to 1050 BC the ___ Dynasty appeared in China.
Shang
The best excavated city of the Shang dynasty is ___.
Anyang
Shang kings were successful warriors, but they also served as the high ___ who offered sacrifices to royal ___, who could ___with the god Di.
priests, ancestors, intervene
The method of communicating with ancestors was ___associated with the cracks of on oracle bones.
divination
Shang kings were ritually ___ underground.
buried
Human beings were ___ and/or ___ at many tombs.
buried, sacraficed
___ was already a major element in Chinese civilization by 1200 BC.
Writing
The Chinese script was ___ meaning that each ___was represented by a single ___.
logographic, word, symbol
The effort required to gain full mastery of reading and writing added to the ___ of education.
prestige
Chinese script played a large role in holding China together and fostering a sense of ___ to the past.
connection
From 12050 to 256 B.C. the ___ Dynasty ruled China.
Zhou.
During the Zhou Dynasty, according to the Book of ___, a theory of government evolved in which Heaven gave the King a ___ to rule only as long as he ruled in the interests of the people.
Documents, mandate
The Mandate of ___ helped explain why rulers and dynasties sometimes had to be deposed.
Heaven
Glimpses of social life during the Zhou Dynasty can be found in the Book of ___.
Songs.
During the Warring States Period, a new weapon called the ___was invented around 350 BC and the introduction of ___ in this period also reduced the need for a chariot-riding aristocracy.
crossbow, cavalry
One of the most famous treatises on warfare cam from the Zhou period and it was known as The Art of ___ by Sun Wu
War
Sun Wu claimed that ___ was a worthless virtue that leads to needless ___; arguing that the entire army had to follow the orders of the commanders without ___ them.
heroism, deaths, questioning
The greatest of all ancient Chinese philosophers was a man named ___ who lived from 551 - 479 BCE.
Confucius
The thrust of Confucian thought was ___ rather than theoretical or metaphysical.
ethical
To Confucius a gentleman was a man of ___ cultivation rather than a man of noble birth.
moral
Confucian ___ ideals shaped Chinese civilization into the twentieth century, and the Confucian vision provided the ___ basis for the Chinese family into modern times.
political, moral
Daoists focused on the whole natural order identified as the ___ or Dao.
way
How is Yin defined?
feminine, dark receptive, yielding, negative and weak
How is Yang defined
masculine, bright, assertive, creative, positive, and strong
The Daoists believed that unwanted things happen when the balance between ___ and ___ gets disturbed.
yin, Yang
Between 800 and 1400, AD, East Asia was the most ___ region of the world.
advanced
In the Song Period, the principle that the government should be in the hands of highly educated ___ officials became well-established.
scholar
A group known as the ___ would conquer China in 1279, they ruled China at the time of ___ travels.
Mongols, Marco Polo
Theory of Dynastic cycle
Vigor to growth => subsequent decline => administrators avoid paying taxes and become “well-off” => cutting state revenue
In 742 AD, China’s population was still approximately ___ million, but with the expansion of ___ cultivation , the food supply increased and China’s population reached ___ million by 1100 AD
50, wet-field rice, 100
In the Song Period, foreign trade flourished and important to oceangoing travel was the perfection of the ___.
compass
Marco Polo observed city life in Hangzhou, which had ___ marketplaces where __ to ___ thousand people would shop on any given day.
10, 40, 50
The Song and Yuan Dynasties ruled China from ___ AD to ___ AD
960, 1368
During the Song period an ___ system was used to select officials and in the 11th century ___ type was invented.
examination, movable
One popular literary innovation was the ___ which appeared at least five centuries before its European counterpart.
Encyclopedia
The 11th and 12th centuries a revival of Confucian thinking known as ___-Confucianism took place.
Neo
Women tended to marry between the ages of ___ and ___ and it was arranged by the parents.
16, 20
The young bride’s first priority was to try to win over her ___ since everyone knew that they were hard to ___.
mother-in-law, please
