China: Notable Concepts (Political, Economic, Social, Militaristic, Legal, etc.; inc. Policies, Laws, Technologies, Routes and Roads, etc.) and Notable Groups (Civilizations, Peoples, Alliances, Leagues, Types of People, Types of Places, Types of Professions, Military Groups, etc.)

Shang (All Facts)

• Gained ascendancy over other tribes in the Yellow River Valley around 1650 BCE - 1600 BCE

• Made inscriptions on oracle bones and bronze ritual vessels, were the first people in the region from which writing emerged, around 1390 BCE

• Society that was powerful but cruel, it was located in the Henan Honan province 75 miles north of the Yellow River

• Society that was centered on the king, a semi-divine ruler who was regarded as the channel of communication with the ancestors of the royal clan

• Offered human sacrifices, usually in the form of prisoners taken from neighboring people with whom they waged constant war, in order to keep on good terms with their powerful gods

  • Their sacrifices were carried out in a solemn ritual by the priest-warriors of the ruling caste

  • They held offerings of food and wine in beautiful bronze vessels that were decorated with animal designs

• Conversed with their gods by writing questions on bones and tortoise shells, applying a hot iron and then analyzing the resultant cracks

  • The answer given by the cracks is written on the bone or shell which is then carefully filed

  • The questions, and the gods to which such questions are being asked, controlled every aspect of their lives

• Their “oracle bones” were consulted whenever

  • Their army set out on a campaign

  • They started an elephant hunt

  • They asked the gods for rain

• Characterized by their

  • highly regarded craftsmanship, with bronze and jade being worked into utensils and jewelry

  • silk-based clothing, which was impressive given that the peoples that surrounded them still wore only coarse hemp clothes

  • cultivation of mulberry trees

  • rulers’ servants and concubines being buried alongside their dead masters, to serve them in the afterlife, along with the rulers’ weapons and cooking utensils

• Society and dynasty characterized by inequality, with the lower classes living in pit-dwellings with few possessions, spending their days laboring in the fields while the ruling aristocrats live in luxury and devote themselves to warfare and ritual

Crossbow (All Facts)

• Weapon that dominated and transformed Chinese warfare by the 300s BCE, it became the means and the end of war in China

  • Chinese armies quickly equipped themselves with it

• Remarkably accurate arrow-firing device so deadly that a soldier could rely on a bolt fired from it to kill or maim an enemy on the other side of a battlefield

  • The key to its effectiveness is the pressure-sensitive trigger that releases the string of the short bow mounted crosswise on a wooden stick

  • Mass production of these triggers and other components for the namesake weapon turned Chinese cities into centers for the manufacture of and trade in weapons

    • This led to military commanders concentrating campaigns on capturing cities in order to destroy their opponents’ ability to wage war

      • This led to the development in siege warfare techniques

• Chinese infantrymen were thus equipped with this item as well as with armor and sword

First Great Wall of China (All Facts)

• Built by the northern states during the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty to protect themselves against barbarian invasion starting around 287 BCE

  • Was built to keep out the fierce hordes of nomads who threatened China from the North

• Was 2,600 miles long

• 300K men were conscripted to build it

  • Did not have to start entirely from scratch, as they were able to incorporate smaller-stake fortifications constructed in past centuries

• Was made of packed earth

• Stretched from Laiodong in East China to Lintao in West China

• The idea of a unified defense system covering the whole of northern China was quite new at the time of its construction in the 200’s BCE

• Was garrisoned, in which

  • It had

    • manned soldiers who had an important intelligence-gathering role

    • regular patrols sent out to watch nomad movements

    • areas of raked sand being maintained in case they ever revealed the tracks of enemy scouts creeping in under the cover of darkness

    • watchtowers, which were manned to pass messages by a complex system of flag, smoke signals, and/or torches

Xiongnu (All Facts)

• Ancestral group of the Huns, they were nomads who formed the namesake Confederacy in present-day Mongolia and north China, which threatened and were often enemies of or at war with China