Highlights of Chinese Civilization and Local Culture

1. Highlights of Chinese Civilization and Local Culture 中国地方文化英语导读 00041010 School of Foreign Languages Suzhou University

2. 第二章 中国历史（History） • 1、教学内容： • 回顾中华文明经历的不同历史阶段和探讨不同历史阶段的文明进程及成就。 • 讲授内容： • (1). 与史前文明相关的考古发现以及神话传说 • (2). 早期文明的发展及成就 • (3). 帝国时代的文明特征 • (4). 当代文明的发展进程 • 2、教学要点： • 重点掌握不同历史文明进程中里程碑式的文化创造及特点。

3. Chapter Two History http://v.ku6.com/show/4ruOZpNHX3-XazOc.html

4. Five Major Stages of Civilization • the primitive society • the slave society, • the feudal society • the semi-colonial and semi-feudal society • the socialist society

5. Pre-historic Time • Early History • Imperial Era • Modern Period

6. The Prehistory Period -----Archaeological Excavations From Paleolithic to Neolithic Ages • The Wushan Man in the three gorges area 2-million years ago • The Yuanmou Man 1.7 million years ago • The Lantian Man 0.5-0.6 million years ago • “Peking Man” Chinese Ape Man Zhoukoudian 0.4 -0. 5 million years ago • Maba, Changyang, Liujiang, in the Yellow River Bend region: the Paleolithic Age • South of the Yangtze River: Neolithic Ages • Unearthed material: specimens of painted pottery (Yangshao Culture); specimens of black pottery (Longshan Culture)

7. Pre- and Early History of China

8. Several Legendary Characters • Pan Gu split the world into heaven and earth. • Nu Wa used soil to create human beings and saved the earth from being drowned by the leaking Heaven. • Cang Jie（仓颉） invented Chinese characters. • Shen Nong（神农）invented agriculture. • Sui Ren（燧人）found out how to produce fire. • You Cao Shi （有巢氏）invented houses and shelters.

9. Pangu Created Heaven and Earth In the beginning when the universe was just darkness and chaos, a man named Pan Gu was birthed from a large egg. He separated heaven and earth with his strength and sacrificed his body to become the mountains and rivers and various parts of the world that we now know. http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/tf21fPWne9M/

10. Story has it that the heaven and earth were integrated into one body that resembles an egg, with Pangu slept inside. He slept for about 18000 years and then awoke. He found that he was in a vast of dark; therefore, he expanded his huge hands and cut into the darkness. After an explosion, the heaven and earth started to split. He feared that the heaven and earth may come together again, so he held the heaven with his hands and trod his legs on the land. His body grew three meters every day. Consequently, the distance between the heaven and earth became three meters longer every day. Time flies! Another 18000 years passed and now, the heaven became far away from the earth and the earth was now very thick. At the same time, Pangu also grew to a huge man.

11. During this period, the heaven continued ascending and expanding while the earth sinking and thickening until the distance between them was as far as 90,000 kilometers which had reached the extreme. That was the condition of the universe in our eyes at present. Pangu gradually weakened after he separated the heaven and the earth. After he died, his body turned into all the things in the universe. His left eye became the sun and his right eye, the moon. The protruded parts in his body turn out to be high mountains and his blood became rivers. His muscle became the soil field, and his hair and beard became the stars on the sky and grasses on the ground. His teeth and bones turned out to be iron and huge stone while the essence in his body became pearls and precious jade. His breath became the wind and cloud, his shout became the thunderbolt, and the sweat turned out to be the rain. A lot of insects on his body were blown by wind into living human beings. This story was first appeared in Sanwu Liji written by Xu Zheng in the Three Kingdoms Period.

12. The myth of Pangu was pervasively spread among the southern ethnic minorities long long ago. Both of the Miao and Yao people took Pangu as their ancestors. So far, the Zhuang people are still singing “Song about Pangu Creating the Heaven and Earth”. The song goes like this: Pangu split the heaven and the earth, and created the sun, moon and other stars. It is thanks to Pangu that human beings can get brightness... From historical record and oral tales, we can detect the evolution trace of the myth of Pangu in the process of spreading. Pangu split the heaven and the earth, seeded all the things in the universe and turned into the heaven and the earth. He is not only the god that created the world but also the hero who broke darkness and sought brightness. Pangu will forever remain living in the minds of generations after generations of the Chinese people.

13. Legendary Emperors in Prehistory China • The ThreeClan-rulers the Tianhuang (the heavenly Emperor) the Dihuang (the earthly Emperor) the Renhuang (the human Emperor) • The FiveEmperors Huangdi Zhuanxu (grand son of Huangdi) Diku (great grandson of Huangdi) Yao Shun

14. 1、伏羲、神农、黄帝。（《世本》、《尚书*序》、《帝王世纪》） • 2、天皇、地皇、泰皇。（《史记*秦始皇记》） • 3、伏羲、神农、祝融。（《白虎通*号》） • 4、伏羲、女娲、神农。（《风俗通*皇霸》、《史记*三皇记》） • 5、天皇、地皇、人皇。（《艺文类聚》） • 6、伏羲、女娲、燧人。（《白虎通*号》）

15. 黄帝、颛顼、帝喾、尧、舜 • 宓戏（伏羲）、神农、黄帝、尧、舜 • 太昊、炎帝、黄帝、少昊、颛顼 • 少昊、颛顼、帝喾、尧、舜 • 黄帝、少昊、颛顼、喾、尧

16. Fuxishi: the ox-tamer, founder of law and order. • Suirenshi: the Fire Producer, or Chinese Prometheus [prə'miθju:s] • Nvwashi: the first heroine in history, Fuxi’s wife who mends the sky; the Goddess of marriage and inventor of Sheng and Huang • Shennongshi: the God of farming, the God of medicine

17. Huangdi the Yellow Lord; inventor ofbows and arrows, boats, carts, ceramics(制陶术), writing, and silk. • Zhuanxu carrying out religious reform • Diku father of Houji--first ancestor of Zhou Dynasty; father of Qi-- first ancestor of Shang Dynasty; father of Yao • Yaocreating calendars and rituals • Shun the originator of moral culture

18. Yao （尧）, the first sage king who chose a talented young man Shun （舜）instead of his own son as new emperor，an action revered as “demise”（禅让）for centuries to come. • Yu the Great （大禹），a hero in taming the flood, the founder of Xia Dynasty ，and the terminator of demise system.

19. 三皇 伏羲女娲

20. 伏羲 神农

21. 火神祝融

22. 黄帝战蚩尤

23. 颛顼 帝喾

24. 尧帝 舜帝

25. History Timeline

26. History Timeline

27. History Timeline

28. History Timeline

29. History Timeline

30. History Timeline

31. History Timeline

32. Early History • The Three Dynasties: the Xia, the Shang and the Western Zhou • The quintessence of material civilization of the three Dynasties was the Bronze Culture. • The notion of great national unity gradually came into being. “All the land under the sky belonged to the emperor, and all the people within this country were the emperor’s subjects”.

33. The Xia Dynasty • A Dynasty that can only be detected through archeological evidence • An evolutional stage between the late Neolithic cultures and the typical Chinese urban civilization • The pioneering dynasty

34. The Shang Dynasty • The Shang dynasty (from 1700 to 1027 B.C also called the Yin • The Huang He Valley --the cradle of Chinese civilization--provide evidence about the Shang Dynasty. • Two important events: the development of a writing system (Chinese characters on tortoise shells or flat cattle bones, also known as the oracle bones 甲骨文); and the use of bronze metallurgy.

36. The Zhou Period • Zhou (1027 to 221 B.C) had settled in the Wei Valley in modern Shaanxi Province. It extended Shang culture through much of China Proper north of the Yangtze River.

37. The Hundred Schools of Thought诸子百家 • It was the “golden age” of China. Many different philosophies developed during the late Spring and Autumn and early Warring States periods that the era is often known as that of the Hundred Schools of Thought .

38. the School of Literati (儒 ) Confucius; Mencius；Xunzi the School of Law ( 法), or Legalism : Han Fei Zi ; Li Si Taoism ( 道): Lao Zi and Zhuangzi the school of yin-yang (yin: dark, cold, female, negative; yang: light, hot, male, positive) and the five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, and earth). The doctrine of Mo Zi ( 470-391 B.C.): Advocating that all action must be utilitarian and pacifism. Schools of Chinese thought

39. Imperial Era

40. Qin Dynasty • Yin Zheng claimed himself as the Shi Huangdi or the First emperor. • He established the first united, power-centralized, multi-nationality and feudal autocratic monarchy • To silence criticism of imperial rule, the kings banished or put to death many dissenting Confucian scholars and confiscated and burned their books (焚书坑儒 ). • To fend off barbarian intrusion, the fortification walls built by the various warring states were connected to make a 5,000-kilometer-long great wall ( 万里长城).

41. Han Dynasty • The Han period produced China’s most famous historian, Sima Qian , whose Shiji (Historical Records) provides a detailed chronicle from the time of a legendary Xia emperor to that of the Han emperor Wu Di. • The empire expanded westward as far as the rim of the Tarim Basin (in modern Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region), making possible relatively secure caravan traffic across Central Asia to Antioch, Baghdad, and Alexandria. The paths of caravan traffic are often called the “silk route”.

42. Sui Dynasty • China was reunified in A.D. 589 by the short-lived Sui dynasty. • The construction of the Grand Canal was completed and the Great Wall was reconstructed.

43. Tang Dynasty • Stimulated by contact with India and the Middle East, the empire saw a flowering of creativity in many fields, eg. the flourishing of Buddhism. • A government system supported by a large class of Confucian literati selected through civil service examinations (科举 ) was perfected under Tang rule.

44. Song Dynasty • The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. • The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. • The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of the ancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of these philosophers was Zhu Xi.

45. Mongolian Interlude • The Han were discriminated against socially and politically. All important central and regional posts were monopolized by Mongols. • The major cultural achievements were the development of drama and the novel and the increased use of the written vernacular. • During the Yuan period, Beijing became the terminus of the Grand Canal, which was completely renovated.

46. Ming Dynasty • Pressure from the powerful Neo-Confucian bureaucracy led to a revival of strict agrarian-centered society. • The Chinese armies reconquered Annam (安南), as northern Vietnam was then known, in Southeast Asia and kept back the Mongols, while the Chinese fleet sailed the China seas and the Indian Ocean, cruising as far as the east coast of Africa.

47. Qing Dynasty • The Manchus retained many institutions of Ming and earlier Chinese derivation. • The Qing regime was determined to protect itself not only from internal rebellion but also from foreign invasion. • Under Manchu rule the empire grew to include a larger area than before or since; Taiwan, the last outpost of anti-Manchu resistance, was also incorporated into China for the first time.

48. Modern Period

49. Emergence of Modern China • The Western Powers Arrive • The Opium War, 1839-42 Era of Disunity • Taiping Rebellion, 1851-64 • Self-Strengthening Movement • Hundred Days’ Reform and Aftermath • Republican Revolution of 1911

50. Republican China • Nationalism and Communism: Opposing the Warlords Consolidation under the Guomindang Rise of the Communists • Anti-Japanese War • Return to Civil War