Chinese Civilization Essay Research Paper In the

Chinese Civilization Essay, Research Paper

.In the formative era of Chinese civilization as early as the first millennium b.c. the Chinese thought of the world as all the regions of the heavens, and within the .four seas.. They called it Tianxia, which literally means .under heaven.. Because this was a universal term, with an undertanding of the inhabited world known to the Chinese at the time, it implicitly meant .All Under Heaven.. Tianxia was first of the entire physical world, the arena in which human history was acted out. (The Chinese World).

China is a very large and beautiful country. It is full of history and culture. Even so, China has grown slowly and unevenly to its present size. This is due to the fact that all the components that China consists of haven.t always existed in harmony in the past. They have fought long and hard for their freedom and independence as a people. It.s a very interesting society with many different aspects that make it worth a very close look into the areas of geography, economy, and history, past and present. The people of China, from all the nationalities within have joined together to create a wonderful culture and have a glorious revolutionary tradition. They have bonded together and fought long and hard to become a free people. The people of China encountered wave after wave of struggles for national independence, liberation, for democracy and freedom. It wasn.t until the 20th century that great historical changes have taken place in China. .The Revolution of 1911, which was led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, put an end to the feudal monarchy and marked the beginning of the Republic of China. (Chinascape). Unfortunately, even threw all that, the Chinese people had yet to fulfil their historical task of overthrowing imperialism and feudalism. After many hard and tortuous struggles, it finally came to an end in 1949. They overthrew the rule of imperialism, feudalism. .Bureaucrat capitalism had finally won the victory for which they had fought so long for. This was to be the new-democratic revolution, and it founded the People.s Republic of China..(Chinascape) The Chinese people were able to take state power into their own hands and become the masters of their own country. Through all this, the rise and fall of dynasties, and the struggles for independence, there has been an undeniable factor effecting their culture and turn of historical events. The Great Wall symbolizes many things to not only the Chinese people, but also the world. The Wall, being an enormous physical boundary, has also had a major effect on their social standing, geography and agriculture of the land. China is known for two amazing structures that have greatly influenced the geography of the land such as the Great Wall and the Grand Canal.

China is the third largest country in the world taking up one-fifteenth of the worlds. land mass. Large mountains and hilly lands take up a large sixty five percent of the total area. Within this sixty five percent, there are five main mountain ranges. Seven of these mountain peaks are higher than eight thousand meters above sea level. There are also four bordering seas and each surrounds China on the eastern and southeastern coast. They are the Bohai Sea, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea. It also has many rivers running threw it. One thousand, five hundred of the rivers cover an area that is larger than one thousand square kilometers. There are also over fifty thousand rivers that cover areas larger than one hundred square kilometers. Two of the main rivers in China are the Yangtze and the Yellow River. The Yangtze, which is six thousand three hundred kilometers, holds the title of being the longest river in China. The Yellow River is five thousand, four hundred, sixty-four kilometers long. Most of the rivers in China flow out of the west and into the east to dump itself into the Pacific Ocean.

In the year 221 b.c., there was a great ruler over the Ch.in kingdom in China, named Shih Huang Ti. Shih was power hungry and wanted more land so he gathered his army and captured the surrounding kingdoms. As the ruler of so many kingdoms he became .the first emperor. of China. Shih showed his tyranny when he burned all history books to insure that his people and future generations would only remember him and none of the earlier rulers. Even though he had strong armies, Chinese villages in the north were being attacked by the fierce tribes of northern China. These were the clans of the Mongols and the Huns. Unforturnatly for Shih, they had stronger armies and the attackers threatened to invade all of China. These nomadic tribes would come into China and steal crops and animals and then destroy everything that they had left behind and did not want. Emperor Zin Shi Hunag Di needed a way to protect his people from these enemies.

Shih was very disturbed with these invasions, His solution was to fix up some older walls that had been built earlier, build a new stronger wall, and then join all walls together. .No one would be able to go around it, over it, under it, or through it. (World Landmarks). In the year two hundred fourteen, B.C., he freed prisoners and gathered workers and herds of animals. He gave all this to Meng T’.en, his loyal general. Right way, seven hundred thousand workers and three hundred soldiers were marched north to build the wall. Men, women and children were forced to work, an