Classical China Flashcards

4949248400	Silk Road	4,000 miles of trade routes from western China to southwest Asia - very expensive and dangerous to travel	0
4949248401	silk	most valuable Chinese export trade product, found as far away as Greece	1
4949248402	bronze casting	*Shang artists created beautiful works of art (vases, drinking cups, sculptures, urns) using clay molds with detailed designs carved into them	2
4949248403	movable type	*an easy way of printing books (instead of handwriting them)	3
4949248404	gunpowder	*created by Chinese for use in explosives, fireworks, and "fire lances" (an ancestor of guns)	4
4949248405	magnetic compass	*allowed Chinese sailors to navigate and go further from land (without fear or being lost)	5
4949248406	stirrup and saddle	*developed by the Chinese for their cavalry forces	6
4949248407	civil service	*process of using examinations to identify qualified candidates for government jobs - favored rich because their families could help them prepare	7
4949248408	The Analects	*a book of Confucius's sayings (Lun Yu)	8
4949248409	Qin Shihuangdi	first emperor of China; founder of Qin dynasty. used legalism to punish or kill anyone who dared disagree with him, overthrown by those who believed him cruel	9
4949248410	Han Wudi	created long, difficult exams to find qualified people for government jobs	10
4949248411	Empress Wu	*the only woman in Chinese history to rule China on her own (Tang dynasty)	11
4949248412	Huang He	the first center of civilization - also called the "yellow river" for its rich yellow soil and "China's sorrow" for its dangers when flooding	12
4949248413	Yangtze	also called the Chang Jiang, another fertile river	13
4949248414	10%	China's land that can be farmed (the rest is mountains and deserts)	14
4949248415	Gobi Desert	a cold and rocky area on China's north border, between it and Mongolia	15
4949248416	Middle Kingdom	what the Chinese called their homeland, which they saw as the center of the world	16
4949248417	Shang	first major empire and dynasty	17
4949248418	dynasty	a line of rulers from the same family	18
4949248419	warlord	governed the territories in Shang kingdom, a military leader with his/her own private army	19
4949248420	aristocrat	an upper class noble whose wealth came from land ownership passed from one generation to the next	20
4949248421	farmers	9 out of 10 Chinese were	21
4949248422	ancestors and spirits	Chinese made food and other offerings to their	22
4949248423	oracle bones	how the early Chinese predicted the future and received answers from the gods - the earliest known Chinese writing	23
4949248424	pictographs	characters that stand for objects	24
4949248425	Zhou	originally a vassal family of the Shang; possibly Turkic-speaking in origin; overthrew Shang and established 2nd Chinese dynasty (1122-256 B.C.E.).replaced the Shang, longest dynasty in Chinese history (800 years)	25
4949248426	Wu Wang	Zhou king who led the rebellion against the Shang - people hated them for living in luxury and mistreating the people	26
4949248427	bureaucracy	group of appointed officials who are responsible for different parts of government	27
4949248428	religious rituals	the king's chief duty as their link between heaven and earth (Remember the pharaohs?!)	28
4949248429	Mandate of Heaven	the idea that the king was given a formal order to rule by the gods because of his talent and virtue	29
4949248430	Period of the Warring States	between Zhou and Qin - when local rulers warred for control	30
4949248431	conscript	to use laws to force a citizen to join the army	31
4949248432	cavalry	soldiers on horses	32
4949248433	merchants	lived in towns and provided goods and services to landowners, lower than farmers in the class system	33
4949248434	filial piety	children showing respect for parents and older family members	34
4949248435	women	could not hold government posts and mostly raised children and managed household	35
4949248436	philosophy	a theory or attitude that guides behavior	36
4949248437	Confucius	China's first great thinker and teacher, wanted to end the problems in China and bring peace	37
4949248438	duty	Confucius believed people needed a sense of [ ] and to put others before themselves for the common good	38
4949248439	Golden Rule	One of Confucius's ideas: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."	39
4949248440	Confucianism	family and community before ourselves, anyone with talent should serve in government to make a better world	40
4949248441	Daoism	Give up worldly pleasures and desires and focus on nature and the force that guides all things	41
4949248442	Laozi	"the Old Master," whose ideas were the basis of Daoism	42
4949248443	Dao De Jing	"The Way of the Dao" - the collection of Daoist ideas	43
4949248444	Legalism	believed that humans were naturally evil and only a strong system of law and harsh punishments could bring peace	44
4949248445	Hanfeizi	developed the teachings of Legalism	45
4949248446	Han	dynasty succeeding the Qin ruled from 202 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. established by Liu Bang after the Qin dynasty, less harsh but continued use of provinces and censors	46
4949248447	censors	government officials whose job it was to make sure everyone else did their jobs	47
4949248448	tenant farmers	live and work on land belonging to aristocrats and pay rent in crops	48
4949248449	rudder, acupuncture, paper, steel	important Han inventions	49
4949248450	Buddhism	took hold in China, provided people comfort during the time of civil war	50
4949248451	porcelain	very thin, fine clay baked at high temperatures and used to create dishes	51
4949248452	Great Wall	Chinese defensive fortification built to keep out northern nomadic invaders; Qin Shihuangdi began constructing this protect from the Xiongnu (invaders from the North)	52
4949295056	Shi	the scholars of ancient China and thus were a very prestigious class.	53
4949317814	Qin	dynasty (221-207 B.C.E.) founded at the end of the Warring States period.	54