Porcelain from China during the Song Dynasty made China famous.
The invention of movable type also helped make China famous. The “Dream Pool Essays” by Shen Kuo records most of the scientific achievements of the time, which included knowledge of petroleum and geological changes. The most important achievement recorded in the ancient encyclopedia was the invention of movable type by Bi Sheng.
The entire process used in movable type printing was described in detail.
The first printed characters were engraved in tiny cubes of baked clay.
The age of paper in the history of human civilization began in China.
Papermaking had been developed during the Han Dynasty about 2,000 years ago. However, the quality of this paper wasn’t that good and was not ideal for writing.
Later, papermaking techniques were improved to a high level during the Song Dynasty.
Then Song era books were printed in large numbers. Even today, Song Dynasty books tell the world about the innovations and achievements of this era. At the time, Hangzhou was the greatest printing center in the world.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar
Tuchman says, Many individuals are guilty of folly (Tuchman also calls this woodenheadedness), but when governments persist in folly, their actions can adversely affect thousands, even millions of lives. Folly is a child of power. “The power to command frequently causes failure to think.” (p.32).
I’ve read that historians say an event must be at least fifty-years old to be judged as history. I used that as my criteria.
LEARN FROM HISTORY
I wanted to find out if I was writing too much history about China, so I surveyed all 734 posts that I have written to date.
The first history post I discovered was Foreign Devil Heroes and that was post 49 that appeared on February 13.
An American Genocide (56) and An American Shadow Over the Philippines (57) qualify but those two are about American history, and I have discovered that some misguided American patriots don’t want to learn about the dark side of U.S. history.
Since so much of China’s history with Christianity and Islam turns out bad, one commenter complained that I was against Christianity.
A LONG HISTORY LESSON
Of more than 730 posts, 107 were on history and 70 of those appeared in the last two months mixed in with more than a hundred posts on other topics—the number of history posts represents less than 15% of the total.
Then I checked statistics for top posts of “All Time”. If no one was reading history, I decided I would stop writing about it.
Seven history posts were among the top twenty and iLook China has had more than eleven thousand visits since the January 28, 2010 launch.
That means 35% of the top 20 most-popular posts visited were on China’s history.
A FINAL LESSON ABOUT HISTORY
For individuals who want to avoid history, there are menus on the HOME page that offer choices.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Under the sands of a beach in the city of Quanzhou City in Fujian Province, a well preserved secret was discovered–a boat built during the Song Dynasty.
It is the oldest, fully intact wooden boat unearthed in the world with a load capacity of 200 tons.
It was not the largest boat constructed during that time. The largest had a load capacity of more than 1,000 tons.
Experts say the construction of these ships with hermetic compartments made safe navigation possible and these methods that were developed a millinea ago are still used today in modern ship construction.
During the Song Dynasty, the trading port of Quanzhou was considered one of the two largest in the world. Egypt’s Alexandria was the other one.
As an important seaport for trade at one end of the Maritime Silk Road, Quanzhou had close ties with Korea and Japan in the east and as far as northeast Africa in the west.
At the time, the Indian Ocean was called the Western Seas, which explains the story of Zheng He’s Voyage to the Western Seas” in the Ming Dynasty.
There were two major kinds of trade goods–silk and porcelain. Some scholars say that porcelain should be considered the fifth great Chinese invention.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Source: US Constitution
I find it interesting that I had to read in the Guardian about a respected Mexican newspaper (across the border from the US) asking the drug cartels for guidance on how not to offend them so the drug cartels would stop killing newspaper reporters and photographers.
Freedom House’s annual survey of media independence in 195 countries and territories show that only 17% of the earth’s population lives in what is considered “Free”.
Forty-two percent of the planet’s people live in “Not Free” and 41% in “Partly Free” countries, and Mexico, which is billed as a democracy is listed with the “Partly Free”.
Watch the video then visit Freedom House.org to discover that countries considered “Free” mostly have colonial links to Europe.
Although the video shows most of the world’s countries are democracies today, the results at Freedom House say it isn’t true.
Even India, which is billed as the largest “democracy” on the planet is “partly free”.
China is listed as “not free”, which is among the planet’s majority, according to Freedom House, and China makes no attempt to hide that fact.
America and the rest of the “free” 17% of the world would be better off if the “free press” were required to tell the truth and nothing but the truth without exaggerations. Unfortunately, America’s Founding Fathers forgot that sentence.
The U.S. First Amendment also doesn’t protect freedom of the press from corporate CEOs or gangsters, and foreign companies own four of American’s six-largest media empires.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Agricultural science during the Song Dynasty fertilized land that was not suitable for growing crops.
Then two or three annual harvests were possible leading to a green revolution, which supported the population of China to exceed one-hundred million—at that time the largest population in the world.
One scientist discovered that petroleum made better ink for writing and predicted that petroleum would be used greatly in the future.
Although China’s four greatest inventions came long before then, it wasn’t until the Song Dynasty that papermaking, the large-scale application of printing, the compass and gunpowder made their mark.
In fact, the German inventor Johannes Gutenberg wouldn’t invent his printing press until 1440 AD.
Before the Song Dynasty, the primitive compass invented centuries earlier was not accurate.
However, the compass was improved for navigation making it less likely for ships get lost at sea and allowed ships to travel farther from China.
To preserve these innovations, Shen Kuo published his Dream Pool Essays in 1088 AD, a huge encyclopedic book that covered a wide range of subjects, including literature, art, military strategy, mathematics, astronomy, meteorology, geology, geography, metallurgy, engineering, hydraulics, architecture, zoology, botany, agronomy, medicine, anthropology, archeology, etc.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
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