Emperor Wu of Zhou Dynasty – Part 1/4

September 6, 2010

Wu of the Western Zhou Dynasty was named Jifa. He was the second son of King Wen, and the founder of the Western Zhou Dynasty.

The Zhou Dynasty would last almost 900 years. Source: Cultural China

The Zhou people lived along the western part of the Yellow River and were one of the first nations to develop agriculture. To the Northwest of Zhou were barbarian tribes.


Video: Chinese with English subtitles

The Zhou capital was near today’s modern city of Xian in Shanxi Province, and the Zhou, a vassal state, were given the job of protecting the Shang Dynasty’s western frontier.

However, while the brutal last king of the Shang Dynasty waged endless wars with surrounding tribes, the Zhou ruler placed more importance on developing agriculture and his small kingdom grew wealthy.

Zhou’s prosperity bothered the Shang king so he threw King Wen in prison.  After his release, Wen recruited a talented general to lead his army to wage war on the Shang Dynasty.

The Zhou king died during the war and his son Wu became king and defeated the Shang. To achieve this victory King Wu forged an alliance with other Shang vassal states.

According to historical records, the Shang Dynasty fell in the first month of 1027 B.C.

Continued with Emperor Wu of Zhou Dynasty – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Silk – Part 2/2

September 6, 2010

The Roman Empire first sailed ships to India and bought silk, which became very popular in Rome. Silk colored purple was worth its weight in gold.

Eventually the Roman merchants set up trading posts all the way to China and reached Canton then Chang-Cheou near today’s Shanghai.

Until 73 AD, the sea route was the only one open since the caravan routes along the Silk Road were closed at that time.

Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar (31 BC to 14 AD) earned credit for establishing trade between Rome and China.

In 166 AD, Roman travelers arrived at the Court of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 219 AD). These Romans met powerful representative of the Han Dynasty.

About the same time, Buddhist missionaries arrived in China by ship from India and introduced Buddhism to China.

  • The next paragraph may sound as if history were repeating itself between the U.S. and China.

Romans spent recklessly. Gold left Rome and flowed to the East at such a rate that the government had to restrict imports. After a long period of prosperity in Rome, the empire entered a serious economic crisis. 

Rome was bankrupt from this overspending and couldn’t maintain the hundreds of thousands of troops needed to protect the empire. 

In 312 AD, Constantine moved the Roman capital to Constantinople.  In 395, the Roman Empire was divided between the Western and Eastern Empires. Then the Western Roman Empire collapsed.

See The Han Dynasty

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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. 

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Silk – Part 1/2

September 6, 2010

I was reading an Associated Press piece by Mansur Mirovalev on Silk’s dark side about Uzbek children made to grow cocoons. If you are interested in that story, click the link.

Silkworms in a Chinese silk factory

However, that’s not what this post is about.  I will say this. I didn’t see much that was dark about what was taking place in Uzbekistan. About a century ago, American children once worked in the fields alongside their parents. I see nothing wrong with that. The Uzbek families not being paid is another matter.

Worker makes silk cloth from a silkworm.

I’ve often read about the Silk Road, but I was curious and wanted to know more about the history of silk so I did some virtual hunting.

Silk has a long history in China. In 1984, silk fabric dating back more than 5000 years was found in Henan Province.

How silk is made.

According to legend, Lei Zu, the queen of China’s legendary Yellow Emperor, was drinking a cup of tea beneath a mulberry tree one day when a silkworm cocoon fell into her cup. Further investigation revealed that the unraveling fibers were light and tough, ripe for spinning. Thus China’s silk industry was born.  Source: The History of Silk

What I didn’t know was that merchants from the Roman Empire sent ships by sea to China and traded directly with the Han Dynasty, which I’ll write about in Silk – Part 2.

See A Millennia of History at a Silk Road Oasis

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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. 

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Links to the Stars – Ancient Astronomy – Part 2/2

September 5, 2010

The Milky Way Maid says that the (ancient) Chinese focused more on the constellations, creating one of the earliest star maps ever found.

Chinese astronomers gave distinctive names to familiar Western constellations. For example, the Big Dipper was called The Plow. The North Star was Bei Ji. Another constellation was called the Winnowing Basket.

From the 16th century B.C. to the end of the 19th Century A.D., almost every (Chinese) dynasty appointed officials who were charged with the sole task of observing and recording the changes in the heavens.

However, the Chinese were not alone in mapping the heavens. 

Ancient cultures in the West studied the skies too. The “Nebra Sky Disc”, discovered in Europe, dates to about 1,600 BC. 

National Geographic says the Nebra Sky Disc is the oldest depiction of the night sky in history.  It is a hundred years older than the oldest images found in ancient Egypt.

The Nebra Sky Disc may be the first representation of the universe in human history.

However, in China about 4,000 years ago, the oldest astronomical instrument known to man appeared. It was merely a bamboo pole planted in the ground so that the movement of the sun could be observed from the direction and length of the shadow of the pole. Source: China.org – Astronomy and Mathematics

Historians consider that the Chinese were the most persistent and accurate observers of celestial phenomena.

Return to Ancient Astronomy – Part 1 or discover Chinese inventions.

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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. 

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Links to the Stars – Ancient Astronomy – Part 1/2

September 5, 2010

For thousands of years, Chinese astronomers have studied the stars and planets moving in their endless travels across the night sky.

Oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty (1766 – 1122 B.C.) recorded eclipses and as many as 90 novae (exploding stars).

For about two thousand years, the Chinese used the North Star (which remains constant). The Chinese used that star to map the location of every other star in the sky.

This method of mapping stars is called the equatorial system. The West would not use this method to map the heavens for almost two thousand years after the Chinese invented it.

In early 1980s, a tomb was found at Xi Shui Po (西水坡) in Pu Yang, Henan Province. There were some clamshells and bones forming the images of the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger and the Northern Dipper.

It is believed that the tomb belongs to the Neolithic Age, about 6,000 years ago.

Star names relating to the 28 lunar mansions were found on oracle bones dating back to the Wuding Period (about 3,200 years ago). Source: New World Encyclopedia

See Shang Dynasty (1766 – 1122 B.C.)

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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. 

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