China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

August 3, 2013

This holistic timeline in no way represents all of China’s history. This menu of China’s history is here for individuals who want to learn about China and the Chinese from near the beginning to today.

What I’ve done is provide links in chronological order—or as close as possible—to posts on this site that offer a look at China’s long history and her people. Click on the links [in red] to discover some of China’s historical, cultural and artistic evolution.

If you see a post that you feel is in the wrong time slot, let me know and I will look into it. New links may be added at any time.

 

6987 BC

The Ancient Yue

 

3000 BC

The Discovery of Silk

God, Ancient Astronauts and China’s Yellow Emperor

 

2256 – 2205 BC

ShangDi, China’s God of Creation

 

2205-1783 BC

The Xia, China’s Oldest Known Dynasty

 

1783 – 1123 BC

Shang Dynasty

The Mandate of Heaven

Links to the Stars – Ancient Astronomy

Spring Festival, Year of the Tiger

The Vanishing Street Art of Chinese Calligraphy

Chinese Drums

The Sheng, one of China’s Oldest Musical Instruments

 

1126 – 222 BC

China’s Spring and Autumn Period

Emperor Wu of Zhou Dynasty

Guqin means Ancient Musical Instrument

China Points the Way

Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”

The Bodhidharma

The Life of Confucius

The Influence of Confucius

The two-faces of Confucius

Confucius Returns

Confucius with Chow Yun Fat

A short history of Taoism and its meaning

Yin Yang

China’s Grand Canal

China’s Ancient Chimes


259 – 210 BC

The First Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, the man who unified China

Xian, China’s Ancient Capital

The Search for the Tomb of Cao Cao

The Seven Wonders of China starting with the Qin Shi Huangdi

Tea for Emperors and Tibet

 

206 BC – 219 AD

The Han Dynasty

Buddhism in China

With or Without Paper

Measuring Earthquakes

 

Near the end of the Han Dynasty to 280 AD

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

 

300 – 644 AD

A Millennia of History at a Silk Road Oasis

[youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R29A0GyLYlE]

 

596 – 644 AD

Hsuan-tsang – From China to India for Enlightenment

 

618 – 906 AD

The Tang Dynasty

Wu Zetian, China’s only Female Emperor and an early feminist

Ancient Feminism in China

Tang Dynasty Poetry

The Accidental Discovery of Gunpowder

Ice Cream from China – Myth or Fact

The First Cinderella was Chinese

The Tea Horse Road

Chinese Crossbow and other Inventions

Quyi: Chinese Singing and Storytelling

Christianity and Islam in China

The Kaifeng Jews

 

925 – 1279 AD

Sung Dynasty

China’s Imperial Encyclopedia

China’s Bound-Feet Women

The Machines of China

 

1279 – 1368 AD

Yuan Dynasty: Kublai Khan’s Mongol Empire [China conquered]

Shanghai’s History & Culture

China’s Real Karate Kids

The Millennium Cult

The White Lotus Mutation

 

1368 – 1643 AD

The Ming Dynasty Part 1

The Ming Dynasty Part 2

Emperor Yangle of the Ming Dynasty

Ruling the Oceans

China’s Romeo and Juliet

 

1644 – 1911 AD

The Qing Dynasty

China’s Last Dynasty

China’s Last Empress Dowager-Regent

The Prince’s Garden

The Qing Dynasty’s Elite Troops

For All the Tea in China

The Connection between Opium, Christianity, Cults and Cannon Balls

The Roots of Madness

The Opium Wars

The Taiping Rebellion; the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace (1845-1864)

A Forbidden City Connection to Tibet Revealed

Dream of the Red Chamber

Jingyun Dagu, Beijing’s Story Telling Opera

Peking Opera

The Importance of Guanxi to Chinese Civilization

Jack London in China

Discrimination against the Chinese in America

 

1912 to present

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the father of China’s Republics

Sun Yat-sen’s Last Days

Yuan Shikai, the general who became China’s president for life

Chiang Kai-shek, brutal dictator and America’s friend

America’s Angel Island

Massacre in Taiwan and America says nothing

Mao’s Long March

China’s Communist Revolution or Civil War

Mao and Snow

World War II and The Rape of Nanking

Japan’s war of lies about atrocities in China

The Rape of Nanking with Iris Chang

China’s Health Care During Mao’s Time

Mao Zedong, the Poet

Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl

From Mao to the Met

Mao’s Last Dancer

The Founding of a Republic

Ah Bing and “Reflection of the Moon”

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Tibet Inside China

China’s Sensitivity over Tibet

Tibet as a Province of China – the unresolved issue

No Way is Tibet a Democracy in Exile!

Chinese Gold from Dead Tibetan Caterpillars

China in Korea Protecting the Teeth

China’s Great Leap Forward

China’s Great Famine (1959 – 1961)

Mao’s ‘alleged’ Guilt in the Land of Famines

Mao and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

China and India at War – 1962

The KMT-CIA Heroin, Cocaine Pipeline to the US

Pearl S. Bucks’ China Predictions – 1966

Nixon in China

Deng Xiaoping

The Sino-Vietnam War of 1979

The Controversy, Complexity and Reality behind China’s One-Child Policy

The Tiananmen Square Hoax

Tiananmen Square Revisited

What is the truth about Tiananmen Square?

On the trail of Dr. Li’s illusive Memories

Water: the Democracy versus the Authoritarian Republic

Greenpeace and the growth of environmentalism in China

China’s Educated Women Work to Bring about Change from Within

China’s Stick People – the rural urban divide

China’s Porn War

Evil Tobacco

Joining the Party

Communism and Socialism are NOT the SAME

Country Driving with Peter Hessler

Oprah Times Four in China

Hooters in China

What do Shanghai’s IKEA and Cupid have in common?

Macao Bringing in the Cash

Falun Gong’s Media Machine

The differences between Individualism and Collective Cultures


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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

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About iLook China

4 Comments | Buddhism, China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, Communism, Confucianism, history | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Myth of China’s Queen Mother, Shi Wang Mu

July 25, 2013

To the Chinese, Hsi Wang Mu is the Queen Mother of the  West (Western China), an important figure of Chinese mythology.

It is believed that the myth of the Queen Mother goes back almost three thousand years, but the earliest recorded history was found from the Chou Dynasty (1122 – 222 BC) and was written in the second century BC.  It appears she may have been a real queen of a Western Chinese state and stories of her life become legend over hundreds of years turning into magical myths.

One of the older stories is about Hsi Wang Mu and the celestial archer, where she asks him to build her a palace of jade in the western sky. His reward was a pill made from the peaches of immortality, which ends in tragedy and heartbreak.

It is said that Hsi Wang Mu had nine sons and twenty-four daughters with her mate, Tung Wang Kung.

Discover The First Emperor – The Man Who Made China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

19 Comments | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, Chinese women, history | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Printing Books in China

July 9, 2013

I read a post on another Blog that complained about printing books in China for the American market, and this was my response.

If American’s stopped buying products made in China, Americans at home would lose jobs.  Since companies like Wal-Mart have most of its products manufactured in China, Wal-Mart might go out of business or shrink—which might be a good thing.  But many low wage people that work for Wal-Mart in the United States would be unemployed like American autoworkers during the recession.

Most Chinese products are manufactured for American companies.  Most of Apple’s products are manufactured outside the country like iPods in China. Try to buy a car—any car—that’s 100% manufactured in the United States.  Does it matter where the jobs go?  They are still gone. People in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc. are manufacturing goods that are sold in the United States. China isn’t the only country that does this.  Yet China seems to get all the blame. Why?

Many products may be built in other countries but an American puts them on the shelf, sells them and gets paid for it. When you buy an e-book, where is it manufactured?

Discover Doing Business in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

His latest novel, Running with the Enemy, was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.

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Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

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Leave a Comment » | America, business, capitalism, China, Chinese history, Chinese literature, economy, history, United States | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

June 25, 2013

Based on a novel written by Dai Sijie, who also directed the film.
ISBN: 978-0385722209
Publisher – Anchor (October 29, 2002)

I read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress soon after it came out.  A few years later, we drove more than sixty miles to see the Mandarin language movie. Checking Amazon recently, I saw 264 customer reviews for the book with an average of 4.1 out of 5 stars. This short novel spent twenty-three weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. The author, born in China, moved to France where he learned to read, speak and write French. The book was originally written in French and translated into English by Ina Rilke.

The story is about two likable, teenage boys and their struggle after being banished to a peasant village for “re-education” during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Sons of doctors and dentists, the boys work at muscling buckets of excrement up the mountainside and mining coal. Then there is the little seamstress of the title, whom Luo, one of the boys, falls in love with. He dreams of transforming the seamstress from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he expected.

This link goes to the Mandarin language DVD with English subtitles. Discover more Chinese cinema through Joan Chen’s Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

His latest novel, Running with the Enemy, was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
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About iLook China

4 Comments | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, Communism, cultural differences, media | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

A Difference in Defensive Thinking

June 20, 2013

Teddy Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Compare this to Sun Tzu, who wrote the Art of War. He said, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

I’m not sure that America speaks all that softly and that stick has been around the world more than once and has been costly.  I did a bit of virtual sleuthing and the military budgets approved by the Congress between 1946 to 2009 have cost the American tax-payer about 23 trillion dollars. These figures do not include the wars since World War II.

In today’s dollars, the Korean War cost more than $340 billion; the Vietnam War cost $740 Billion.

To date, the cost of war in Iraq has cost more than $810 billion and Afghanistan $629 billion.


To compare, the US military has more firepower.

China intervened in the Korean War and sent hundreds-of-thousands of troops. To understand why the Chinese got involved, Mao said,”Vietnam is the gums to our teeth. What happens when the gums are gone?”

Between 1965 and 1970, over 320,000 Chinese soldiers served in North Vietnam.

“Rather than worrying about this development, we should understand that Beijing’s maintenance of a large, modern military is driven by history.” Source: Huffington Post  “On 4 March 2010, Beijing announced China’s declared defense budget will only increase by 7.5% this year — the slowest rate in 20 years.”

In 2012, China defense spending increased by 11%—more than $100 Billion compared to $738 Billion for the US.

Discover When China’s generals laughed.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

His latest novel, Running with the Enemy, was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, cultural differences, military, military spending | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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