The Mongol Empire & Yuan Dynasty (1279 – 1368 AD) – Part 1/5

October 19, 2010

Kublai Khan was the first significant non-Chinese to rule over the entire Chinese empire. He also had a goal to rule the entire world.

Like his grandfather, Genghis Khan, he defeated and crushed his enemies with brutal force.

However, after the conquest, he ruled his empire peacefully setting up governments and creating systems of taxation while promoting culture and commerce.

He also made Beijing the capital of the biggest empire the world has ever seen.

Kublai Khan’s empire stretched from the East China Sea to the Danube River in Europe – more than five thousand miles or eight thousand kilometers from east to west.

His military career started late in his life but his skills as a conqueror were the best.

In addition, throughout his reign, he courted the most sophisticated, intellectual, scientific and artistic minds of the day.

The Mongols were a nomadic people and Kublai Khan’s skills as a military leader would eventually lead to the conquest of the Song Dynasty of Southern China.

One of greatest influences over Kublai Khan while he was a child was his mother.  Mongol women often fought beside their men and ruled tribes and territories. She insisted that he be educated in Chinese culture.

Continued in the Yuan 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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2 Comments | China, Chinese history | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

When China “Could” Have Ruled the World

October 16, 2010

An interesting post at The Globalist says, “Many regard China’s economic powerhouse as a new phenomenon.  But a thousand years ago, Chinese merchants ruled the seas of Asia.”

The post goes on to point out how China’s Song Dynasty promoted international trade and that Chinese merchants expanded foreign trade rapidly but with Chinese government control over trade as in China today.

The Song Dynasty also kept a close watch on exports as in China today.

The Globalist said, “Even 1000 years ago, China’s government kept a close eye on trade. If a ship was blown off course, its captain had to report it promptly (on his return to China) — and produce evidence.”

In fact, Merchants from all over the world came to China at that time just as they are doing today.

Therefore, it should be no surprise when The Economist says, “China’s overreaction to a Japanese ‘provocation’ has set its regional diplomacy back years. … China sneezes, Asia shivers.”

I don’t believe China cares if diplomacy suffered.  China is more concerned with not letting anyone step on its toes again.

When I say that, I’m talking about the Opium Wars then Western domination of China’s politics for close to a century before World War II when Japan invaded and killed about 30 million Chinese.

If we are to believe Marco Polo (1254 – 1324), who said China could have conquered the world, then we should also breathe a sigh of relief that China didn’t want to do that then when it could have and still doesn’t.

However, China’s desires to control events that affect China have not changed.  Japan sneezed and China roared back. It’s all about harmony—in China.

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

History’s Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 4/5

October 16, 2010

Marco Polo had no doubt that China was the world’s greatest civilization. He wrote that if the Chinese were war like, they would conquer the world.

He said, “Thank goodness, they are not.”

During the Song Dynasty, the standard of living in China was the highest in the world.

The key concept of Chinese civilization was the search for harmony and during the Song Dynasty this balance was achieved for a few centuries.

Writing was considered a tool that provided access to the ancestors until writing became civilization itself.

 

However, the way China saw the world started to change after Chinese Admiral Zheng He sailed from China with a huge armada in the fifteenth century.

Zheng He’s ships were eventually broken up and the logbooks destroyed.

Western thinkers have a simple explanation that the end of Zheng He’s explorations was proof that the Chinese were backward and ignorant and had no desire for new knowledge.

However, there is another explanation.

After all, at the time, the Chinese were the most advanced technological nation on the globe.

Therefore, perhaps it is a difference of how different civilizations believed technology should be used and the Chinese may have realized that their real interests were in China — not in the world.

In Europe, however, Western philosophers, leaders and writers were not concerned with perfecting the past but how to control the world’s future.

Return to History of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 3

 

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

History’s Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 3/5

October 15, 2010

In the eighth century AD, all roads in Asia led to Xian. It was the greatest city in the world. Rivaled only by Bagdad and Constantinople.

At this time, foreigners were allowed into China for the first time and they were kept in their own area away from the center of power.

In the western part of Xian in the foreign enclave, there was a great mix of cultures.

To the Chinese, the Tang Dynasty was the most golden of all ages for Chinese poetry.

For the Chinese, composing poetry is one of the central ideas of civilization.

A famous Silk Road poet talked about in the video said that the people of China could face any test as long as their leaders treated them humanely.

The Tang Dynasty ended in chaos and anarchy like so many in China’s history but was followed by an even greater Dynasty.

Four hundred miles from Xian lay Kaifeng. In the 11th century AD, this city was the capital of what is considered the peak of Chinese civilization, the Song Dynasty.

During the Song Dynasty, the invention of printing and inward development changed China. This would guide Asia for another thousand years.

In Kaifeng, as everywhere in China, several decades of Communist rule have not cut the ancient beliefs.

Reverence for ancestors, filial piety, and Confucian virtues are all coming back into the open now that freedom of worship (of the old ways) is guaranteed.

Like its medicine, Chinese cooking is based on harmony and balance – the old themes of Chinese culture. In fact, the oldest restaurant in the world first opened in 1153 AD and is still open for business in Kaifeng.

Return to History of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 2

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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.

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SONG DYNASTY (960 – 1279 AD) – Part 6/6

September 30, 2010

Movable type printing became widespread in the Song Dynasty and played an important role in the cultural development of the time.

The shape of books also changed. During the Tang Dynasty, books were rolled. However, with movable type, books were printed in volumes similar to modern books.

Han Qi, a research fellow for today’s Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that the development of Neo-Confucianism during the Song Dynasty was due to the widespread availability of printed books.

Printed book also promoted the development of science, technology and education.

During the Song Dynasty, both private and public school developed quickly. About 300 schools focused on education, teaching and book printing.

Some schools had math and physics departments.

This was also the age of the scholar-bureaucrat. A scholar from an impoverished background could become a member of the higher-social class through imperial examinations.

China was also the first country to introduce bronze-block printing for advertisements.

It is widely believed that without government support for the sciences, it would have been difficult to achieve the progress that took place at this time.

Return to Song Dynasty – Part 5

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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

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