Creating ChinaX Feb

Today Bol – background and context Group discussions Group presentations Organizing labs

Fundamentals of Course Organization Why a survey of China’s history? Multiple histories – Geography, environment, climate – Political and institutional history – Social history – History of religions – History of art – History of literature – Economic history – Intellectual history, history of philosophy

Fundamentals of Course Organization Chronology Themes/topics Questions, problems, paradoxes

Background (the course to this point) 1 Olympics and Geography The beginning of civilization – Reading Neolithic artifacts Legitimating power and overthrowing the King – Shang and Zhou – Bronzes and oracle bones The age of philosophy – Confucius and competing schools

Background (the course to this point) 2 Forging a centralized bureaucratic empire: Qin ( BCE) and Han (202 BCE-220) Fundamental institutional tensions in the empire – E.g. centralization vs. regionalism The changing balance between interests of the state and of society – e.g. taxation

Coverage this week The “Period of Division” and foreign invasion; the reunification in 589 by Sui and Tang (chronology) What themes? – Turning from state to self – Religion – Literature – Art – calligraphy

Reunification and the end of early imperial China Tang as a cosmopolitan empire – Taking from the world – Providing a model for the world Tang as an aristocratic empire – Contrast with later