During the later part of the Ming period, the government was weakand the throne was in danger. Not only was there an uprising byHan people, there were also invasions of the Mongolians from theNorth and the Manchus from the Northeast. After much struggle,the dynasty collapsed and the Manchus succeeded in ...

Han people resumed their rule during the Ming dynasty. Onedistinction is the overseas expeditions during the period 1405–1433led by Zheng He, a eunuch and confidante of the emperor of theMing dynasty. According to Gavin (2003), on March 8, 1421Zheng He sailed the largest fleet the world had ever seen from ...

Before the Yuan dynasty, Han people ruled China. Han refers to themajority ethnic group in China. At least from the Han dynastyonward, Mongols from the north tried to invade China repeatedly.They finally succeeded and established the Yuan dynasty in 1279.The founder was Hubilie, the grandson of Genghis Khan. Yuan wasvery ...

Song dynasty also had its beautiful poems, although of differentforms from Tang’s. They are not made up of sentences of equallength, but have to fit into particular forms. They tend to be moreromantic, dealing with the tragedy of love lost. Song suffered frominvasions by people from the north, leading to ...

Unification was achieved by the short-lived Sui dynasty (581–617).The rule of Sui was known to be harsh, with many laborers draftedto reconstruct the Great Wall and to build the Grand Canal goingfrom south to north. A system of civil service examinations wasintroduced to select scholars well versed in Confucian classics ...

At the end of Han was the period of Three Kingdoms. As the namesuggests, there were then three kingdoms contending to succeedHan to form a new dynasty. The history of this period was writtenin the Record of Three Kingdoms. A novel  The Romance of ThreeKingdoms,  written by Luo Guanzhong, was ...

The empire of Qin did not last long. A well-known Chineseclassical essay examining the fault of Qin attributes its downfall toits authoritarian rule and failure to treat the people with kindness.After the death of the First Emperor, his son, the second emperorto be, was unable to rule. There came two ...

At the end of Zhou dynasty, many states rivaled for power. Thisis known as the Period of Warring States. Among them wereseven strong ones. These states came about because the emperorsof Zhou annexed territories to relatives and imperial officialsfor them to govern. These people gradually declared themselveskings of independent states. ...

Mathematics was already fairly advanced in the Zhou dynasty in1100 BC as imbedded in Yiching, The Book of Changes. This bookcan be found in most American bookstores. Besides Yiching, otherbooks of the Zhou period were impressive, including the  Bookof  Poems, the  Book of Learning,  the  Book of Li (Rules of ...