Official Website
|
|
China Government |
|||
|
|
||||
|
|
China City Guide |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
China Library |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Maps of China
|
|||
|
|
China Insight
|
|||
|
|
SAFEA Regulations |
|||
|
|
Writer's Guild |
|||
|
|
||||
|
||||
|
10 Hottest Sectors |
||||
|
|
199 Questions |
|||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
China City Guide |
|||
|
|
Cost of Living |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
China Insight
|
|||
|
|
Job Contracts |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Chinese Weights |
|||
|
|
||||
|
|
Contact Librarian |
|||
|
|
Join Library |
|||
|
|
Member Inquiry |
|||
|
|
Contribute |
|||
|
|
Letters to Editor |
|||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Advertising |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
How to use PDF |
|||
|
|
||||
|
Please Support our Sponsors |
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
China Law
Encounters
Marriage in China
Religious Practice
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Live Life Work and Jobs in China Library & database @ jobschina.org |
|||
|
China Facts & Insight |
|||
|
|
|||
|
History of China |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
Concise Political History Of China |
||
|
|
Ancient Times through the Dynasties |
||
|
|
The Ancient Dynasties |
||
|
|
The First Imperial Period |
||
|
|
Emergence Of Modern China |
||
|
|
Republican China |
||
|
|
The People's Republic Of China |
||
|
|
World Heritage Sites and Historical Preservation in China |
||
|
|
Historic Preservation |
||
|
|
History of Chinese Family Names |
||
|
|
Taiwan- Timeline |
||
|
|
The Fifty Six Ethnic Groups of China |
||
|
|
Related Articles and information |
||
|
|
Personal Experiences |
||
|
|
Educational Articles & Weblinks for more China History |
||
|
|
|||
|
China's earliest primitive human discovered so far is known as "Yuanmou Man," a fossil anthropoid unearthed in Yuanmou in Yunnan Province who lived approximately 1.7 million years ago. The better-known "Peking Man," discovered in the Zhoukoudian area in the suburbs of Beijing, lived about 600,000 years ago. |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
A significant aspect of China is its long cultural and national history. The Chinese people have shared a common culture longer than any other group on Earth. The Chinese writing system, for example, dates back almost 4,000 years. The imperial dynastic system of government, which continued for centuries, was established as early as 221 BC. |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
Chinese civilization, as described in mythology, begins with Pangu, the creator of the universe, and a succession of legendary sage-emperors and culture heroes (among them are Huang Di, Yao, and Shun) who taught the ancient Chinese to communicate and to find sustenance, clothing, and shelter. The first prehistoric dynasty is said to be Xia, from about the twenty-first to the sixteenth century B.C. |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
Much of what came to constitute China Proper was unified for the first time in 221 B.C. In that year the western frontier state of Qin, the most aggressive of the Warring States, subjugated the last of its rival states. (Qin in Wade-Giles romanization is Ch'in, from which the English China probably derived.) |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
VIEW |
|||
|
|
|
||
|
VIEW |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
VIEW |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
56kb
The success of the Qing dynasty in maintaining the old order proved a liability when the empire was confronted with growing challenges from seafaring
Western powers. The centuries of peace and self-satisfaction dating back to Ming times had encouraged little change in the attitudes of the ruling elite. 
The republic that Sun Yat-sen and his associates envisioned evolved slowly. The revolutionists lacked an army, and the power of Yuan Shikai began to
outstrip that of parliament. Yuan revised the constitution at will and became dictatorial. In August 1912 a new political party was founded by Song Jiaoren (1882-1913),
one of Sun's associates. The party, the Guomindang (Kuomintang or KMT
On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was formally established, with its national capital at Beijing. "The Chinese people have stood up!" declared
Mao as he announced the creation of a "people's democratic dictatorship." 
For decades, the Chinese government has attempted the protection of famous historical and cultural cities. The protection of these cities includes both the
preservation of the ancient buildings and historical sectors, and the preservation of the layout, features and traditional cultures of the ancient cities.
In the 1990s China made significant investment toward protecting cultural relics. Special subsidies by the Central Government for the protection of
cultural relics reached some 700 million yuan for about 1,000 projects. The Palace Museum in Beijing, Potala Palace in Lhasa and the Longmen Grottoes in Henan Province, for example, underwent major renovations. 
The Chinese have had surnames long before the period of the Three Emperors and Five Kings, that is, during the time when recognition was given only to one's
mother and not one's father. Hence, the Chinese character for surname is made up of two individual characters----one meaning woman and one meaning to give birth. That
is to say, the surnames of the early Chinese followed the maternal line.
Timeline : Taiwan
China is a united multi-ethnic nation of 56 ethnic groups. As the majority of the population is of the Han ethnic group (accounting for 91.6 percent of the national
total population), China's other 55 ethnic groups are customarily referred to as the national minorities. According to the fifth national census in 2000, the national minorities
which have a population of over one million include
