China Popular Itineraries |
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Culture in the Qin Dynasty and the Han Dynasty |
Feudal society reached maturity in the Qin and the Han dynasties. The economic development and military annexation in the Warring States Period laid the foundation for the unification, which came true in 221 B.C. when the State Qin united China, thus establishing the first centralized feudal autocratic dynasty in the Chinese history. The unification by the Qin was of great signif-ieance£ºDevised to meet the needs of feudal autocracy, the Qin system exerted a lasting influence on government in China's feudal society. For about 2,000 years from the Qin to the end of the Qing dynasty, the country was governed by copying the Qin's system. There were modifications from dynasty to dy-nasty in government organization and administration, yet with very few fun-damental changes in the main structure of the political system. The great na-tional unity founded in the Qin became the basis on which the Chinese nation relied for existence, in spite of the temporary separatist rule and division.
The centralized autocratic political system revolving around the emperor was established in the Qin and the Han. Emperor Ying Zheng of the Qin coined for himself a distinguished title, the First Emperor or Shi Huang Di in Chinese, which, that is, the Chinese words, suggests a blending of three sage "kings" and five virtuous "emperors" prior to his reign. He intended to ex-press his own political ambition in making as great achievements as those by the wise legendary rulers. He also devised some terminology for the emperor's exclusive use. For instance, he addressed himself by Zhen meaning the sovereign. The First Emperor enjoyed supreme power. He set up a complete autocratic system of state administration extending from the central court to the local levels. In the imperial court, cheng xiang (the prime minister) as-sisted the emperor in governing the country, tai wei (the marshal) took charge of military affairs and yu shi (the censor) supervised officials of all ranks. The whole empire was divided into 36 prefectures, each of which com-prised a number of counties. Both the central and local officials were appointed and dismissed by the emperor. The offices held by the nobles were not heredi-tary. The administrative set-up was like a pyramid guaranteeing the absolute authority and effective control over the whole country. The Han Dynasty car-ried on the Qin system. Emperor Wu Di of the Western Han Dynasty took steps to weaken the power of the prime minister and strengthen the authority of the monarch. At the imperial court a secretariat was set up, which rein-forced the autocratic monarchy in that it took over the power of the prime minister to handle documents. The Eastern Han Dynasty was even more auto-cratic than the Western Han. The emperor exercised direct control over the secretariat handling imperial documents, which could decide on state policies and issue orders to the whole country, while the prime minister no longer en-joyed any real power. The Six Boards system that remained in use from the Northern Wei to the Qing Dynasty was also initiated in this period. The em-peror divided the whole country into thirteen regions. To tighten the control over the localities, he appointed an itinerant inspector for each of these regions to keep a watchful eye on the officials in the prefectures and counties. In the early years of the Eastern Han, the thirteen governors were empowered by the emperor to be the local chief executive, thus changing the prefecture-county system in the Qin into a three-level system of administration (state-prefecture-county). Later on, the circuit-prefecture-county system in the Sui-Tang, and the Song Dynasties, the executive secretariats in the Yuan Dynasty and the province-prefecture-county system in the Ming and the Qing dynasties all de-scended from the administrative system of the Qin and the Han dynasties.
The emperor took many measures to consolidate the unification. In econ-omy, the First Emperor ordered that the land system and the weights and measures be standardized. Consequently, the road standards were worked out. "Roads for royal carriages" were constructed with Xianyang, the capital, as the center, stretching to the northeast, the north and southeast of the country. The opening-up of land developed a transport network which fur-thered communications throughout the country. To reinforce the feudal eco-nomic foundation, in the Qin the policy of physiocracy was carried out while the development of trade was restrained, which became the traditional policy of the succeeding feudal societies. Emperor Wu Di decreed a state monopoly on iron and salt. Government offices were set up to supervise the state sale of iron and salt. Revenue for the imperial treasury increased and the menace posed by the fiefdoms to the imperial court was restricted. The economic mea-sures instituted by Emperor Wu Di helped to reinforce the autocratic monar-chy.
In the domain of ideology and culture, the First Emperor ordered that the written language and behaviors be standardized. He called on Prime Min-ister Li Si to devise a new script to replace the many different forms of writing in use in various parts of the country. Li Si introduced a standard form called Xiao Zhuan, aiming at standardizing written communication in official docu-ments. This, in turn, was replaced by the official script which was much sim-pler to write and more wide-spread among the people. These standards all proved helpful for cultural exchange and merging of nationalities. In the Qin Dynasty, the established social tradition was also transformed, namely, the backward customs gave place to the more civilized habits of the Central Plains, so that the formation and development of the community of Chinese nation were promoted. "The First Emperor resorted to the Legalist School for strengthening his control over every part of the country so as to root out all oppositions. The Legalist theory emphasized the gains and losses among the people and advocated a rule by penal code. In order to thoroughly wipe out the old aristocratic ideology the First Emperor ordered that books he burned and Confucian scholars be buried alive. Consequently, the social contradictions were intensified. The collapse of the Qin regime declared the defeat of its despotic cultural and ideological policy. The later rulers of China did not fail to draw the necessary lessons from this. It was in Emperor Wu Di' s time that Confucianism gained supremacy as the ideological weapon of the feudal dy-nasty. Emperor Wu Di adopted Confucianism as the official philosophy, and denied scholars of all other schools the opportunity to enter the civil service. Rooted in the traditional patriarchal culture, Confucianism was more geared, by taking in the merits of the various schools, to the national conditions of China than the other schools. The Confucian school in the Han Dynasty was known as Study of Confucian Classics, mainly concerned with annotating Five Confucian Classics ( The Book of Changes, Collection of Ancient Texts, The Book of Songs, The Rites, and The Spring and Autumn Annuals). Taoism was regarded as infidel. The ideologists Wang Chong and Wang Fu's materi-alism was closely bound up with the Taoism.
As a peak period in ancient historical development, the Qin-Han periods witnessed significant achievements in many fields, including political system, economic development, science, culture, and military force. The Han Dynasty saw the invention of papermaking technology. Zhoubi Suanjing was a classic work on mathematics written in the Western Han Dynasty. Nine Chapters on Mathematical Art summarized the important achievements in this field since the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods. Zhang Heng created an armillary sphere (celestial globe) and contrived the world' s first seismo-graph. In the medical field, there appeared classics in traditional Chinese medical science: Classic o[ Internal Medicine and Febrile and Other Dis-eases. The solid national power stimulated the curiosity of people in the Han Dynasty for the neighboring area. Emperor Wu Di sent Zhang Qian as the en-voy to the Western Regions. The mission promoted the Understanding be-tween the Han empire and adjoining regions. The Silk Road that came into being became the main passage for cultural exchange between the east and the west. The Han Dynasty also saw new developments in China' s foreign rela-tions. The Han court sent missions to the countries such as Parthia (Iran), Tiao Zhi (Iraq), Da Qin (the Roman Empire), Tian Zhu (India), thus spreading its advanced culture |
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