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Essay: China’s Cultural History and The Great Wall of China

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  • Published: 1 April 2019*
  • Last Modified: 23 July 2024
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  • Words: 1,475 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 6 (approx)

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Paste your essay in here…China is the most ancient nation in history and is considered the leading cultural focal point of East Asia. China history thrives on ethics and morals, a strong government, efficient economy, and a systematic environment. In addition, China throughout its history has become a powerful cultural civilization.  China has battled and faced conflict in developing a more up to date cultural existence in the world in comparison to other countries.  China has been trying to revolutionize its cultural values in today’s modern age. Confucius a great philosopher believe self-discipline and proper motivation is key to developing a humble mind. Berling, J. (n.d.)  Although Confucius was a great teacher of self-preservation. Confucius understood that China would eventually become unstable because of indifferences amongst other countries.  

China throughout its history has change its cultural landscape and economic principles.  Confucius influence and determination, led too what is known as Confucianism which means traditional Chinese culture. However China, during the course of its history, has generated an imbalance in its cultural identity which created unwanted cultural progress amongst its people. Additionally, China created a Communist government that created new laws and boundaries which lead to a somewhat unbalance cultural society and activities that created vague understanding on how cultural principles and governing ideologies supposed to be implemented. In general, cultures intend to become accustomed to their cultural core surroundings.  The history of China’s unrighteousness towards its people goes against all Confucian's ideologies.

The development of a communist government can affect the widespread cultural values that are supposed to create a new form of modernization. All cultures must be part of a selected form of needs, knowledge, and modern considerations.  In the beginning of the 20th Century, China's modernization of its cultural design left an indication that the values of the Chinese culture will change overtime. Economic growth, expansion, policy-making, self-governing, worldwide education system, resources and quick contact with various nations create a more modern culture.

These elements such as Economic growth etc. has been develop over into Chinese civilization which became elements of the Chinese cultural identity, thus making Chinese cultural identity both traditional and modernized. Moreover, China has without a doubt played a vital part in world history. China is one of the largest countries in the world, and throughout history, it has constantly been difficult to conquer and even more difficult to unify a whole entire cultural civilization.   The reason why it was hard unify China as whole was for the simple fact that China is divided into three sections of rivers, the Xia, the Haung and the Chang. In addition, there was large rainfall which caused considerable amount of flooding. The flooding would occur all the time and in response to this the overflow of water would wipe out the soil utilized for crop raising.

The flooding also destroyed towns and villages. The flooding happen during of the Shang Dynasty 1766-1027 B.C China is also comprised of mountains that are very dry, and on the northwest region of China, there is a large, cold desert named the Gobi.  In spite of this, the northwest area of China was considered an unlivable area.  Many areas of China were preserved and isolated.  China’s cultural history does not really consist of leaders, instead China had dynasties.  The first one was the Xia dynasty which occurred during 2,000 B.C to 1,500 B.C. and was first known government to occur during that time period.  In 1,500 B.C., the Xia emperors were conquered by the Shang dynasty. Through the course of the Shang dynasty, Chinese culture began to develop in meaningful aspects of life.  

This consisted of creating graceful art figures, spiritual things, and making weapons out of bronze.  Although the Shang dynasty lasted for many centuries, the majority of the emperors were mainly violent rulers, who tortured many innocent people.  Emperors were very rich and were treated really well in comparison to the local villagers who were extremely poor. However, emperors was not able to live without the local villagers because the villages made their food.  The emperors of Shang dynasty were so ruthless they will not only sacrifice animals for spiritual ceremonies, but would also have humans sacrificed.

The human sacrificing cause the people to drive the Shang dynasty out of because cultural indifferences and the way local villagers were treated.  Once the Shang dynasty was out of play the Wu Wang dynasty began its rule from 1100 B.C. to 256 B.C. Wu Wang dynasty was in power longer than all the other dynasties in the history of china. Dowling, M (2016)   In addition, the Great Wall of China was built in midst of those dynasties. The Great Wall of China was a stone reinforced position that was constructed and preserved and reconstructed for many centuries.  In addition there was four major walls built from the ages of 208 BC from 1620.  Qin Shi Huang was the first Emperor of China to build the first wall, however majority of the wall is no longer in place.  Emperors who also built walls were: 1). the Qin Dynasty 208 B.C, 2).

Han Dynasty 1st century BC 1138 – 1198 and 3). Hongwu Emperor & Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty from 1368-1620.  In light of this, the greater part of the wall was created during peace time this generates a convincing argument that the wall was made as a borderline rather than defense for war. A separate viewpoint was the manual workers who help build wall.  Looking at historical data the manual workers consisted of local people, criminals and soldiers. The main part of the wall was built by the large majority of the people surrounding villages and towns including the soldiers.  The wall continue to be reconstructed to help keep any nearby enemies out. Millions of people died building The Great Wall of China. Even though people died building it the wall is still a dominant part of China’s history. Szczepanki, K (2017)

The great wall was built to fight against enemies during those times and to serve as a cautionary defense tactic to those who felt like they could conquer the land.  I believe the wall was built during peace time and was used a borderline. This is the same like the borderline between Mexico and the US kind of controlling who comes in and out. In our modern day we have borderlines that are seen and some that are not seen sort of like the Great Wall of China. A person cannot talk about China cultural history without talking about the Great Wall of China.  The wall is well known and part of China large and enrich culture that even a movie was made about it.

Furthermore, Chinese main cultural aspects consist of marriage, music, fashion, language, spiritual beliefs, food and even ethical behaviors as the main diverse characteristic amongst people of other cultures.  In the Chinese culture religion is highly used to separate difference cultures. Chinese culture has many difference religion that they go by. This consist of a community with five known religions. The Chinese communist party who are in power is an freethinking governmental party that for a long period of time has preserved its independence as an freethinking party in other word (atheistic), nonetheless, with the changes in conditions and the diversified nature, Chinese higher powers are slowly permitting other religions to practiced their spiritual beliefs.

The five religions that are used in China are Buddhism, Catholicism Islam Protestantism and Taoism. Mainly about 25 percent of the population practiced Confucianism and Taoism.  Looking at the standpoint of language, there are seven dialects used by the Chinese with all exhibiting a difference way of speaking and pronunciations.  Mandarin, Wu, Yue, Xiang, Man, Hakka and Gan are all the dialects used in China. The Chinese dialect that is used the most is Mandarin about 72 percent of the population uses this language in China. 9 percent of the population also uses Wu dialect. Yue dialect also known as Cantonese and the Xiang dialect consist of about five percent. Min, Hakka, and Gan dialect make up about 10 percent of the Chinese Languages. Zimmermann, K (2015)

The disparities in the Chinese dialects makes the language seem as a language that are different its own right which creates a more diverse culture. Looking at the similarities at other languages, the logical changes amongst the Chinese dialects could be far more than the similarities linking the French and Italic dialects. Chinese culture is filled with sculptures and paintings which are largely focused on describing the physical aspects of their spiritual figures, and the most common in this case is the Buddhist spiritual figure. Lastly, China has a much enriched culture that has been around for a very long time yet China does stands out as one of the premiere countries of the World and undoubtedly is one of the strongest nation to date.

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