Chinese History for White People - Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasty

[My husband has been working on a simplified Chinese History 101 as a part of our home school program for our kids. I’m impressed enough with his work that I thought it’d be a good idea to post it here for your enjoyment.]

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It is tradition for Chinese historians to summarize the entire timeline up until the period they are writing in, starting with the creation of the universe. Even CCTV's Official History Propaganda series does this, going from creation myth to early hominids. But for most of history, Chinese historians would open with something you could summarize like this:

“In the beginning, God created the universe. Either he is dead or has abandoned us, but he is not here any more.”

If you've ever been to China, you will immediately notice how undeniably true that is.

So let's start by orienting you to the Oriental timeline. I'm going to cover historical periods in a series of Dynasties, but I'm not going to include insignificant dynasties that mostly were just interregnum periods. So, the dynasties I'll discuss- compared to their western contemporaries are:

Xia —> Mythological

Shang —> Bronze Age

Zhou/Spring and Autumn —> Iron Age

Warring States/Qin —> Roman Republic

Han/Three Kingdoms — Late Roman Republic/Roman Empire

Wei-Jin Period —> Roman Empire

Sui/Tang —> Dark Ages

Five Dynasties Period —> England is Founded

Song —> Crusades

Yuan —> Black Death

Ming —> Renaissance

Qing —> Colonialism

Republic/CCP —> 20th Century

The other thing you should keep in mind is that I am writing BADLY WRITTEN HISTORY. This is not accurate in all details. It is a primer to familiarize yourself with the basics of Chinese history so you aren't completely lost when you try to learn more about it from better sources. Think of this as the mythological version of American History you were given in 3rd Grade except instead of being written as propaganda it's just written by a stupid guailao instead. I'll do my best to not outright fabricate anything, and I am consulting with actual well educated Chinese history enthusiasts. But I am going to misinterpret stuff, fall for propaganda, and otherwise get things wrong. Still, it's going to be way more accurate than most of what I've seen in the west.

And of course, when it comes to anything in history, there are going to be a lot of controversial events and takes. For the most part, I’ll just make my own judgement call about what’s the most likely to be the accurate version.¹

3 Sovereigns, 5 Emperors, and Xia Dynasty

The universe is a featureless primordial state, and then the Yin (black, cold, nurturing, calculating and logical female energy) and Yang (white, hot, destructive, passionate and noble male energy) coalesced into a cosmic egg for 18,000 years. Then awoke a hairy horned giant from within the egg named Pangu- the creator god- who cleaved the Yin from the Yang with his giant axe. He then pushed them apart for 18,000 years. The Yin became the Earth and the Yang became the Sky. As creation unfolded, 4 Holy Beasts came to his aid—the Black Turtle, the White Qilin (chimeric offspring of a dragon and an elk), the Red Phoenix, and the Blue Dragon. Then Pangu perished—his breath became the wind, his eyes the sun and moon, his blood the rivers, etc.

After this, a mother of gods emerged named Huaxu. Among the many gods she bore were Fuxi and Nuwa—siblings and married—who had human faces but snake bodies. It was they who created mankind out of yellow clay. Fuxi is believed to have authored the “I Ching”—a manual on divination and Chinese sorcery in general—and guided mankind for 197 years before his death. At some point a war broke out among the gods, in which Nuwa fought. After defeating a god chieftain, he felt such shame at losing to a woman that he committed suicide in a way which shattered the pillar of heaven and flooded the world. Nuwa sheltered humanity, patched the flood with 5 colored stones, but had to kill the celestial tortoise to use its leg bones to forge a new pillar.

Nuwa is never explicitly said to have died as far as I can tell, but her reign over mankind came to an end, and a new demigod ruled. The details here vary with each account of the myth. Some count Nuwa as the second of 3 sovereigns, others consider her reign equivalent to that of Fuxi. Others still list 3 demigods separate from Fuxi and Nuwa altogether. Most versions seem to agree that at least one of them had something to do with controlling fire and teaching mankind in its use.

Eventually even the demigods passed. From this there emerged two Emperors. There was Huangdi, the “Yellow Emperor”, who is accredited with inventing agriculture, while his wife invented silk cultivation. There's some argument today among Daoists over whether Huangdi is in fact the Celestial Emperor or whether that's a different guy. The other was the Yandi, the “Flame Emperor”. After 3 battles, the Yan surrendered to the Huang and intermarried, such that Han Chinese throughout history to this day call themselves “the descendants of Huang and Yan”. Huangdi established the tradition of abdication, in which nobody has a right to succession; rather, the Emperor directly chooses his successor. In future dynasties, there would be attempts to revise this mythology to fit with primogenitor succession. Since this is all firmly mythological, it's not like you can say either way what is true. But at least some versions have Huangdi choose his grandson Zhuanxu over his son and brothers. Zhuanxu's son was so incompetent he recorded him in history as “blockhead”, and he named his cousin Ku his successor. Ku passed it to his son via concubine, who had to fight the primogenitor usurper to become Emperor Yao.

It was during Yao's reign² that the Great Flood began, in which both the Yellow river and the Yangzi flooded nonstop for two generations. Yao appointed Count Gun to stop the flood, who stole self-perpetuating soil from the gods to build an immense dyke. It worked—until the dyke grew so tall that it collapsed, causing catastrophic destruction. The disaster brought Yao's reign to crisis. On the advice of great sages known as the Four Mountains, he abdicated his throne to Shun, a random fisherman³ (some sources insist he is in some way distantly a descendant of Huangdi but was living in obscurity for reasons untold). Shun initially refused, saying he was unqualified, but was eventually persuaded to take the throne provided he could intern under Yao for a bit. Confucius would later immortalize this fable as a morality tale for humility, piety, and caring more about the prosperity of the realm than your own glory. This was a morality tale of how even the King had the moral responsibility to pass his throne down to the most competent heir he could see. It is immoral to prioritise bloodline over ability.

Shun executed Gun (some sources say he committed suicide) for his hubris, but Gun begged his son Yu to continue his work and redeem his mistake. Yu would toil ceaselessly for 13 years, not once seeing his wife or child, as he knew countless lives hung on his task. He became China's mythological hero of hydraulic engineers (China judges you western savages for not having any hydraulic engineers in your mythology). He built irrigation canals that acted as sand traps and dredged the riverbeds knowing that dams would fail to stop the ever increasing flood. There is archaeological evidence of river fed sand traps from early China, so this isn't an anachronistic invention of mythologists; rather, it's an attempt to accredit engineers whose names were never recorded in written history.

Hydraulic engineers will be a recurring theme throughout Chinese history, likely because China's ability to control the waters was what allowed them to cultivate rice. Rice is an amazing crop, and one of the only grains with a higher calorie yield per acre than tuber crops. If you ascribe to the theories of J.C. Scott's “Against the Grain”, this meant coercion wasn't necessary to compel farmers to cultivate rice. Consequently, China never in its history had widespread chattel slavery, and slaves never made up large percentage of Chinese society. That said, rice is only cultivated in the Yangzi river valley. The Loess plains of the Yellow river are more suited to wheat and millet. So feudalism and serfdom nonetheless followed a similar course to Europe through China's bronze age.

Shun named Yu his successor as a reward for saving the world. “Yu the Great” thus established Xia dynasty on the territories of the Yellow River that he knew so well. For the most part, I'm going to skip over Xia dynasty as having nothing notable going on- keep in mind nothing here is actual history, just various mythological attributions about who invented musical instruments or what have you. Xia Dynasty is solidly before written history, and it’s considered mythological precisely because no archeological evidence has been discovered for its existence. So there’s very little concrete detail to cover here.

Xia dynasty would end with its 17th ruler, Emperor Jie. He's said to have sat on a throne of women, executed all who criticized him, constructed a lake of wine for his favorite concubine and had a massive drunken orgy in the lake which caused 3000 people to die, etc. King Tang of the Shang (a suzerain Kingdom under the Xia Empire) had enough, and overthrew the Xia.

Shang Dynasty

Like the Xia, there's not a great deal to say about Shang Dynasty. Many of the Emperors are mentioned by name only. Just like Xia, many of the stories involving Shang are mythological and magical in nature⁴.

We begin to see the earliest surviving writing inscribed on turtle shells, as well as standard bronze age artifacts. Archaeologists agree the dynasty existed, but the stories told about it were likely understood as fictions even by the ancient Chinese historians who first wrote them down. The period we know the most about is the fall of Shang Dynasty, because this tale was popularized by the Zhou Dynasty who overthrew them, and it follows more or less the same beats as Emperor Jie of the Xia.

The last Emperor of Shang was named Di Xin, but history records him as Emperor Zhou (a different tone than the Zhou dynasty, so not even a homophone by Chinese standards), which can basically be translated as “Emperor Shitstain”. Legend has it that he was already a petty, lustful, incompetent and corrupt Emperor even before a woman came and made everything worse. Once he met Daji, his favorite concubine, he abandoned all court affairs to indulge her, including yet another mass orgy in a pool of wine, as well as inventively sadistic executions for entertainment purposes. Later fictions would portray Daji as a Huli Jing (fox spirit) sent by the heavens to hasten the fall of Shang dynasty.

During this time, Jiang Ziya—after serving the Shang court for 20 years—escaped service by feigning madness. He then proceeded to go fishing without a hook for decades, claiming “the fish will come on their own when the time is right”. King Wen of Zhou, following a prophecy by his diviners, found him fishing, and convinced him to join his court. Jiang then wrote “The Six Secret Teachings” which is basically like “The Art of War”, and when Emperor Wen of Zhou passed (his title was given posthumously), Jiang advised his son Emperor Wu of Zhou that the time was finally right to overthrow the wicked Shang.

Modern archaeologists now believe the real reason there was a revolt against Di Xin is because he tried to end the practice of human sacrifice for the purpose of divination, which proved immensely unpopular. Human sacrifice would remain common practice until population loss from the wars of the Spring and Autumn era made it impractical.

Zhou Dynasty, the Spring & Autumn Period

Zhou Dynasty ostensibly lasted 800 years, but in fact really only ran around the standard 250 that every single Dynasty lasted, as one might expect from the Turchin cycle. The next 350 years is the Spring & Autumn Period, where the Dukes and Marquesses had de facto autonomy over their province in a pretty standard feudal aristocracy Europe knows and loves. The final 200 years is the Warring States period- which should be somewhat self-explanatory given a bunch of autonomous feudal states. Not that Spring & Autumn were perfectly peaceful—there were plenty of barbarians to slay, territory to expand into, intrigue to be had, failed coups and other squabbles. Despite it being contemporary to the Iron age, this era is known as the peak of Chinese bronze work, so presumably the bronze age collapse didn't affect them. Which makes sense, they probably weren't sourcing their tin from the same mines as the Mediterranean civilizations.

Zhou's main contribution to Chinese history is establishing the Mandate of Heaven, which established their divine right to rule as revocable and predicated on them bringing prosperity and justice to the people. The Mandate of Heaven is basically Ancient Chinese 2nd Amendment: if the government is corrupt, you have a moral duty to murder that government and become the new government. He who stabs the emperor becomes emperor, though if you stab him and are unpopular expect to very quickly be stabbed yourself and then get reincarnated as a dung beetle. This held true for all of China until the 20th Century, where they ostensibly became much more civilized and China's government was never corrupt or dangerously incompetent again after that thanks to democracy, peaceful resolution, and the support of the global community.

To properly explain the Mandate of Heaven, I need to explain Chinese Religion. As previously mentioned, god (Nuwa) has abandoned China. But Daoists believe the gods left a bunch of magical tools and artifacts that control various facets of reality. One of these is the immortality tree, which every 1000 years grows a peach which if eaten renders you immune to all disease and aging (but not mortal injury). The man who controls this tree is the Celestial Emperor (literally “Jade Emperor”)—the Emperor of “Heaven”, who governs the celestial bureaucracy of all the artifact users as they regulate the weather and cosmos and other aspects of reality. They reside on a magical floating island located over the shrine of Penglai near the city of Yantai in Shandong province (they even have videos of a floating island appearing just over the sea, but we understand it today to be a mirage).

But the Celestial Emperor—and everyone in his court—is just an immortal fallible human wizard, not a god in the western sense. For this reason high school teachers in America have a really hard time deciding whether Daoism is a religion or a philosophy. Daoists believe that if you meditate and practice wizard spells you can harness the power of the leylines (the flow of qi, fengshui and all that), and also if you make potions from special ingredients that happen to rest at the intersection of leylines, you can get enough mana to become an extremely powerful wizard, at which point reality tries to kill you with lightning and fire and if it fails you get to join the Celestial Bureaucracy. Also your moral integrity is just as important as your magical prowess, but there's no specific guidelines in Daoism as to what is actually moral—that's an exercise left to the reader. Vegetarianism, pacifism, abstinence, and refusing alcohol are all popular speculations, but a historical minority of Daoists think puritanism is evil and being super into meat and gambling is the way to spiritual enlightenment. Interestingly, women get treated as equals if they happen to practice wizardry, and Daoists uniquely do not have to bow to the (worldly) Emperor, even though the mortal Emperor is considered part of the Celestial Bureaucracy as their mortal affairs liaison officer.

Anyone who isn't making a career out of being a Daoist can petition the Celestial Bureaucracy by burning an offering and making a prayer. It's basically the same thing as you going to the DMV to fill out some forms and pay a $5 fee, and the court of immortal wizards will decide whether or not to approve of your request for new license plates. Mostly you pray for rain, and maybe they send a dragon to go spew rain over your fields (Chinese dragons breathe water, not fire, and are the canonical source of rain), maybe they don't. It's not up to you, you're just an uneducated peasant. However, if the Emperor—who is their minister of mortal affairs—isn't doing his job correctly, then the Heavens will let you know this through various omens. These omens include PLAGUES, FAMINE, WAR, CRIME, and INFRASTRUCTURE COLLAPSE. If you see these omens, this is the Celestial Bureaucracy letting you know it's time to grab your pitchforks, march on the capital, and die in great numbers to stab the Emperor. The heavens have given you this sacred duty, and the minister of death (King Yan) will take your bravery (or lack thereof) into account when deciding how you reincarnate.

“Reincarnate? Wait, I thought Chinese people burned hell money so their ancestors could pay rent in the afterlife!” Correct! Daoists explain that souls have anatomy- specifically 7 major soul organs. The part that experiences stuff reincarnates while the part that has all your memories becomes an ancestor spirit in (what Christian missionaries chose to translate as) hell, a pretty neutral place where you only have whatever you were buried with. Like, say, an army of terracotta soldiers. Except after 4000 years China has run out of burial space (no really, farmers keep digging up ancient Shang dynasty tombs filled with poisonous gas that kills their crops) so cremations are mandatory and we'll just pretend burning effigies of stuff is the same as burying it with you. If you're asking yourself why a collection of memories needs comfortable living conditions when it isn't experiencing anything, then you've brought great shame to your ancestors and should consider killing yourself in atonement (this gets prescribed a lot in China).

The bottom line is that this is a civilization that literally worships a slow, unresponsive DMV, and their sole clearly defined obligation to their god is to stab shitty politicians. If you look at the list of peasant revolts (prior to gunpowder) on Wikipedia, Europe and China had a similar number, but only a handful of European revolts were fully successful. In China, half managed to slay the Emperor, and half of those that did not got their request granted anyways. Even most of those that failed still did major damage to the regime they opposed.

Next to Qin Dynasty

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[I’ll be updating one Dynasty every other day until we get to the modern day. I know that there’s not much actual History in these early dynasties, but the later the timeline goes, the more information that exists. Sunday, when I talk about the Warring States period and Qin Dynasty, we’ll be going into a lot more historical detail. I hope you like this series!]

1. Moly here speaking: Obviously, if you find any of this interesting and want it expanded on, let me know, and I’ll see what I can dig up.

2. If you’re familiar with the tale of Hou Yi, who shot down the 10 suns, or Chang’e and the moon festival—that is also said to have occurred during Yao’s reign.

3. Pay attention every time someone goes fishing in Chinese history. It’s going to become a pattern that any man who goes fishing is a badass.

4. Such as the tale of Nezha—a boy who was executed by his father for slaying the Dragon King’s son with a pair of divine rocket skates. The heavens took pity on him and resurrected him as a lotus golem, only for him to seek revenge on his dad for desecrating his grave. This caused the heavens to give his father a magical handheld pagoda that works more or less like a pokeball so he could control his son.