Library:An Outline History of China

An Outline History of China
Author	Bai Shouyi, Fang Linggui, Gong Shuduo, Yang Zhao, Zhu Zhongyu
First published	1982 Beijing
Type	Book
PDF	First Edition Second Edition

Introduction

A Land of 9,600,000 Square Kilometers

The People’s Republic of China is situated in East Asia, on the western shores of the Pacific Ocean. Its borders reach from the central line of the main navigation channel of the Heilongjiang (Heilungkiang) River near Mohe in the north to the Zengmu Reef in the Nansha Archipelago in the south, and from the Pamirs in the west to the confluence of the Heilong¬ jiang and the Wusuli (Ussuri) River in the east. The total area is about 9.6 million square kilometres, making China one of the largest countries in land size in the world. With a con¬ tinental land boundary of more than 20,000 kilometres, China adjoins Korea in the east, the People’s Republic of Mongolia in the north, the U.S.S.R. in the northeast and the northwest, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan in the west and southwest, and Burma, Laos and Viet Nam in the south. The continental coastline is more than 18,000 kilo¬ metres long, and looks across the seas towards Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. The primary administrative divisions in China today are the three municipalities directly under the central govern¬ ment, the twenty-two provinces and the five autonomous re¬ gions (Table I). The capital of China is Beijing.

The Three Municipalities Directly Under the Central Government:

• Beijing
• Shanghai
• Tianjin

The Twenty-two Provinces:

• North: Hebei Shanxi
• Northeast: Liaoning Jilin Heilongjiang
• Northwest: Shaanxi Gansu Qinghai
• East Shandong: Jiangsu Zhejiang Anhui
• Southeast: Fujian Taiwan
• Southwest: Sichuan Guizhou
• Central South: Henan Hubei
• South: Jiangxi Yunnan Hunan Guangdong

The Five Autonomous Regions

• Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (north)
• Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (north)
• Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (northwest)
• Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (south)
• Tibet Autonomous Region (southwest)

Underneath the provinces and autonomous regions are cities, autonomous prefectures, counties, autonomous counties and other divisions. The municipalities directly under the central government are subdivided into urban districts and suburban counties. China has many mountain ranges, most of the major ones being located in the western regions. Running west-east are the Altay, Tianshan, Kunlun, Qilian, Karakdrum, Gangdise, Himalaya, Yinshan, Qinling and Nanling mountains. Running north-south is the Hengduan Range, which is formed from the Daxue, Nushan and Gaoligong mountains lying side by side from east to west. In the eastern part of the country are mountain ranges running from the northeast to the southwest: to the west are the Greater Hinggan Range, the Taihang Mountains, and the Wushan, Wuling, Dalou and Xuefeng ranges; to the east are the Changbai Mountains and the Liao¬ dong, Shandong and Minzhe highlands. These mountain ranges and highlands determine the basic features of China’s topography. The Chinese terrain varies conspicuously in elevation and consists of three tiers descending from west to east. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the highest and largest plateau on earth, is commonly known as “the roof of the world”. To the north it is bounded by the northern branch of the Kunlun and Qilian mountain ranges and to the south and west by the Karakorum, Himalaya and Hengduan mountain ranges. Its average elevation is more than 4,000 metres above sea level. Mount Qomolangma in the Himalaya Mountains, located on the border between China and Nepal, is the world’s highest peak, with an elevation of 8,848.13 metres. The Qaidam (Tsaidam) Basin northeast of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is somewhat lower even though it has an elevation of almost 3,000 metres. This area forms the highest tier in China’s topography. The northern and eastern faces of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau descend to plateaus and basins mostly between 1,000 and 2,000 metres above sea level.

They include the Yunnan-Guizhou

Plateau; the loess plateau which takes in central and eastern Gansu, eastern and southern Ningxia, northern Shaanxi, the whole province of Shanxi and western Henan; the Inner Mongolia Plateau; the Sichuan Basin; the Tarim Basin and the Junggar Basin in Xinjiang. These plateaus and basins form the second tier. East of the Greater Hinggan Range and the Xuefeng Range are hilly country with an elevation of less than 1,000 metres and plains of less than 200 metres. The three main plains of China, the Northeast Plain, the North China Plain and the Lower and Middle Changjiang (Yangtze River) Plain are all in this area. The coastal plains have an elevation of less than 50 metres above sea level. These hills and plains form the third tier in the Chinese terrain.

�4

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

Most Chinese rivers flow from west to east and empty into the Pacific Ocean. The major rivers all flow east along most of their courses, such as the Changjiang (Yangtze River), Huanghe (Yellow River), Heilongjiang, Zhujiang (Pearl River), Songhuajiang (Sungari River), Liaohe, Haihe and Huaihe. (Jiang and he are both Chinese words for medium-sized and large rivers.) Some of the south-flowing rivers, such as the Yarlung Zangbu Jiang (the Yalutsangpo or Brahmaputra) River and Nujiang (the Salween River), pass through India, Bangladesh and Burma to empty into the Indian Ocean; others, such as the Lancangjiang, the Mekong River and Yuanjiang, flow through Burma, Laos, Thailand, Kampuchea and Viet Nam into the Pacific Ocean. The Ertixhe (the Kara-Irtysh River) flows north from Xinjiang into the U.S.S.R.

There

are also inland rivers with no ocean outlet, such as the Tarimhe, Qaidamhe and Shulehe; these are mostly confined to Northwest and West China. The longest river in China is the Changjiang at 6,300 kilometres, which passes through Qinghai,

Sichuan,

Tibet,

Yunnan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shang¬ hai, with tributaries flowing through several other provinces including Guizhou, Shaanxi, Gansu and Henan. Huanghe, which passes through Qinghai,

Next is the

Sichuan,

Gansu,

Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan and Shan¬ dong. The part of the Heilongjiang which lies within Chinese territory and forms the border between China and the U.S.S.R. has a drainage basin which covers the greater part of the northeastern provinces.

The Tarim which has few tributaries

has a relatively small drainage basin.

The Zhujiang, originat¬

ing in the Nanpanjiang in the upper reaches', of the Xijiang (Sikiang or West River), passes through Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Guangdong.

The Songhuajiang in the northeast

has a relatively large drainage basin, and the drainage basins of the Yarlung Zangbu Jiang (within China) and the Haihe are both more than 200,000 square kilometres.

�CHAPTER I

TABLE

5

II

The Longest Rivers in China Name

Length

Drainage basin

Changjiang (Yangtze River)

6,300 km

1,800,000 km2

5,464 km

750,000 km2

Huanghe (Yellow River) Heilongjiang (Heilungkiang or Amur River)

2,965 km*

Tarimhe (Tarim River)

2,179 km

198,000 km2

2,129 km

425,700 km2

1,840 km

545,600 km2

Zhujiang (Pearl River) Songhuajiang (Sungari River)

Lakes of all sizes are scattered throughout China but are more concentrated on the Lower and Middle Changjiang Plain and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The largest fresh water lakes are the Poyang in Jiangxi, the Dongting in Hunan, the Hongze in western Jiangsu and Taihu in southern Jiangsu. The most important of the salt lakes are the Qinghai Lake (Koko Nor) in Qinghai and the Lop Nur (Lob Nor) in Xinjiang; the latter covers an area of more than 2,500 square kilometres but is not fixed either in area or shape. Lake Xingkai (Hsingkai) is a fresh water lake which straddles the Sino-Soviet border.

• Length within China and along the Sino-Soviet border.

�OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

TABLE

III

The Largest Lakes in China Name

Qinghai Lake (Koko Nor) Poyang Lake Dongting Lake (Tungting Lake) Hongze Lake (Hungtse Lake) Taihu Lop Nur (Lob Nor or Lop Nor) Lake Xingkai* (Lake Hsingkai or Hanka) 1

Area

Type

salt fresh

more than 4,400 km2 3,976 km2

fresh

3,915 km2

fresh fresh

3,780 km2 more than 2,200 km2

salt

more than 2,500 km2

fresh

4,380 km2

In addition to the natural rivers and lakes, there are also many canals in China. The most famous is the Grand Canal between Beijing and Hangzhou (Hangchou), 1,782 kilometres in length, which passes through the city of Tianjin and four provinces (Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang) and links up with five major rivers: the Haihe, Huanghe, Huaihe, Changjiang and Qiantangjiang (Chientang River). The continent of China faces east and south towards the seas. In the east, the most northerly sea is known as Bohai (Po Hai): the Liaodong peninsula and the Shandong peninsula confront each other forming a natural gateway known as the Bohai straits. Southeast of Bohai is the Huanghai (Yellow Sea), south of the mouth of the Changjiang is Donghai (East China Sea), and south of the Taiwan Straits is Nanhai (South China Sea). Bohai is an inland sea of China while the other three are all marginal seas of the Pacific. Morg. than 5,000 islands are scattered across the seas, with half of them located in Donghai, forming a total area of about 80,000 square kilo* Belongs in part to China, in part to the U.S.S.R.

�CHAPTER I

7

metres. The largest island is Taiwan (35,700 square km), followed by Hainan Island (over 34,000 square km) and Chongming Island (1,083 square km). Also well known are the Miaodao Archipelago at the entrance to the Bohai, the Zhoushan (Choushan or Chusan) Archipelago beyond the mouth of the Qiantangjiang, and the Penghu Islands (Pescadores) in the Taiwan Straits. The most southerly islands are the coral reefs or atolls known as the Dongsha (Tungsha), Xisha (Sisha), Zhongsha (Chungsha) and Nansha archipelagos. These Nanhai archipelagos are composed of varying numbers of islets, sandbars and reefs totalling more than 170; the Nansha Archipelago consists of close to a hundred of them, and the Xisha comes next with about thirty. Many seaports are strung out along China’s lengthy and winding coastline. The river estuary ports of Tianjin, Shang¬ hai and Guangzhou-Huangpu (Canton-Whampoa) are im¬ portant centres for foreign trade and economic exchange within China. The port of Tianjin stands on the western shores of Bohai Bay at the lower reaches of the Haihe; the port of Shanghai stands at the confluence of the Changjiang, Huangpujiang (Whangpoo River) and Wusongjiang (Woosung River); the ports of Guangzhou-Huangpu stand at the Zhujiang delta which is the confluence of the lower reaches of the Dong jiang, Beijiang and Xijiang (the East, North and West rivers). The bay ports of Dalian (Dairen) on the Liaodong peninsula, Qing¬ dao (Tsingtao) on the Shandong peninsula, Jilong (Keelung) in Taiwan and Zhanjiang (Chankiang) on the Leizhou (Leichow) peninsula all have good natural harbours and are key to sea and land communications. Due to the monsoon climate created by the difference in temperature between continent and ocean, plus the vastness of the land and the complexity of the terrain, there are con¬ siderable variations in air temperature and rainfall in different parts of China, and a wide variety of climates. In summer, the temperature throughout China is generally rather high. The average temperature in July is above 20°C in Heilongjiang,

�OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

8

15°C in Lhasa and 28°C in Hangzhou. The average tempera¬ ture in winter is about minus 30°C in the most northerly part of Heilongjiang but above 10°C in places like Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian, while in Hainan it can go as high as 15°C or more. When the north is a frozen land, coconut groves flourish in the south. The vastness of the land, the complexity of the terrain and the variation in climate, together with the related regional differences in natural characteristics, combine to make China’s natural

resources

extremely

rich

and

multifarious.

The

fertile plains produce cereal crops such as wheat, rice, maize, millet, sorghum (gaoliang) and soybean, and cash crops such as cotton, hemp, sugar and oil-bearing plants. The vast mountain areas produce, in addition to foodstuffs, tea, tea oil, tung oil, silk, wax and medicinal materials.

Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang,

Qinghai and Tibet have large areas of prairie land providing rich pastures for raising cattle, sheep, horses and camels, in¬ cluding many excellent breeds.

The forests are mostly con¬

centrated in the northeast and southwest, and are also to be found in Fujian and the eastern part of Taiwan.

The forests

are complex with many different types of plants:

there are

more than 2,800 species of trees alone, of which almost 1,000 provide timber of considerable economic value.

The fauna

that live wild in every region throughout China include about 1,150 bird species, more than 400 species of mammals, and over 420 species of reptiles and amphibians, many of them rare.

China is very rich in water resources.

According to

preliminary estimates, the total volume of flow of Chinese rivers is 2,700,000 million cubic metres, with reserves of 580 million kilowatts of hydro-electric power. All the major rivers are open to navigation, with a total of about 160,0.00 kilome¬ tres of navigable waters. Rich reserves of oil, coal and iron are found in various regions of the country. Non-ferrous minerals such as copper, aluminium, tungsten, antimony, molybdenum, tin, manganese, lead, zinc and mercury, along

�m

« as

t*

mm

■?

The Lake of Stars, the source of the Huanghe River, as seen from a distance.

�Mount Tomur of the Tianshan Mountains.

The Huanghe River skirts the southern frihge of the Tengger Desert as it flojys to Zhongwei County, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. In the middle of the river is a newly built bifurcation dam across the Meili Canal dug in the Han Dynasty.

�Grazing sheep in the foothills of the Yinshan Mountains, Inner Mongolia.

�A country scene in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefec¬ ture, Yunnan Province.

�The Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region.

�A landscape in the Miaoling Moun¬ tains, southern Guizhou Province.

�Riyuetan Lake on a branch stream of the Zhuoshuixi River in the central part of Taiwan Island.

Chengyang Bridge in the Sanjiang Dong Autono¬ mous County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

�Upper: An itinerant song and dance troupe in Inner Mongolia on one of its rounds. Lower right: Song of the Fisher¬ men in the Liangshan Mountains, a dance of the Yi people. Lower left: Drum dance of the Korean nationality.

�CHAPTER I

9

with oil shale, phosphorus, sulphur, magnesite, salt, gypsum and so on are also widely distributed.

Fifty-five Nationalities and a Population of Nearly 1,000,000,000

The People’s Republic of China is a unitary multi-ethnic state, comprising the Han people and over fifty ethnic minori¬ ties. The Han people are the most numerous and live all over the country; their highest concentrations are in the Huanghe, Changjiang and Zhujiang river basins and on the Songhuajiang-Liaohe Plain in the north-east, occupying forty to fifty per cent of the total area of China. According to 1978 statistics, the ethnic minorities have a total population of 55.8 million, which is believed to have increased by now. They inhabit fifty to sixty per cent of the country’s total area. TABLE

IV

China’s Ethnic Minorities (Based on 1978 Statistics) Region

Name

Northeast Manchu

Widely distributed, con¬ centrated in Liaoning Mainly in Jilin, Heilong¬ jiang, Liaoning

Korean Daur Ewenki Oroqen Hezhen North Mongolian

/

)

Mainly in Heilongjiang

Mainly in Inner Mongolia, also in Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Qinghai, Gansu and Xinjiang

Population

2,650,000 1,680,000 78,000 13,000 3,200 800

2,660,000

�OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

TABLE

Region

Name

Northwest Uygur Kazak Kirgiz Xibe Tajik Ozbek Tartar Russian Hui

Dongxiang Yugur Bonan Tu Salar Southwest Tibetan Lhoba Moinba Yi

Miao

Bouyei

IV (cont.) Population

/

5,480,000 800,000 97,000 44,000 22,000 7,500 2,900 600

Widely distributed, but mostly in Ningxia and Gansu; also in Shandong, Yunnan, Qinghai, Hebei, Henan, etc. | Mainly in Gansu r ' Mainly in Qinghai | J

6,490,000 190,000 8,800 6,800 120,000 56,000

\

) In or mainly in Xinjiang

Tibet, Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, etc. \ In Tibet, but mostly in Moinyii and Lhoyu regions ) now occupied by India Over one million in Sichuan and over two million in Yunnan More than half in Guizhou, the rest in Hunan, Yunnan, etc. Guizhou

3,450,000 Estimated at 200,000 Estimated at 40,000

^ 4,850,000

3,920,000 1,720,000

�CHAPTER I

11

Table IV (cont.) Name

Dong Bai

Region

Population

Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi Mostly in Yunnan; small

1,110,000

numbers in Sichuan and Guizhou Hani Dai Lisu Lahu Va Jingpo Blang Achang Pumi Nu Jino Benglong Drung Naxi Shui Gelo Qiang

/

1,050,000 960,000 760,000 470,000 270,000 260,000 83,000 52,000 18,000 22,000 19,000 10,000 10,000 4,100

Mostly in Yunnan, also in Sichuan and Tibet ) Mostly in Guizhou, a small number in Guangxi J Sichuan

230,000 230,000 . 73,000 85,000

/

\

)

In or mainly in Yunnan

South and Central-south Mostly in Guangxi, small Zhuang numbers in Yunnan, Hunan, Guangdong, etc. In Guangxi and also in Hunan, Yao Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou, Jiangxi, etc. Hunan and Hubei Tujia Guangdong Li Taiwan Gaoshan

12,090,000

1,240,000 770,000 680,000 Estimated at 300,000

�OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

12 Name

Region

She

In Fujian and Zhejiang, also in Guangdong, Anhui, etc.

Mulam Maonan Jing

i l j

Guangxi

Population

330,000 73,000 31,000 5,400

Apart from the fifty-five ethnic minorities listed in the above table, there are still some groups whose ethnic status remains unclear. The language and script of the Han nationality are the most widely used in China, and are commonly known as the Chinese language and script. Each of the other nationalities, with the exception of the Hui which uses Chinese, has its own language. The language of the She is very close to Chinese. Increasing numbers of people among the ethnic minorities are using Chinese in addition to their own languages. Many of them have no script of their own and use either the Chinese script or the script of a related nationality. The Chinese (Han) language belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family. It is often said to be monosyllabic because the smallest meaningful units of speech generally consist of one syllable each. However, very many words of the modern language are polysyllabic compounds of two or more of the one-syllable basic units. Chinese is also described as a tonal language, which means that a syllable generally is pronounced with a characteristic tone (even, rising, falling-rising or falling). On the whole, Chinese lacks the inflections (suffixes, prefixes etc.) that are characteristic of many other languages. These are partly replaced by grammatical “particles”, and the parts of speech in a sentence are chiefly determined by the word order. Over the vast area throughout which the Chinese language is spoken, there are many different dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible. In the last few decades a standard language has gradually been formed, based on the language of the north, with the Beijing pronunciation as the norm and

�CHAPTER 1

13

a grammar modelled on modern vernacular writing. This language is called putonghua and is gradually being populariz¬ ed. It will eventually become the form of spoken and written Chinese in universal use. The Han script consists of pictographs and ideographs com¬ monly known as Chinese characters, some of which go back more than three thousand years. The earliest characters con¬ sisted of a single pictographic or ideographic element: the characters 0 and M were, as they still are, pictographs for the sun and the moon, while JL(_h ) and T* (T) conveyed the meaning of “upper” and “lower” in terms of the relative posi¬ tion of the vertical stroke to the horizontal. The structure of such characters was relatively primitive and simple. A second step was taken when two or more simple characters were com¬ bined to form a more complex character to express a new meaning. For example, the characters 0 and A were com¬ bined to form meaning “bright”, and the character A (man) with the character A (spear) forms the character meaning “defend”. Still later a third type of character was developed, consisting of one element which stood for the mean¬ ing and another for the pronunciation, e.g.: 7j fang:

fragrance

fang: ■pfj fang:

house visit

fang:

fang: fang: U fang:

francium hinder pleasure boat

set down

The character A fang, which means direction, only indicates the pronunciation and does not contribute anything to the meaning; the other element indicates the meaning. Over a long period of time, Chinese characters have undergone very great changes in appearance, and many new characters have been invented, but the principles for the formation of new characters have persisted. In the development of Chinese culture, the Chinese or Han script has played a very great role in facilitating communication between different regions in China and strengthening the unity of the country. But because

�14

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

each character has its own separate form, the Chinese script is much more difficult to learn, write and print than an alpha¬ betic script. For this reason, the Chinese government has set up a committee for the reform of the Chinese script to study and carry out gradual reforms. Twenty-eight of the languages of China’s ethnic minorities belong to the Sino-Tibetan family, including Tibetan, Yi, Zhuang, Bouyei, Dai, Miao and Yao. Another eighteen belong to the Altaic family, including Uygur, Kazak, Mongolian, Manchu and Korean. Va, Blang and Benglong belong to the Austroasiatic family, Gaoshan to the Austronesian family, and Tajik and Russian to the Indo-European family. Some people claim that the Jing language belongs to the Austroasiatic family, but this has not been fully established. Some national minorities, such as the Mongolians, Tibetans, Uygurs, Kazaks, Koreans, Xibes and Dais, have their own alphabetic scripts. The Tibetan script has a history of more than 1,300 years. The Uygurs and Mongolians have used dif¬ ferent alphabetic scripts over periods of more than a thousand years and seven or eight hundred years respectively. The Yi language has a syllabic script which also has a history of over a thousand years.

The Naxi script consists of two elements,

ideographs and a syllabary, and the ideographs go back more than a thousand years. Ethnic minorities which had no script or incomplete scripts have created or improved their scripts in recent years. Ten of them have devised their phonetic alphabets, and nine of these are being tried out. Both in economic and cultural life many of the nationali¬ ties have much in common with each other, yet each has its distinctive characteristics. Han people have had a very long history of agricultural production, and their handicrafts also reached a tairly high level at an early stage. Their inventions, such as printing, the compass, gunpowder and the manufacture of porcelain, tea, silk and paper, have long been famous throughout the world. Han culture is extremely rich in ancient books and records,

�CHAPTER I

15

literature and history. Many great thinkers, scientists, in¬ ventors, statesmen, military strategists, writers and artists have appeared in the course of Chinese history, and great rev¬ olutionary movements have taken place. The Han people have made a very great contribution to the development of Chinese society. Of the twenty-one ethnic minorities that live in North Chi¬ na, twelve are mainly engaged in agriculture, including the Manchus, Koreans, Huis and Uygurs. Among them the Tus, Xibes and Yugurs turned from stock-breeding or fishing and hunting to agriculture only during the last few centuries. The achievements of the Koreans in rice paddy cultivation and im¬ provement are well known. The Uygurs are skilled in estab¬ lishing green oases on basin peripheries and at constructing karez (an irrigation system of wells connected by underground channels), demonstrating their mastery of agricultural pro¬ duction. The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was one of the first area in China where cotton was planted. The Kazak, Kirgiz and Tajik minorities are mainly engaged in stockbreeding. The Kazak regions are famous for their livestock. Agricultural crops flourish in the Ili Basin, which is known as “the granary of northern Xinjiang”. The Mongolians on the northern plateau are mainly engaged in stock-breeding, while those on the Hetao Plain at the Yellow River Bend are mainly engaged in agriculture. The Mongolians raise famous breeds of horses, oxen, cows, sheep and camels.

The Hezhens

are mainly hunters and fishers, and the Oroqens are mainly hunters, but both also practise some agriculture. The Ozbeks and Tartars are for the most part engaged in commerce, but a few also practise agriculture. Of the thirty-four ethnic minorities in the south, the majority are chiefly engaged in agriculture, some in combina¬ tion with stock-breeding, hunting and fishing, or forestry. The Tibetans practise both stock-breeding and agriculture, the former on the extensive, high grasslands and the latter in the river valleys. The large and long-haired yak is unique to the

�OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

16

Tibetan highlands. The Jings are the only minority which chiefly subsists on fishing, with some agriculture as well. Most of the ethnic minorities have a rich cultural tradition embracing song, dance, oral literature and art. The colourful dances of the Uygurs, Kazaks, Mongolians and Koreans are particularly well known. The Uygurs, Mongolians, Huis, Manchus, Tibetans, Bais and Dais all possess substantial bodies of literature and art as well as historical and technological works and religious classics. Modern industry began in China around the middle of the nineteenth century. After the founding of the People’s Repub¬ lic in 1D49, an all-round development of the national economy got underway, and all kinds of industries were established. At the same time education and cultural activities were im¬ proved and popularized.

The economic and cultural life of

each ethnic group took on a new look. Ethnic minorities which had lingered in a backward condition for a long period achieved a rapid development both economically and culturally, and ex¬ hibited striking changes. In Chinese history no one ethnic group has developed in isolation from the others. Each has contributed to the creation of Chinese history and each shares the destiny of the nation as a whole.

In the protracted struggle against feudalism, colo¬

nialism and imperialism, each group has battled side by side with the others.

In every aspect, economic, political and cul¬

tural, each group absorbs nourishment from its fraternal groups for its own enrichment, and each language is under the con¬ stant influence of the fraternal tongues.

Even the formation

and development of each ethnic group is a constant process of association, separation and fusion, a constant process of emigra¬ tion and immigration between different groups. j\fter the founding of the People’s Republic, a policy of equality and unity between its ethnic groups was put into effect, autono¬ mous areas for minorities living in compact communities were established, the languages and customs of the minorities were

�CHAPTER I

17

respected, and the state helped each of them to develop its economy and culture. Unprecedented unity has been achieved.

1,700,000 Years and 3,600 Years

Human life existed in many parts of China in remote antiq¬ uity, leaving behind traces of primitive society. The earliest man discovered in China is Yuanmou Man, who lived roughly 1,700,000 years ago. The famous Peking Man lived approxi¬ mately 400,000 to 500,000 years ago. The gradual formation of a matriarchal commune took place approximately 40,000 or 50,000 years ago, and the patriarchal commune appeared more than 5,000 years ago. Because of low productivity, exploitation did not appear in primitive society; it was a society of communal production and consumption, and the productive relations were based on the public ownership of the means of production. Primitive socie¬ ty was followed by slave society, in which the relations of pro¬ duction were based on the slave-owners possessing both the means of production and the productive workers, the slaves. It was in slave society that exploitation, classes and the state ap¬ peared for the first time. We still lack concrete evidence to determine when slave society came into being in China. According to traditional ideas, the first dynasty in Chinese his¬ tory was the Xia, which ruled for more than four hundred years. Its activities were centred around the juncture of mod¬ ern Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan. It is generally thought that this dynasty lasted roughly from the 21st century to the 16th century B.C. and saw the beginning of slave society in China. Archaeologists are still trying to find out the truth about the Xia, which is now known to exist only in traditional legend. The first dynasty which can be traced from archaeological discoveries and from records corroborated by these discoveries was the Shang, having begun some 3,600 years ago when, ac¬ cording to our present knowledge, recorded history started in

�OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

18

China. By the Shang, which lasted roughly from the 16th cen¬ tury to the 11th century B.C., China had entered the stage of slave society. The Western Zhou Dynasty, which succeeded the Shang in the 11th century B.C., was also based on the slave system. The centre of Shang activity was initially around Shangqiu in the southeast of modern Henan, but after repeat¬ ed moves the rulers finally settled around Anyang in modern Henan.

The Zhou capital, Hao, was on the western outskirts

of modern Xi’an in Shaanxi.

The centre of Zhou activity was

the region around the lower reaches of two rivers, the Jinghe and Weihe.

In addition, the Zhou had an eastern capital at

Luoyi, on the west bank of the Luoshui (present-day Luohe) near modern Luoyang in Henan, which formed another centre of activity around the lower reaches of the Yihe and Luoshui. The Jing-Wei plain and the Yi-Luo plain were both well suit¬ ed for agriculture, with fertile soil, a mild climate and relative¬ ly adequate rainfall. abundant there.

Other natural resources were also fairly

These two regions subsequently experienced

several periods of prosperity and decline, but they enjoyed an important political position up until the end of the 9th cen¬ tury.

Considerable bodies of cultural relics, legends and rec¬

ords have also been preserved in other regions within China. The period from 770 to 221 B.C. is known in traditional history as the early Eastern Zhou, Spring and Autumn, and Warring States periods. It was a time when slave society was gradually disintegrating and feudal society taking shape, a period of transition from slave to feudal society. The relations of production in feudal society were the landlords’ ownership of the means of production and their partial ownership of the productive workers. In addition, there was an individual econ¬ omy where peasants and artisans owned tools and other means of production on the basis of their own labour. But' these in¬ dividual labourers were the objects of landlord control and exploitation. The landlords and peasants were the two antag¬ onistic classes in feudal society, although the different ranks

�CHAPTER I

19

into which the society was divided generally obscured the class division. . In the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the feudal hierarchy of land ownership gradually replaced the land ownership by the slave-owning aristocracy; the labour of individual peasants replaced collective slave labour in agriculture, the dependence of the labour force on the land replaced an unstable relationship between the labour force and the land, and the individual peasant family combining plough¬ ing and weaving gradually became the dominant form of labour organization. As for the political system, the system of enfeoffment initiated in the early years of Western Zhou underwent changes, giving rise to a prefectural system of local administration: local government officials were appointed by the court to serve limited terms in a succession of different places, as opposed to the system of hereditary posts. With the appearance and development of the prefectural system, con¬ tacts between the various regions increased, the political or¬ ganization of each locality was strengthened and history pro¬ gressed further along the path to unification of the country. In 221 B.C., Qin Shi Huang (First Emperor of the Qin) estab¬ lished the first imperial dynasty, marking the beginning of feudal predominance throughout the country. The period from 221 B.C. to A.D. 196 was a time when feudalism reached maturity under the three imperial dynasties of Qin, Western Han and Eastern Han. The hierarchical feudal order matured both economically and politically. The emperor possessed supreme political power, and at the same time was the supreme landowner. Under the emperor were landowners with different kinds of hereditary status and privileges, in¬ cluding the imperial relatives on the male and female lines and persons who had rendered meritorious services to the throne. These landed aristocrats with hereditary titles oc¬ cupied the dominant position in the landlord class. In addi¬ tion there were the landowners from powerful families and the mercantile landowners thriving on usury. Both possessed

�20

considerable they did not some even subjected to

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

strength in property and social influence, but belong to the higher ranks in social status, and ranked very low. The hereditary aristocrats exploitation peasants who were registered by

household and bestowed to them by the feudal state. This was the main type of peasant at the time. The registered peasants had a private economic sphere and a certain degree of personal freedom. Although they were exploited, they were better off than the slaves. But they too varied in socio¬ economic status. Their household registration status could not be altered after they were attached to hereditary aristo¬ crats by state decision. The land rent they paid to the landed aristocracy also served as their state tax, the two being com¬ bined in one. The relations of production stated above were established in the period of unity under the Qin and grew continuously under the Western and Eastern Han. Slavery did not vanish in the Qin and Han period but persisted in government and private handicraft industries, and existed in households throughout the feudal era. However, these rem¬ nants of the slave system were insignificant in social pro¬ duction. As for the political system, Qin Shi Huang started a unitary prefectural system of administration, but no historical records survive which describe how it was carried out. Under the Western and Eastern Han the system coexisted with the fiefs. Underneath the prefectures and fiefs were counties and un¬ derneath the counties were administrative organizations at the grassroots. These were the different levels in the political structure, each with some relative independence. Beginning in the 3rd century, the prefectural system gradually supersed¬ ed the fiefs and changed continually. But generally speaking, power became more and more concentrated in tl^e hands of the court and restricted at the local levels. The capital of the Qin Dynasty was Xianyang, and the capital of Western Han was Chang’an; the Eastern Han moved its capital east to Luoyang after Chang’an had been devastat-

�CHAPTER I

21

ed by war. The Jing-Wei plain, the Yi-Luo plain and the lower reaches of the Huanghe were the most fertile regions in these periods. The sphere of activity of the Qin and Han was much wider than those of previous dynasties and included the Huanghe, Changjiang and Zhujiang river basins. There were more extensive records of the history of the ethnic minorities than before. The Han people, the major ethnic group in China, was formed in the Qin and Han periods through the fusion of related tribes and ethnic groups. The name of the Han people is identical with that of a great dynasty. Chinese feudalism experienced its earlier period of ascend¬ ancy from 196 to 907, which covered a period of disunity — the Three Kingdoms, the Western and Eastern Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties — as well as the dynasties of Sui and Tang. The period witnessed protracted struggles as well as large-scale displacement and migration among the nationalities. As a result the territory shared by various groups expanded both northward and southward. The Han group replenished itself, and the ethnic minorities raised their production level and standard of living. A new phase in national fusion appeared, and feudalism developed among groups sharing the same territory. This is an important, feature of the earlier period of ascendancy of Chinese feudalism. The hereditary landed aristocracy of the previous era crumbled under the onslaught of peasant uprisings, and was replaced with the newly arisen landlords of privileged fami¬ lies. Like the landed aristocracy, the privileged families en¬ joyed political status and hereditary rights. But they built themselves up by relying on their traditional position in the feudal officialdom and not as a result of imperial fiat. Their land ownership had a more private character than had been the case with the landed aristocrats. The privileged landowners mainly controlled peasants who had attached them¬ selves to these manorial lords for protection against exorbitant taxes and levies.

These manorial peasants were omitted from

�OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

22

the household registers of the state and the land rent they paid was no longer part of the state tax. Their position in society was lower than the state-registered peasants, but they were relieved of state taxes which included a heavy burden of labour service. This change in the relations of production was favourable to the growth of the productive forces of society. It was another sign of the ascendancy of Chinese feudalism. The Wei (one of the Three Kingdoms), the Western Jin, and the Later Wei (one of the Northern Dynasties) all set up their capitals at Luoyang. The Sui and Tang had their capitals at Chang’an and maintained an eastern capital at Luoyang. The Wu (another of the Three Kindoms), Eastern Jin and the four Southern Dynasties of Song, Qi, Liang and Chen all had their capitals at Nanjing (Nanking).

The northerners who be¬

gan to move south in the Wei and Jin dynasties lent fresh im¬ petus to agricultural production in the southeast by increasing the labour force and spreading productive skills.

The lasting

prominence of Nanjing as a political centre was inseparable from the prosperity of the southeast.

The economic growth

in the middle and lower reaches of the Changjiang, emulating that in the fertile areas of the Huanghe river basin, was an¬ other feature of the ascendancy of Chinese feudalism. The years from 907 to 1368 were the later period of ascend¬ ancy of Chinese feudalism.

It began with the Five Dynasties

and Ten Kingdoms, followed by the Liao, Western Xia and Jin dynasties on one side and the Northern and Southern Song dynasties on another, and finally reunification under the Yuan Dynasty.

Extensive border regions from the north¬

east to the northwest and again in the southwest entered the stage of feudal society in most important Respects at this time.

This was a significant feature of Chinese feudalism in

the later period of its ascendancy. The economic growth in the southeast surpassed that in the north, and the middle and lower reaches of the Changjiang became the most prosperous parts of the country.

�CHAPTER I

23

The privileged stratum of landowners of the previous historical period crumbled under the onslaught of peasant uprisings. It was replaced, under the Northern and Southern Song, by bureaucrat landlords who enjoyed certain political status and privileges. With few hereditary privileges, these bureaucrat landlords obtained most of their land through purchase or seizure. The law put no limit on the amount of land they might hold. They were obliged by regulations to pay taxes to the state, and in their turn collected rent from the peasants. The distinction between taxes and rent became clearer. Apart from the bureaucrat landlords there were also the plutocrat landlords and mercantile landlords. Some of the peasants owned small amounts of land, but the majority were tenant-farmers who worked on the lands of the various kinds of landlords. They had a better social position in society and more personal freedom than the manorial peasants in the previous period. Listed in the state household registers, they had to contribute a poll tax and some labour services to the feudal state in addition to payment of rent to the landlords. But generally they were not registered with a certain landlord on the order of the feudal state. This was a major difference between them and the state-registered peasants of the Western and Eastern Han. The imprint of feudal bondage on both landlords and peasants tended to fade away, and the agrarian relations of exploitation in terms of property rights became more distinct. This marked the feudal relations of production in the Northern and Southern Song dynasties. The strength of the Southern Song landlord class was largely preserved after national unification under the Yuan Dynasty, and a most typical feudal economic order prevailed in the regions under its domination. The Yuan Dynasty saw the emergence of a huge stratum of Mongolian aristocratic landowners, many commoner households bearing feudal duties, and a greater number of slaves. This kind of relations of production was, however, confined to the north and was merely a partial phenomenon of retrogression. The feudaliza-

�24

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

tion of extensive border regions was a new phenomenon in the development of production in Yuan society. The states of Liang, Jin (936-946), Han and Zhou in the period of the Five Dynasties established their capitals at Kaifeng, which also served as the capital for the Northern Song and as a secondary capital for Jin (1115-1234). Modern Bei¬ jing was the capital for three dynasties: Liao, which called it Nanjing; Jin (1115-1234), which called it Zhongdu; and Yuan, which called it Dadu. Since ancient times this site has been of strategic, political and economic importance. After the Yuan, the Ming and Qing dynasties retained it as their capitals and today it is the capital of the People’s Republic. The de¬ velopment of Beijing is a joint creation of the Han, Qidan, Niizhen, Mongolian and other ethnic groups. Although the Song capital of Kaifeng and the Yuan capital of Beijing were father distant from the fertile regions of the Southeast, they both used the Grand Canal linking north and south to facilitate the transport of foodstuffs from the south to the north and to bring in the wealth of the southeast. The period from 1368 to 1840, which takes in the Ming Dynasty and a large part of the Qing, saw the decline of Chi¬ nese feudalism. The majority of peasants under the Ming were still tenant-farmers. From the legal point of view, the feudal dependence of the tenant-farmer on the landlord was somewhat weakened. Peasants could choose their own land¬ lords and could reject the landlords’ excessive demands for labour service. Hired labourers selling their labour power for material recompense also made their appearance. The tax law of the Qing converted the poll tax and the land tax into a single tax, so that those with land were taxed and those without were not, giving the tax the character, of a pure prop¬ erty tax. These conditions showed that feudgl bonds had eased considerably. But this did not arise from the kindness of the rulers, but from the necessities of socio-economic de¬ velopment and the fierce struggles of the labouring people. Nevertheless, this was only one aspect of the social phenomena

�CHAPTER I

25

of that time. The other aspect was the rapacious plunder and oppression carried out by the landlord class, especially its ruling group, by using the power in their hands. The unscru¬ pulous use of eunuchs at the Ming court and the strength¬ ening of military rule during the Qing period were attempts to preserve a highly feudalized government. These two as¬ pects may appear to be in disagreement with each other, but they are simply different manifestations of the moribund condition of feudal society. The second manifestation by no means showed the vitality of the feudal landlord class, but revealed its weakness. The two apparently contradictory phenomena were precisely signs of decline. The bureaucrat landlords of the previous historical period and their successors, together with the Mongolian aristocratic landlords, crumbled as before under heavy attacks from peasant uprisings. Taking their position were the newly arisen scholar-official landlords. Apart from officials it included fairly large numbers of intellectuals who had passed the Ming and Qing civil service examinations. The wealthier members of this class not only owned much land but also took up trade, operated pawnshops and issued high-interest loans. This was a reflection of the development of commodity production and a money economy, which nevertheless could not be developed normally because those people were dependent on feudal power. The Ming court directly occupied large areas of land in the form of imperial estates. This, like its appointment of palace eunuchs to collect taxes on commerce and mining and to look for and store up tremendous amounts of gold and silver, re¬ vealed the greed of the rulers of a falling dynasty. The estates of the imperial clan and the nobles and bureaucrats, along with the grain allowance of the imperial clan, amounted to fantastic sums, growing into a malignant tumour on the social economy and national finance. Although the Qing court also had imperial estates, they were aware of the possible harmful effects and kept the area much smaller than under the Ming.

�26

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

However, for a fairly long period, the Manchu homeland of the Qing court in the northeast was a forbidden area, which largely hindered local economic development. “Sprouts of capitalism” could be found as early as the be¬ ginning of the Ming Dynasty. They appeared in greater quantity after mid-Ming and showed a further development in early Qing. But these “sprouts” could never grow to full maturity or break through the declining feudal system because of their insufficient strength. In external relations, the Sui, Tang, Song and Yuan were all in a position to take the initiative, but under the Ming and Qing external relations took a distinct turn for the worse. In early Ming there were landings by “Japanese invaders” (wokou), pirates operating off the Chinese and Korean coasts from the 14th to the 16th century, but the Ming court did lit¬ tle against them. From mid-Ming on, coastal harassment by the “Japanese invaders” brought great destruction to the south. During the Ming and Qing period, capitalism had already arisen in the West, but Chinese feudalism hobbled along its own course, and the autocratic rulers knew nothing of world developments. By the beginning of the 16th century, the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and others had come east to carry out colonial activities and had invaded Chinese territory. They were subsequently followed by Tsarist Russia, England and the United States, whose ambitions in regard to China grew constantly.

The eunuch admiral Zheng He’s voyages to

Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean in early Ming and Chi¬ na’s resistance to Tsarist Russian invasion in early Qing were major events in external affairs, but the overall situation worsened continually, and it was not by chance that the Opium War was followed by a series of national disasters. The history of semi-feudal and semi-colonihl China lasted from 1840 to 1949. At the same time, this was aJi era of re¬ sistance to imperialism and feudalism by all of China’s ethnic groups. The first stage, up to the May Fourth Movement of 1919, was the period of the old democratic revolution. The

�CHAPTER I

27

second stage, from 1919 on, was the period of the new-dem¬ ocratic revolution. The period of the old democratic revolution lasted almost eighty years, taking in the final years of the Qing Dynasty and the first years of the Republic. In this period, due to the invasion of foreign imperialism and its brutal rule over China, China’s social economy underwent major changes, becoming more complex than that in feudal society. In addition to the feudal landlord economy and the individual economy of the peasants and handicraftsmen, which continued to exist, the newly arisen capitalist economy became a major sector in the social economy. The capitalist economy comprised three parts: imperialist capital, bureaucrat-comprador capital and national capital. While imperialism gained control over China’s econom¬ ic lifelines, the feudal landlord class occupied a dominant position in the economy, and the two were in mutual collabora¬ tion. Bureaucrat-comprador capital was an appendage to the imperialist economy and was also closely connected with feudal exploitation. The national capitalist economy was ex¬ tremely weak. It did not form an independent economic system or occupy an important position in socio-economic life, and it also had ties with imperialism and feudalism. Foreign imperialist aggression brought ruin to the self-suf¬ ficient natural economy in the countryside; commodity pro¬ duction developed, but agricultural production and the peas¬ ants’ economic life was drawn deeper and deeper into the vortex of the world capitalist market. These were the main features of China’s semi-colonial, semi-feudal social economy. Along with the violent changes in the social economy, changes also developed in class relations. Following its penetration into China, the foreign bourgeoisie became a dom¬ inant power in Chinese social life, controlling the country’s economy, politics, military affairs and culture. It not only propped up the feudal landlord class as the mainstay of their rule over China, but also created a comprador class to serve the needs of their aggression. Within the feudal landlord class,

�28

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

the newly arisen warlord-bureaucrat landlords, with the sup¬ port of the international bourgeoisie, replaced the scholarofficial landowners as the dominant force. The warlordbureaucrat landlords were an appendage to the international bourgeoisie and were generally the earliest bureaucratcapitalists of a strong comprador character. They held the real power in the regime of the landlord class and became the de¬ cisive force. This was an important manifestation of the compradorization of the landlord regime. The peasant class mostly comprised owner-peasants, tenant-peasants and farm labourers, and accounted for about 70 or 80 per cent of the national population. Under the oppression and exploitation of feudalism and imperialism, the peasants became increasing¬ ly impoverished and bankrupt, so that the owner-peasants became ever fewer and the tenant-peasants ever more numerous. The national bourgeoisie and the proletariat were the two new classes arising in this period. The national bourgeoisie, as determined by their economic position, was a class with a dual character:

on the one hand it exhibited an

anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolutionary character in certain periods and to a certain extent, but on the other hand it tend¬ ed towards a compromise with the enemies of revolution.

The

proletariat was the greatest, most progressive and most rev¬ olutionary class. In the period of the old democratic revolu¬ tion, however, it did not constitute an independent political force, but took part in revolution as a follower of the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie. The socio-economic conditions and class relations in semi¬ colonial, semi-feudal China determined that the basic task of the Chinese revolution was to overthrow the rule of imperial¬ ism and feudalism. In the period of the old democratic rev¬ olution, the people of all ethnic groups in Chftna carried out a bitter, unremitting struggle against the internal hnd external enemies and for the winning of national independence and freedom and happiness for the people. However, they did not find the road to liberation and did not gain the final victory.

�CHAPTER I

29

After the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the proletariat grew in strength, Marxism-Leninism spread to China, the Chinese Communist Party was established and the Chinese revolution took on an entirely new appearance. Under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, the people of each ethnic group in China gained the final victory in China’s democratic rev¬ olution. In 1949, the People’s Republic of China was establish¬ ed and China entered a new age of socialism.

Traces of Remote Antiquity

From Yuanmou Man to Peking Man; the Making of Tools and the Use of Fire

The first primitive man so far known to have existed in China is Yuanmou Man, who lived about 1.70 million years ago. In 1965, two fossil front teeth of primitive ape men were discovered in Yuanmou County, Yunnan Province. Later, stone artifacts, pieces of animal bone showing signs of human work and ash from campfires were also dug up. The primi¬ tive ape man who had inhabited the site came to be known as Yuanmou Man. In 1963 and 1964, a fossil skullcap, the upper and lower jawbones, and three teeth of the ape man were discovered together with stone artifacts and animal fossils in Lantian County, Shaanxi Province. The “Lantian Man” inhabited this site 500,000 to 600,000 years ago.1 Other traces of the ape man have also been found in Hebei, Shanxi, Henan, Hubei, and Guizhou. But the best-known of all is “Peking Man”. Peking Man, whose remains were discovered at Zhoukoudian to the southwest of Beijing (Peking), lived some 400,000 to 500,000 years ago. In excavations before and since libera¬ tion, a wealth of fossils and other evidence of this culture have been uncovered. In 1966, a relatively complete fossil skullcap was discovered at the site. To date, fossil bon^s deriving from more than forty individuals of both sexes and various ages, 1 Paleogeomagnetic examination reveals that the skullcap and the lower jawbone date from different periods. The former is a million years old, while the latter dates back 500,000 years.

30

�CHAPTER II

31

and more than 100,000 pieces of stone worked by man, fossils of more than a hundred kinds of animals, and traces of campfires have been discovered there. Though still retaining some of the features of the ape, Peking Man’s physical structure already possessed the basic characteristics of man. He was relatively short, the male averaging 1.558 metres, the female 1.435. His face was shorter than that of modern man, his mouth protruded, and he had no chin, while his forehead was low, flat, and receding. His skull was about twice as thick as modern man’s, with the cap small¬ er at the top and widening towards the base. Cranial capacity averaged 1,075 cc., approximately 80 per cent of contemporary man’s, more than twice that of the modern anthropoid ape (415 cc.), and much greater than Lantian Man’s 780 cc. The brain structure was incomparably more advanced than that of present-day anthropoid apes. Peking Man had two inter¬ locking heavy brow bones above the eye sockets which screen¬ ed his eyes, his nose was flat, his cheekbones were prominent, his teeth strong and their grinding surfaces relatively complex. Peking Man’s lower limbs already had the basic form of those of modern man. In size, shape, proportion, and muscular attachment, his thighbones were similar to those of presentday man, though they still possessed some primitive features. The bone walls were thicker and the medullary cavities inside the bones smaller, while the transverse diameter of the middle section of the femur was slightly greater than the diameter measured front to back — more like that of the ape than of contemporary man, whose femoral cross-section is the reverse. But Peking Man could already walk and even run erect, though he was somewhat stooped. Through labour over long periods, Peking Man’s hands had become dexterous, as they had had to adapt to complex move¬ ments. The humerus and collar bone of the upper arm re¬ sembled those of modern man, though the humerus was still a bit primitive, with a relatively small medullary cavity and a thicker wall. Research on the inner surface of the cranium

�32

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

shows that the left cerebral hemisphere was bigger than the right, testifying to the fact that Peking Man normally used the right hand in labour. This point is verified by reference to the stone tools he used. It is clear that the uneven development of the various parts of Peking Man’s physique was due to the nature of the labour in which he was engaged. Hand labour led to the functional differentiation between the upper and lower limbs, with the upper limbs developing faster than the lower. The develop¬ ment of the brain occurred gradually as a result of hand labour and differentiation of the limbs, and thus the primitive character of Peking Man’s head is rather more pronounced. The role of labour in the physical development process proves the truth enunciated by Engels: “Labour created man.”1 Peking Man was already able to make and use tools: tools of wood and bone, but especially of stone. He already had several ways of making stone tools. He used one piece of stone to strike or hammer another stone to pieces, or broke a stone held in his hand by pounding it against a bigger stone, thus knocking off large numbers of usable sharp flakes which could be fashioned into various kinds of tools.

Most of the

tools were made of stone flakes worked on one edge. a few were made of unworked stone flakes.

Only

The stone tools

can be roughly classified as choppers, scrapers, or knife-shap¬ ed tools, according to their different forms and uses. Some were suitable for cutting and fashioning wooden hunting clubs, others for cutting animal skins or meat. The tools made and used by Peking Man prove that he was essentially different from the animals and had already come a long way on the road of human development. A great deal of ash, some of it in piles and some in layers, has been discovered in the caves once inhabited by Peking Man. The ash contains pieces of burnt animal bones and stones 1 Dialectics of Nature, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Mos¬ cow, 1966, p. 170.

�CHAPTER XX

33

of various colours, hackberry seeds, and charred Chinese red¬ bud wood, showing that animal meat was often roasted, and that Peking Man was already able to preserve, use, and con¬ trol fire. The use of fire allowed Peking Man to cook his food, and thus shorten the digestive process and promote the absorption of more nutrients, thereby spurring physical evolution and enhancing health. At the same time, fire could be used to ward off cold and defend against attacks by fierce animals. It could serve as an effective aid in hunting as well. In his mutual relations, Peking Man had already formed links which do not and cannot exist in the animal realm, namely, the links involved in the cooperative creation and use of tools, and the creation of speech through the common labour process. The size of the part of the brain where the speech centre is located shows that he could already speak. Speech originated in joint labour, and in turn promoted the evolution of man’s body; it had an especially great influence on the development of man’s brain. Peking Man’s main productive activities were hunting and gathering. The great quantities of smashed and burnt deer bones discovered in the caves where he lived indicate that deer were his principal game.

Probably his most effective

hunting weapons were the firebrand and the wooden club. Although no clubs have been preserved, the discovery of many choppers and big convex tools suitable for scraping wood, pro¬ vides indirect evidence of their existence. Peking Man led an extremely difficult life in primitive collectives.

He used his crude tools, his limited labour ex¬

perience, and his simple cooperative labour to confront every kind of natural hazard, to stave off repeated attacks by wild beasts, and to procure his essential food. His lifespan was generally not long; of the more than forty individuals whose remains have been discovered, approximately one-third died before the age of fourteen years.

Dingcun (Tingtsun) Man and Upper Cave Man; the Improvement of Tools and the Emergence of Ornaments

About 100,000 years ago, China’s ancient culture entered the “Neanderthaloid” stage.1 Human fossils from this period are relatively widely distributed in China, but the most significant among them are those of “Maba Man”, discovered in Qujiang County in South China’s Guangdong Province; “Changyang Man”, found in Changyang County in Central China’s Hubei Province; and “Dingcun Man”, uncovered in Xiangfen County in North China’s Shanxi Province. Their physical appearance was already different from that of Pe¬ king Man. Maba Man’s skull bones were thinner than those of Peking Man, and his forehead was higher. Changyang Man’s upper jawbone did not protrude so much as Peking Man’s. And both the roots and the crowns of Dingcun Man’s teeth were more advanced than those of Peking Man, closer to those of modern man. Dingcun Man lived in the Fenhe River basin to the west of the Taihang Mountains. His chief tools were still stone implements, but they were more advanced than those of Pe¬ king Man, both in terms of flaking and fashioning technique. In making the flakes, Dingcun Man commonly used a flinging technique, forcefully hurling a large piece of stone against another stone. Dingcun Man’s stone implements were also more clearly differentiated as to type than were those of Pe¬ king Man, with tools like the prismatic knife-edge and stone balls appearing for the first time. About 40,000 years ago, China’s ancient culture entered the stage of “modern man”. Starting then, the hunting and fish_

"H

1 The evolution of man may be roughly divided intO'-the Pithecanthropine (“Apeman”), Neanderthaloid, and “Modern” stages. Some scholars hold that beginning with the time man began to create tools, his morphological development may be divided into three stages, name¬ ly, the “Australopithecus” stage, a Homo erectus stage, and the Homo sapiens stage which includes contemporary man.

�CHAPTER II

35

mg economy underwent a remarkable advance and the matriarchal commune gradually took shape. Traces of the peoples of that period have been found at many places across China’s wide territory. Typical examples are Liujiang Man and Qilinshan Man found in Liujiang and Laibin counties respectively in Guangxi, South China; Hetao Man found along . both banks of the Sjara-osso-gol River in Uxin Banner, Inner Mongolia and in Lingwu County in Ningxia; the Shiyu Culture which existed 28,000 years ago in what is now Shuoxian in North China’s Shanxi Province; and the Upper Cave Man who lived about 18,000 years ago in caves near the top of Dragon Bone Hill at Zhoukoudian, where Peking Man was discovered. Upper Cave Man’s physical make-up and outward ap¬ pearance were hardly different from those of present-day man. As a result of working with, the hands and walking erect, the load on the skeletal muscles had been diminishing. Thus the walls of the bones of the limbs had become thinner, and the medullary cavity larger. As for the head, the cranial capacity had expanded and the structure of the brain was reaching a higher level of complexity and perfection.

Peking

Man’s cranial capacity had averaged 1,075 cc., but Liujiang Man’s and Upper Cave Man’s was between 1,300 and 1,500 cc., similar to that of present man.

As the brain gradually grew,

the forehead became progressively higher, the cranium pro¬ gressively thinner, and the point of maximum breadth of the skull shifted from above the ears to the region where the parietal bones link up. The brow-ridges had become thinner and flatter, and the teeth smaller and less complex. The mouth had receded so that the lower jaw and nasal bridge were more prominent as in modern man. The cranium of Liu¬ jiang Man and Upper Cave Man possessed the basic character¬ istics of that of modern man. From the point of view of race, their heads bore the primeval features of the Mongoloid peo¬ ples, and they represent an important stage in the formation of Mongoloid physical characteristics.

�36

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

Upper Cave Man’s labour experience and skill surpassed that of his predecessors. Though his stone implements were still basically made by striking stones against each other and by rough fashioning, he had already acquired the new skills of polishing, scraping, drilling, carving and colouring. Among the tools he left behind were two bone implements, a polished dear antler and a lower jawbone. The polished antler bears carved designs consisting of both straight and curved lines. The best reflection of Upper Cave Man’s improved tool-mak¬ ing techniques is a bone needle. With a length of 82 mm and a diameter varying from 3.1 to 3.3 mm, the needle is round and sharp, and the eye small. To fashion such a needle, an animal bone had to be cut and scraped, the eye had to be goug¬ ed out, and then the whole thing had to be polished. By these complex techniques Upper Cave Man created a needle which could be used to sew animal skins into clothing. Among the ornaments belonging to Upper Cave Man that have been discovered are drilled stone beads, pebbles, the eyesocket bones of black carp, perforated animal teeth and clam shells, and carved tubes made of bird bones.

The making of

these ornaments involved selection of materials,

chipping,

drilling, abrading and colouring. Some of the ornaments were dyed red with.hematite. Upper Cave Man’s main economic activities were hunting and fishing. Hare, red deer, sika, wild boar, antelope, badger and fox were his chief game. He also caught ostrich and other birds. He caught various fish, including black carp a metre in length, and he collected fresh-water clams. He gathered fruit and roots as supplementary food. Upper Cave Man, or even his predecessors, probably already knew how to make fire. Making fireninstead of just preserving it marked another big step forward in man’s effort to control nature. Engels considered the discovery of the fire¬ making technique to be even more important than the dis¬ covery of the steam engine. He pointed out that “the genera¬ tion of fire by friction for the first time gave man command

�CHAPTER II

37

over one of the forces of nature, and thus separated him for ever from the animal kingdom.”1 The invention of the fire¬ making technique paved the way for many subsequent inven¬ tions, such as the making of pottery and metal tools. The shells of salt-water clams found in the upper cave were not local, but could only be obtained at the seaside quite a dis¬ tance away. Whether obtained by exchange or collected directly, they show that man had expanded the scope of his activities and contacts, and was in a better position to do bat¬ tle with nature. The upper cave is approximately 12 metres long and about 8 metres wide, with an area of more than 90 square metres, and could accommodate a dozen or so inhabitants. The cave was divided naturally into “upper” and “lower” chambers. The upper chamber, near the cave mouth, was the common liv¬ ing quarters, while the lower, located deep inside, served as a burial ground.

A vast region around the cave served as the

base for hunting, fishing, and gathering activities. A young female, another of middle age, and an elderly male were interred in the lower chamber of the cave. Hematite powder was scattered around the dead, and stone implements and ornaments were interred with them. The arrangements for the dead give an idea of the activities of the living in the upper chamber. The burial of men and women, old and young together, with production tools and ornaments around them, reflects the closeness of a blood relationship and the produc¬ tion relations of communal labour and consumption. The fact that there is no great differentiation in burial objects suggests equality of the clan members. The hematite powder and ac¬ companying burial objects show that Upper Cave Man adhered to certain burial customs and that his thinking had developed to a new level at which he had begun to formulate primitive re¬ ligious beliefs with a superstitious tinge and ideas that went beyond actual existence.

The Yangshao Culture and Its Matriarchal Communes

Some 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, clans and tribes, big and small, were scattered across China, leaving behind rich cul¬ tural remains. A microlithic culture extended from the North¬ east through Inner Mongolia and Ningxia to Xinjiang and Tibet.1 There was the Yangshao culture2 on the middle reaches of the Huanghe (Yellow River), and the Majiayao culture3 on its upper reaches. Other primitive cultures were distributed elsewhere. The features of the matriarchal commune are displayed relatively distinctly by the Yangshao culture. Mainly dis¬ covered in central Shaanxi, western Henan and southern Shanxi, it stretched as far as the upper and middle reaches of the Hanshui River in the south and the Hetao (Yellow River Bend) region in the north, the upper reaches of the Weihe Riv¬ er in Gansu in the west, and Shandong in the east. The re¬ mains of many settlements have been found in these places, and in some cases they were clustered relatively close together. The inhabitants of the Huanghe River region were engaged mainly in a primitive agriculture, supplemented by animal husbandry. They used pointed wooden sticks for digging the earth, and their stone implements were no longer the roughly fashioned ones made by striking stones, but comparatively re¬ fined ones made primarily by abrading techniques. They had stone axes for cutting away the ground cover, stone and bone spades for loosening and levelling the soil, and various kinds of stone knives for harvesting grain. The main agricultural crop 1 The name “microlith” derives from the small size of the stone implements. The term “culture” is used here in Its archaeological sense, referring to an entire body of archaeological remains with common characteristics from a single period and a single region. Such a culture is commonly identified by the name of the spot of the first discovery or the name of a characteristic site or relic. 2 The name comes from Yangshao Village, Mianchi County, Henan Province, where the culture was first discovered. 3 First discovered in Majiayao, Lintao County, Gansu Province.

�CHAPTER IX

39

was grain,1 but they also planted vegetables. Some simple tools for processing crops had already been invented. Grain was placed on a millstone and ground with a hand-held stone pin or disc until it was husked or powdered. Once man took up agriculture, he was able to produce the food he needed, and thus could settle down. Of course, the methods of cultivation used in primitive agriculture were still in an early stage, and production was always subject to the whims of nature. The yields were low or even came to nothing. In such circumstances a part of or even an entire clan settle¬ ment had to move. Hunting and fishing was second only to agriculture in man’s productive activities, occupying a relatively important position in the economic life of the time. The principal weapons in¬ cluded bows and arrows, stone-tipped spears, fishing lances, fish-hooks, and nets with stone weights attached. Household animal husbandry developed as another sideline. From the pens and animal skeletons found at the Banpo site at Xi’an, we can see that the main livestock were pigs and dogs. Cattle, sheep, horses and chickens may also have been domesticated. But gathering was still an indispensable part of production. Many hazelnuts, pinenuts, chestnuts, hackberry seeds, snail and clam shells were discovered in the homes and cellars at the Banpo site. The rise in the quantity and quality of production and household implements is an indication of the advance of hand¬ icraft industry. The creation of large numbers of ground and polished tools provided man with new tools and spurred the overall development of social production. That cutting, par¬ ing, grinding and drilling techniques were being used can be seen from the axes, adzes, spades, chisels, knives, needles and 1 Between 1973 and 1978, archaeologists unearthed large quantities of carbonated rice remains and bone and wood spade-shaped imple¬ ments used in rice planting at the site of Hemudu Village in Yuyao County, Zhejiang Province. These remains go back approximately 7,000 years. To date, they are the first signs of the domestic cultiva¬ tion of rice in China.

�40

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

hairpins. The reflex-barbed fishing spear, the fish-hook and the perforated bone needle had already appeared, indicating the relatively high level of the bone-working techniques of primitive handicraft industry. Weaving and sewing had also made relatively rapid prog¬ ress. Fibre could be stripped from wild hemp and twisted into thread with the use of pottery or stone spinning wheels, and then be woven into cloth. Animal skins were also used to make clothing. The ingenious bone needles or bone and antler awls could be used to sew cloth and leather into various kinds of clothing. Pottery manufacture was a new, distinctive handicraft at the time. One of the characteristics of the Yangshao and Majiayao cultures was that they had various kinds of painted pottery. Remains of pottery kilns have been found at the sites of numerous clan settlements. The pottery paste was prepared from relatively fine loess soil to the proper degree of viscosity. After mixing, it was rolled into cords and then either folded to make a rough blank or coiled into an embryonic shape. Small pieces were molded directly into finished form. The next step was decoration of the blank and the addition of handles, ears, noses, etc. by adhesion or inlay. After the blanks were half dry, the inner and outer walls were again scraped and polished. Hematite and manganese oxide were applied with brush-like tools to paint pictures on finer household utensils. Sometimes, before applying the paint, a white or light red ground was ap¬ plied to make the whole image more colourful. As the kilns were not completely sealed, the iron oxides in the clay would oxidize fully, hence the bulk of the pottery is red or brown. Part of the pottery articles were production tools while most were household utensils: basic cooking utensils ssuch as stoves, steamers, footed vessels and cauldrons for steaming or boiling various kinds of foods; drinking and eating vessels like cups, basins, plates, bowls and tumblers; and jars and pots for stor¬ ing things in. There was an amphora-shaped bottle for drawing water which utilized the principle of equilibrium: placed on

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Upper: Yuanmou Man site, Yuanmou County, Yunnan. Lower right: Yuanmou Man’s teeth, found in Yuan¬ mou County, Yunnan. Low¬ er: The reconstructed cra¬ nium of Lantian Man.

�The bust of a reconstruction of Peking Man.

�Stone tools used by Peking Man, unearthed at Zhoukoudian, Beijing.

Lower animal jawbone, stone and earth burnt by Peking Man, found at Zhoukoudian.

�Stone tools used by Dingcun Man, unearthed at Dingcun Village, Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province.

Bone needle and ornaments used by Upper Cave Man, found at Zhoukoudian.

�A neolithic village site with remnants of Yangshao Culture, discovered at Banpo Village, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province.

A reconstructed round house at the Banpo site,

�Upper: A stone pickaxe (restored) found at the Banpo site. Middle upper: Mill and pestle, unearthed in Xinzheng County, He¬ nan Province. Mid¬ dle lower: Painted spinning wheels, un¬ earthed in Jingshan County, Hubei Province, and Xichuan County, He¬ nan Province. Low¬ er: Pottery basin with human-mask and net-like de¬ signs, unearthed at the Banpo site.

1

�Black pottery stem¬ med cup with thin body, of Longshan Culture, unearthed in Weifang, Shan¬ dong Province.

A pottery wine con¬ tainer of Longshan Culture, unearthed in Linyi County, Shandong. It is of white clay mixed with fine sand.

�Bronzes of Qijia Culture, unearthed at Huangniangniangtai, Wuwei County, Gansu Province.

Oracle bones of Longshan Culture, kept in the Museum of Chinese History, Beijing.

�CHAPTER II

41

the surface of the water, it would automatically tilt, allowing the water to flow in. Pottery was one of the most important inventions of the matriarchal commune period. It indicates that man’s wisdom was not limited to the working of natural objects, but could create entirely new things. Pottery could be used to cook food, thereby allowing the human body to absorb more fully the nutritious substances of foodstuffs, and it could be used to store liquids, which was beneficial to agricultural irrigation. This contributed to making the sedentary life style more stable. And the principles of pottery-making could also be applied in making ceramic spinning wheels, pellets for hunting, and sink¬ ers for fishing nets. Fire could also be used to bake the earth walls and foundations of primitive buildings.

All of this

had very great significance for the advance of human produc¬ tion and livelihood. Painted pottery was not only practical, but was also a fine handicraft art. The painted designs, patterns, birds and ani¬ mals on the pottery reflect the agricultural labour and hunting and fishing activities of the time with much liveliness and imagination. There are also many marks carved into the sur¬ faces of the pottery which may have been used as symbols for the utensils themselves. a kind of primitive script.

Some scholars believe that they are The birds, fish, deer and frogs de¬

picted on the pottery may have been the clan totems.1 The settlements of that era had a fixed layout in keeping with clan structure.

The Banpo site is a typical clan settle¬

ment. It covers an area of about 50,000 square metres and in¬ cludes three components: a residential section, a pottery-kiln quarter, and a common burial ground.

Cellars of various

1 Totems served as both the names and emblems of the clans. In general, names of animals, plants or inanimate objects were adopted. The function of the totem was to preserve the common pedigree of all clan members bearing its name, thereby serving to distinguish be¬ tween clans.

�42

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

shapes within the village were the clan’s common storehouses. The homes in the residential section are themselves arranged according to a pattern. There was one very large square build¬ ing, a place for public activities, while other medium- and small-sized buildings served as the clan members’ dwellings. A ditch, approximately five or six metres deep and wide, was dug around the residential section, and the clan’s common burial ground was to the north of the ditch, the kiln quarter to the east. This layout demonstrates that the clan members lived in equality, labouring and consuming in common, and the fact that they were buried together when they died shows that they all belonged to a single clan. Women enjoyed a high status in the clan. They played an important role in production and other activities. The custom of burying the females in the centre prevailed in some places: dozens of joint matriarchal clan graves have been discovered at Yuanjunmiao, Huaxian County, and Hengzhen Village, Huayin County, in Shaanxi Province. The bodies of the deceased, found in common pits, were all moved there to be buried to¬ gether; the number of bodies in each pit was uneven, and there were men and women, old and young. The removal and joint burial process was quite complex. When a person died, the corpse was probably first dealt with in an interim fashion, but when a woman of fairly high status in the matriarchal clan died, her body was immediately placed in one of these grave pits in a supine position. Then the remains of the predeceased of the same clan were brought, laid out together, and buried in the same grave. This burial custom, with the women at the centre, is one reflection of the important position women oc¬ cupied in the clans. But what is more, at the Banpo site and at the Jiangzhai site in Lintong County in Shaarixi, the buried objects accompanying the females generally outnumbered those of the males. This is further demonstration that the women’s social status was high. Collective labour and the public character of ownership of the means of production determined that the distribution of

�CHAPTER II

43

goods within the matriarchal commune was perforce one of common consumption by all members. The cellars for storing things at the Banpo and Jiangzhai sites are distributed closely together around the dwellings. In some spots there are more than ten clustered together in one place, forming a cellar com¬ plex. This may have been a form of collective storage. From the graves we can see that after death the majority of clan members were buried in a common burial ground according to a basically similar burial style, and that the great majority of burial objects were ornaments and pottery used in daily life. The maximum number of burial objects in any one of the sev¬ enty-one graves containing such objects at Banpo was ten, the minimum one, and the average 4.3. Although by that time, people’s livelihood had improved somewhat, it was still very difficult. According to the result of a survey of human bones at the Yuanjunmiao site, the peo¬ ple of the time were afflicted with bone-compression spurs be¬ cause of the excessively heavy burdens they had to bear. And because their food was coarse and they had to expend a lot of energy in chewing, their lower jaws were still more sturdy than those of modern man and their teeth show serious wear and tear. The remains in the various grave groups reveal that the life expectancy of the majority was only around thirty or forty years, and that there was a high rate of infant mortality. Precisely because the level of the productive forces was still very low, and the means of livelihood very limited, it was only possible for them to maintain such an arduous, poor life for members of the clan by living, producing and consuming in common.

The Patriarchal Clan Society of the Longshan Culture

Approximately 5,000 years ago, the tribes of the Huanghe River and Changjiang (Yangtze River) valleys gradually en¬ tered the era of the patriarchal clan commune. In general, the

�44

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

Longshan, Qijia, Qujialing, Qingliangang, Liangzhu and Dawenkou tribal cultural remains belong to this period.1 The Longshanoid tribes were widely distributed, from the seacoast in the east to the middle reaches of the Weishui River in the west, from the Bohai Gulf coastline of the Liaodong Peninsula in the north to the northern parts of Hubei, Anhui and Jiangsu in the south. The principal area was Henan, Shan¬ dong and Hebei, the southern part of Shanxi, and the Weishui River basin in Shaanxi. Taken as a whole, it was greater in extent than the Yangshao culture, and the regional differences were more pronounced. Tribes belonging to the Qijia culture lived on the upper reaches of the Huanghe River in the east¬ ern part of Gansu and the northeastern part of Qinghai. The stone implements and pottery from the late New Stone Age sites found in Tibet have an affinity to those of Qijia; the jade

bi (a piece of jade for ceremonial purposes) and jade beads of the New Stone Age cultural remains of the Wusuli River ba¬ sin in the Northeast are also similar to those of the Huanghe River basin. The Qujialing culture was distributed mainly in the Hanshui River basin in Hubei, while the Qingliangang cul¬ ture was scattered along the lower reaches of the Changjiang River, principally within what is now Jiangsu Province.

The

Liangzhu culture extended along the lower reaches of the Qiantang River and the area around Lake Taihu. The Dawenkou culture was scattered mainly throughout Shandong and the northern parts of Jiangsu and Anhui. Production reached new levels of development, especially in agriculture and animal husbandry, during the Longshanoid period. The rise in handicraft levels was marked by the intro¬ duction of the potter’s wheel and by the beginning of the metal¬ lurgical manufacture of copper. Two new agricultural tools 1 These cultures take their names from their places of first dis¬ covery: Longshan Township, Zhangqiu County, Shandong; Qijia Green, Guanghe County, Gansu; Qujialing, Jingshan County, Hubei; Qing¬ liangang, Huaian County, Jiangsu; Liangzhu, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang; and Dawenkou, Taian County, Shandong.

�CHAPTER II

45

appeared at this time: the wooden fork and the stone or clam¬ shell sickle. It was discovered that by using a stone or clam¬ shell sickle with handle attached, a change could be made from picking the ears of grain to harvesting it with the stems con¬ nected. This raised labour efficiency and made it possible to bring in fodder for the livestock. The development of Longshanoid agriculture is also reflected in the increase in the num¬ bers of reaping tools. At some sites in Hebei, Henan and Shaanxi, reaping tools in the form of stone knives have been found in numbers roughly equal to those of tools for clearing and planting, as represented by the stone axe and stone spade. In some places the reaping tools even outnumber the clearing and planting tools by two to four times. There was also an improvement in the stone knives, which became broader, long¬ er and sharper. By way of contrast, among the argicultural implements of the Yangshao culture, clearing and planting tools normally outnumbered reaping tools by a couple of times. The increase and improvement in the Longshanoid culture’s reaping tools indicate the better harvests in that period. The tribes of the Qujialing, Qingliangang and Liangzhu cultures living on the middle and lower reaches of the Changjiang opened up the grass-covered marshy regions, turned them into paddy fields, and planted rice. The numbers and variety of domesticated animals also in¬ creased in this period. Herds of pigs and dogs were raised everywhere, and there were cattle and goats as well as horses and chickens. The bones of livestock excavated from twentysix firepits of the Longshanoid culture at Miaodigou, Shanxian County, Henan, are more plentiful than those from 168 Yang¬ shao firepits; among them, pig bones are especially numerous. Bones from twenty-one pigs were excavated from a single firepit in Jiangou, Handan County, Hebei. More than one-third of a total of 133 graves excavated at Dawenkou yielded pig bones which had been interred with the corpses, the richest tomb in this respect yielding fourteen pig skulls. Of the domesticated animals, pigs have the advantage of reproducing quickly and

�46

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

of tolerating coarse food. The growth of pig raising provided a source of meat for man and made him less reliant on hunting. Livestock raising had already become a new means of liveli¬ hood and it gradually took on increasing importance in eco¬ nomic life. While participating in agricultural labour, the males also devoted themselves to animal husbandry and thus the acquisition of means of livelihood became a primarily male affair. The products from such pursuits accrued more to the males, while the women were confined to labouring chiefly within the household. It was precisely these herds that be¬ came the major private property of the patriarchal family. The hunting-fishing-gathering economy served as a supple¬ mentary means of livelihood and underwent development to varying degrees. Of the hunting implements discovered, the stone, bone and shell arrowheads are highly polished, but in specific areas we still find a few struck flint ones. People of the Liangzhu culture of Shuitianfan at Hangzhou and Qianshanyang in Wuxing, Zhejiang, were already using fishing boats to go out into open waters to fish on a relatively large scale. At the time under discussion, the potter’s wheel had al¬ ready been created. The clay was fashioned into containers by using the force of the rapidly spinning wheel. Pottery made this way was regular in shape and of even thickness, but a more important result was the sharp rise in productivity. The structure of the pottery kilns had also been perfected and peo¬ ple had mastered the technique of sealing them. High temper¬ atures and sealing caused the reduction of the ferrites in the fired blanks, giving rise to a grey-coloured pottery. The wheel-thrown pottery of the Shandong Longshanoid clans was particularly well-developed. Because the blanks were pol¬ ished, the kilns were tightly sealed, and the smoke^was inten¬ tionally allowed to colour it, the fired pottery was pitch-black, with a glossy surface. Black pottery could even be made which was thin as eggshell. And kaolin clay was used to fire a small number of tripod pitchers with a very white surface.

�CHAPTER II

47

The metallurgical industry was one of the outstanding pro¬ duction accomplishments of the patriarchal clan period. Copper tablets have been discovered at the Dacheng Mountain site near Tangshan in Hebei and such things have also been dis¬ covered in some quantity in several dwelling sites and grave of the Qijia culture which came a bit later than that of Longshan. Copper products — knives, awls, chisels and rings — and frag¬ ments of copper utensils have been found at Huangniangniangtai in Wuwei County in Gansu. Copper daggers, awls and rings have also been found at Qinweijia and Dahezhuang in Linxia County, Gansu. All these items were made of very pure cop¬ per; there were small amounts of impurities, but no tin or lead was added in the working process. Such copper was relatively soft and could be directly hammered into various kinds of tools and ornaments. Copper is malleable and can be shaped at will and even recast, and is thus much superior to stone. The dis¬ covery of copper marks a break with the several tens of thou¬ sands of years of stone tool technology of primitive Chinese society; it was a creative new technology which brought about a fresh rise in the productive forces. Making copper imple¬ ments involved a series of steps — mining, smelting, hammer¬ ing, pattern making and casting — which required much more complex production techniques than did the making of either stone implements or pottery. People came to specialize in this profession, furthering the division of handicraft labour. As those who turned out the copper utensils came to know the properties of metals, they also opened the road for subsequent metal manufacture. At the time of the patriarchal clan communes, people still lived under a primitive communal system with collective ownership and sharing, and the clans were still held together by blood ties. In the layout of the clan settlements, the dwell¬ ings and the cellars are still tightly interknit and there are com¬ mon graveyards close to the dwelling areas. The common bur¬ ial grounds of the clans are especially ordered and best reflect the characteristics of the clan system. The clan grave-

�48

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

site of the Longshanoid culture at Miaodigou is situated on the western edge of the site. Within an area of something over 1,100 square metres, 145 graves are laid out, aligned northsouth, the heads of the dead pointing invariably to the south. The public burial ground of the Qijia culture at Qinweijia has more than a hundred graves in six north-south rows and the heads of the dead all face northwest. Somewhat over twenty metres to the east is a smaller burial area with three east-west rows and twenty-nine graves, the heads of the deceased all facing west. These arrangements suggest that the different clans adhered strictly to their own traditional customs for bury¬ ing the dead and that .the members of the clans did not easily leave their own clans under normal circumstances. An important symbol of the patriarchal clan commune was the appearance in marriage relations of a more firm and en¬ during system of monogamy, with succession fixed through the male line. By that time they had adopted the formula of joint burial after death. There are quite a few joint graves of adult men and women at the Dawenkou cultural site and they are also found at the Longshanoid Hengzhencun site in Huayin County, Shaanxi.

In the joint graves of the Qijia culture at

Qinweijia, the males are invariably on the right-hand side, stretched out, their faces upward, while the females are always on the left, reclining on their sides facing the males, legs flexed. This burial style seems to show that the males were in the dominant position and the females in a position of submission and dependence. In the separate conjugal families, the diverse household chores had been transformed from the previous service to the commune to a kind of service to the individual — this marks them off completely from the matriarchal households. It has been discovered that in the graves of the Dawenkoq, culture at Dawenkou, Liulin and Dadunzi of Pixian in Jiangsu, all those whose heads are ornamented have spinning wheels, while those without ornaments have more production tools. In the graves of Majiayao culture discovered at Liuwan in Ledu County in

�CHAPTER II

49

Qinghai, the majority of the burial objects with the males are ground stone axes, adzes, knives and chisels, while the majority of those with the females are pottery or stone spinning wheels, and bone awls and needles. These things all give expression to the division of labour between males and females, the women being excluded from social production and hence losing their previous social status. What is more, pottery and stone sculp¬ tures symbolizing male ancestor worship have been found at the Longshanoid sites at Keshengzhuang in Xi’an and Quanhucun, Huaxian County in Shaanxi, and the Qijia culture site at Zhangjiazui, Linxia County in Gansu. This too is an important sign of the formation of the patriarchal clan. The patriarchal clan commune represented a transitional social stage between primitive communal and slave society. Private ownership, polarization between rich and poor, class division, and the possession of slaves all made their appear¬ ance in the patriarchal clan commune period. As we have not¬ ed, the most important item of private property at the time was the livestock herd. It was the fashion for tribes in various places to use pig palate bones as a yardstick for measuring wealth. The private wealth which people accumulated while alive went into their graves as burial objects after their death. About one-third of 133 Dawenkou culture graves have pig skulls in them, the maximum number being fourteen. In a few graves belonging to the Dawenkou culture at Gangshangcun, Tengxian County, and Yaoguanzhuang, Weifang City in Shan¬ dong, there were also unequal numbers of pig palate bones. Fourteen such bones were found in a grave belonging to the Longshanoid culture at Qinglongquan, Yuanxian County in Hubei, thirty-six pieces were placed in a grave belonging to the Qijia culture at Dahezhuang and sixty-eight pieces were discovered in a grave at Qinweijia. Pig bones in varying num¬ bers have also been found in graves in other places. This shows both that the pigs were owned personally by the grave occupant while alive and that the accumulation of personal property had already reached substantial proportions.

�50

OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA

The beginning of private ownership was accompanied by polarization between rich and poor. Some wealthy people used grain to brew alcohol. A set of wine containers such as tripod pitchers, kettles and long-stemmed cups discovered in a Dawenkou grave testifies to this situation. There is a clearer re¬ flection of this division between rich and poor and of the in¬ equality in property in the Dawenkou burial grounds. The burials of the wealthy were very extravagant and the pits very big — more than four metres long and three metres wide. The pits were lined with wood, wooden floors were laid to form outer coffins, and some of the coffin bases were daubed with red pigment. The wealthy had fifty or sixty burial objects — the richest more than 160 — including elegant painted, jetblack and pure white pottery, delicate production tools, and various kinds of ornaments made of polished stone and bone. Some graves also had ivory combs and containers with per¬ forated patterns carved in them. In contrast to the lavish burials of the wealthy, of the 133 graves already excavated at Dawenkou, eighty employ only common production tools and household utensils as burial objects, and eight have no burial objects at all. In graves of the same age and style ex¬ cavated at Liuwan, differences in size and great disparities in number of grave objects also appear. The differences in num¬ ber of grave objects, their presence or absence, are a record of the wealth possessed by the grave occupants during their life¬ times, a reflection of the division into poor and wealthy, and evidence that some people expropriated the fruits of others’ labour and made them their own. In the patriarchal clans, relations of bondage were taking root. At the Huangniangniangtai site, one joint adult grave was discovered, containing one male and two females. The male lay face upward in the middle with a female^pn either side; both females lay on their sides facing the male with limbs bent, the lower limbs behind them and their two hands in front of their faces. In graves belonging to the Qijia culture at Liuwan, some males lay in coffins, face upwards with their

�CHAPTER II

51

limbs straight, while young females lay on their sides outside the coffins, their limbs bent and facing towards the males. The women in these graves, whether their relations with the males were conjugal or not, were obviously in a subordinate position and seem to have been in the status of slaves. Oracle bones have been discovered in many of the Longshan and Qijia culture sites. They are the result of a method of divination which used fire to scorch the upper surface of pig, oxen or sheep scapulae to produce cracking patterns which were then used to determine good or bad fortune. The develop¬ ment of this kind of activity later led to the emergence of sorcerers who specialized in divination, becoming daily more divorced from physical labour. Their activities probably were not limited to making entreaties to nature, but may also gradu¬ ally have assumed the character of class oppression.

Myth and Legend

The Slave State of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties

The Early Eastern Zhou, Spring and Autumn, and Warring States Periods: Transition from Slavery to Feudalism

The Qin and Han Dynasties: the Growth of Feudal Society

The Three Kingdoms, the Jin, the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Sui and the Tang: the Earlier Period of Ascendancy of Chinese Feudalism

The Five Dynasties, the Song and the Yuan: the Later Period of Ascendancy of Chinese Feudalism

The Ming-Qing Period: the Twilight of Feudalism

Semi-Colonial and Semi-Feudal Society; The Old Democratic Revolution