China during q1n dynasty

The Qin dynasty was one of the China's shortest, extending only 15 years, from 221 to 206 ВС. Yet its influence lasted for centuries. Its founder created the first true dynasty in Chinese history bent upon imperial ex­pansion.

This first of the Qin rulers was Shi Huangdi, whose name means First emperor, born about 246 ВС in one of the poorer and smaller provinces of Zhou China. However, in this region the rulers paid great attention to the army. Equipped with crossbows, Shi Huangdi's forces toppled the last of the Zhou emperors and then established his own centralized state over provinces that had long shown independence from Luoyang. For the first time northern and southern China had a single ruler.

Shi Huangdi brought the nobles to his capital, once more at Qangan, where he could watch them and nip in the bud any tendencies toward rebel­lion. In a law code he issued, he took away the privileges they once enjoyed.

The emperor envisioned an empire far beyond the borders he inherit­ed from the Eastern Zhou. His armies campaigned in Southeast Asia, where the Vietnamese people first experienced the might of Chinese arms. Next to fall to Shi Huangdi was Korea, a nation that inhabits the peninsula that juts into the Sea of Japan from the Asian mainland. The spread of Chinese arms also meant the diffusion of Chinese culture, which the Vietnamese and Koreans now experienced in close fashion.

Moderation was not found in Shi Huangdi character, hence his con­tempt for Confucian values. His advisors, the Legalists, assured him that might makes right and supported all the imperialist ambitions of the First Emperor. The emperor's rage at Confucianism translated into a purge of scholars at his court (several hundred were buried alive) and the destruc­tion of any books that carried Confucian doctrine. The only exceptions were books dealing with farming and medicine, which the First Emperor deemed harmless. Many Confucianists hid their scrolls, convinced that' their cause would prevail.

The most lasting monument to Shi Huangdi's activities is still to be seen. While other rulers built sections of walls to keep out the Mongol and Turkic nomads who raided China, Shi Huangdi sought to connect these partial barriers into a single Great Wall. To accomplish this huge construc­tion effort, his government conscripted tens of thousands of workers from all over China. Built and rebuilt many times after Shi Huangdi's time, the Great Wall now traverses 1,400 miles across the north of the country.

To provide for his tomb, he chose a mountain near Qangan to be hol­lowed out so as to contain his body. According to one estimate, half a mil­lion people labored for 30 years to complete this project, which compares favorably to the pyramids of Egypt. To guard his final resting place, arti­sans cast 7,500 life-size soldiers made of baked clay, each with his own individual characteristics, to be buried with their master. Lost for centu­ries, the emperor's tomb was only discovered in AD 1974.

The list of Shi Huangdi's accomplishments is impressive. He standard­ized a system of weights and measures, reformed the Chinese script so that the writing of characters should be more uniform, and centralized both the bureaucracy and the tax system in Qangan. His minister Li Ping is still held in honor in modern China, for he found a way to control the worst of the annual spring flood of the Yellow River.

The Chinese remembered the burdens Shi Huangdi placed on them during his rule. His less than able successors could not enforce the rigid rule of First Emperor. Only four years after Shi Huangdi was buried in his magnificent tomb, rebels overthrew the third of the Qin emperors, his sec­ond son. A new dynasty came to the fore, and ancient China entered its most prosperous era.