Ch 5 1 Chinas River Valleys Ancient China

Ch. 5. 1 China’s River Valley’s Ancient China is very large, depending on your location in China, climate, soil, waterways, and landforms vary greatly

A. Contrasting Climate and Landforms • The north china plain is located on the Huang River also location of highlands • They have a short summer filled with lots of rain and monsoons, but not much rain any other time

• Climate in the south is warm most of the time and get rain nearly all year long • Most of the huge monsoon storms comes from off the South China Sea

B. Effects on Civilization • Geographic Barriers like mountains and seas separate the land of china • Because of this influence from Egypt, Nubia and even India was very little • These people believed they were at the center of the earth so they called themselves the Middle Kingdom

• Like many other regions the rivers flood often bringing down ? ? ? Which caused very fertile lands • This made the Huang River and the Chang River the main hot spots like the Nile was for Egypt

C. Yellow River • Huang River is also known as the yellow river • This is due to its yellow-brown soil • When the river floods it deposits loess or yellow brown soil and provides prime growing areas

D. China’s Sorrows • The Huang River provided life with the crops by the large amounts of trade it allowed • However it also brought death with the many unexpected floods, sometimes they were so bad that entire cities were lost and the river even created new paths for it to flow

E. Flood Control • To help control this problem the Chinese built dikes or ditches made up of steep walls to contain the water • At times these weren’t even enough, but settlement still occurred due to the resources

II. Early Civilization in China • Early farmers were once nomads but once the rivers resources were noticed many settled • A. Shang Dynasty was the first in China • They were known for their bronze work, language, and writing systems

B. Zhou Dynasty • This dynasty bordered the Shang and like before sometimes it was peaceful and others it was not • China ruled this area for 1000 years but within this time wars over different kingdoms occurred all the time

C. Mandate of Heaven • Sometimes rulers inherited the throne while others won it only by war, either way they believed it was fate • This was called their mandate of heaven or the order things went in their lives in order to get to heaven

III. Importance of the Family • Family was the center of their life • Their number one responsibility was family • Most living arrangements followed the traditional style where one household might contain up to 5 generations including small kids, uncles, grandparents etc…

B. Family Authority • Authority depended on age and whether your were the male or female in the family • The oldest man had the power and he decided the discipline, who married his daughters, and gave out land to his sons

C. Women’s roles • Women were considered lower than man, and they had to follow 3 major obedience's • 1) obey their fathers in youth 2) obey their husbands after marriage 3) obey their sons if they were widowed • They also followed 4 virtues: 1) morality 2)modesty 3) proper speech 4) domestic skills

D. Family Matters • Chinese were known for using inherited names along with personal names • Ex. Washington, George • Last name showed family heritage and first name showed individualism