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China Cultural Analysis

INTRODUCTION
COUNTRY Formal Name: People’s Republic of China (Zhonghua Renmin Gonghe Guo — 中华人民共和国 ).
Short Form: China (Zhongguo — 中国 ).
Term for Citizen(s) Chinese (singular and plural) (Huaren — 华人 ).
Capital: Beijing (Northern Capital — 北京 ).

I. Historical Background

Prehistory: Hominid activity dates back 4 to 5 million years in China, and evidence has been found of early Paleolithic hominids living some 1 million years ago. Found in southwest of Beijing in 1927, date from around 400,000 years ago. Some 7,000 Neolithic sites (some as old as ca. 9000 B.C.) have been found in North China, the Yangzi (Changjiang or Yangtze) River Valley, and southeast coastal areas. These sites include a Neolithic agricultural village in Shaanxi Province dating from around 4500 B.C. to 3750 B.C., which had a moat for security and evidence of wood-framed, mud and straw houses, colored pottery, slash-and burn farming, and burial sites in nearby cemeteries.
Early History: The first recognized dynasty—the Xia—lasted from about 2200 to 1750 B.C. and marked the transition from the late Neolithic age to the Bronze Age. The Xia was the beginning of a long period of cultural development and dynastic succession that led the way to the more urbanized civilization of the Shang Dynasty (1750–1040 B.C.). Hereditary Shang kings ruled over much of North China, and Shang armies fought frequent wars against neighboring settlements and nomadic herders from the north. The Shang capitals were centers of sophisticated court life for the king, who was the shamanistic head of the ancestor- and spirit-worship cult. Intellectual life developed in significant ways during the Shang period and flourished in the next dynasty—the Zhou (1040–256 B.C.). China’s great schools of intellectual thought—Confucianism, Legalism, Daoism, Mohism, and others—all developed during the Zhou Dynasty.
The Imperial Period: Over several millennia, China absorbed the people of surrounding areas into its own...