CHINA Notes 3
HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY OF CHINA
NEOLITHIC: 3000 BC
 agriculture, animal husbandry (bones, seeds, tools)
China is thought of in terms of Dynasties rather than centuries
SHANG PERIOD - 1766 -1122 BC
Bronze Age
 intensive agriculture - irrigation
 engineering skills, political influence, wealth
 selective animal husbandry
 aesthetics - crafts, pottery
 social organization - villages, public works, taxation
 *writing developed, literacy high
 China a macro-entity (equivalent macro cultures in North Africa and
Mesopotamia)
Culture Hearth - Anyang, Luoyang, Xian
A culture hearth generally has:
1. A productive physical environment - food surplus, rivers, water, fertility,
which provides rewards for agriculture, lumbering, animal husbandry
(rewards such as profits for some and taxes for the government)
2. A cultural contact zone -Yang Su corridor silk route, transportation.
3. Stimulus of pressure. Raiding tribes force you to have a superior social
structure for defense like the Great Wall
CHU DYNASTY - ended 221 BC
 unification of North and South
CHIN DYNASTY - 221 BC - 207 BC
 China's name
 Great Wall completed
HAN DYNASTY: 207 BC - 228 AD
 China's real development
 "Are you Chinese?" -- "I am Han." D.A.R. of China! There are more non-Han, but
they're called minority!
 Confucianism - philosophy, religion
 social system - sophisticated administrative class (Mandarins)
 capitalism - state and private, money invented interregional development with coastal
trade Korea, Japan, as well as western silk route to Russia and India
 military expansion - conquered areas along silk route, also Viet Nam (Anam), Korea
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Culture Hearth - area of origin of basic cultural patterns
Yellow and Wei confluence, Anjang, Luoyang, Xian
Mandarin language
Cultural Contacts - trade: Westward - silk, spices, tea, jade, paper
Eastward: gold, silver, cotton
Ideas - religion, Christianity, Islam (centuries after Han Dynasty), Buddhism from
Nepal and India
China was then and remained a very inward looking country
EUROPEAN IMPACT ON CHINA
 Turks conquered Constantinople in 15th century, severed the Silk Route
 Spice Islands in Indonesia
 Profound cultural differences. Europeans had no respect for the Chinese, and they
had superior military and naval technology.
 Europeans arrived by back door, by sea into coastal areas, forcing China to look
outward.
Two Phases of European Contact
1. 16th to 18th century
 Merchant companies searching for exotic goods, established coastal trading stations.
 Portuguese in Macau, Germans to Ching Tau, British to Shang Hai, French also
present in South (most particularly in Viet Nam)
2. 19th century: Europeanization
 Imperialism became a factor, Europeans wanted ports and hinterland. Britain,
France, Germany, Russia, Japan (Italy and US kept out).
 Geographic reorientation from within China: focused on their interior rather than the
coastal ports
 Russia was moving into central Asia from the West
 British were moving into China from the South
 beginning of the "great game" in Asia, later it was in Afghanistan
 Spheres of interest - Europeans had carved up eastern China
 Manchuria - Russian; Japan defeats Russians (1903) taking over Manchuria
 Shandong Peninsula -German (breweries)
 Taiwan- Japanese
 Shang Hai, Yangtze Basin - British
 South -French, Vietnam (Annam)
1839-60: Opium Wars
1898-1903: Boxer Rebellion: Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, a nationalist
movement to rid China of Western culture and Christianity.
Pu’I or Puyi: the last emperor of China, Manchu Dynasty, 1908-67, puppet emperor until
Mao’s communist takeover in 1930s.
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Urbanism - Europeans wanted big cities, therefore, many Chinese cities are similar
architecturally to those of Europe.
 Shang Hai: major financial center (NY of China)
 Major cities all along coast, industrial and commercial
 Railroads from interior to coastal cities, didn't join up other areas until the
Cultural Revolution
 Also large population Movements to Southeast Asia and to North America (RR)
AGRICULTURE
 monoculture -- what we have in the US
 multiple cropping -- what they have in much of China
 mixed cropping -- seeds of 2 or more crops (beans and oats, beans a
nitrogen-fixing legume)
 inter-cropping -- rows of various food crops, similar plants
 relay cropping -- esp. rice, 3 crops a year instead of two by having a
seedling nursery in one field while the standing crop matures, get a head
start.
 double cropping -- more than one crop/yr. maybe 3 in warm climates
 ratoon -- more than one harvest from one planting, sugar cane, hay, grasses
 transhumance-- moving animals seasonally, winter down slope, summer upslope,
or latitudes, to the grass. Humance from the Latin humus.
 Oasis agriculture -- small isolated, water, intensive agriculture
 Nomadism -- no fixed routes, more circular meanders than transhumance.
 Aquaculture -- growing fish in ponds, harvesting, crawfish
 Sinicization – “Chinese-ification” of non-Han Chinese
Hmmm…
 Forbidden City , 7 hundred years old, Ming Dynasty
 Shang Hai, 1930s, European-like and built by them, Port facilities with Victorian
architecture and lifestyles
 human power always cheap, cheaper to feed than animals
 Communists have turned soil erosion around, noted the problem caused by
overgrazing, planted trees and other vegetation on slopes.
 every city was a walled city. Communists tore most walls down because they
were too symbolic of the past, dynasties and warfare
 Today there is more emphasis on Chinese cultural heritage in opera and theater.
During Maoist Communist Regimes theater was about the party, the workers, and
one's duty to the state.
 China has more pigs than anywhere else, they eat almost anything and don't have
to graze on land that would be more valuable growing crops.
 Aquaculture is everywhere in eastern China because it is wetter there. They grow
carp, Chinese eat them, we don't.
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night soil, human dung, 2-3 yrs. old, crop fertilizer
Silk - 20 days to make a silk cocoon, silk worms placed on bamboo screens, fed
white mulberry leaves (not red like we have here), make silk cocoon, screen
placed in hot oven quickly to kill worm, but not damage silk or screen
MUSLIM AREA OF CHINA
 Xinjiang Province, Eastern Turkistan
 Mosques, 4 minarets, Muslims pray 5 times a day, no rendition of
human form in Islam
 Turkic language, Kashgar, Marco Polo into Kashgar, Tartara
 Women half-veiled, short skirts and veil (hair alluring), semi-western, semiMuslim clothing
 signs in Arabic and Chinese, maybe English
 exhortations, brush your teeth, marry late, wash your hands, all over China
wheel almost an innovation in western China
Oasis Agriculture
 grapes for wine
 sorghum
 desert constantly encroaching
 100 m below seal level, all internal drainage
 cotton