The Decisive Struggle: Chu - Han Contention
The Chu-Han Contention (206— 202 BC) was a post-Qin Dynasty period in China. During this period the rebel kings derived from the collapse of the Qin Dynasty formed two camps fighting each other. One camp was headed by Liu Bang, King of Han, while the other was headed by Xiang Yu, Overlord of the Western Chu. The Chu-Han Con- tention ended with Liu Bang’s total victory. China was reunited under the new Han Empire, which was to become one of the strongest empires in the history of the world.
Chu-Han Contention also made a strong impact on Chinese culture and language. Liu Bang and his officers are often favored in Chinese history book because Liu Bang started out as a peasant. They are often referred to as people who worked their way to the top starting with nothing, like a rags-to-riches story. Liu Bang is respected in Chinese history because he created the Han Dynasty which is considered a golden age period for China, militarily. The other golden age period is the Tang Dynasty, culturally.
Many Chinese four-character proverbs and short stories come from the Chu-Han War. The expression, literally means “fighting with the river at your back”, was often used to mean “either win or die”. This expression came from a battle, in which Han Xin, Liu Bang’s Chief Gen- eral, deliberately stationed his troops facing the enemy, with their backs to the river, leaving no escape route. The knowledge that there was no way out but victory or death inspired the soldiers to fight harder. The last stand of Xiang Yu is often called Farewell My Concubine in Chinese opera. Chinese Chess is usually referred to as Chu-Han Contention. The red side is usually Han while the Green side is usually called Chu. The middle part which divides the players’s ides is called the “Chu-Han borderline”, literally “Chu river and Han border”. The incident of the “feast at Hong Gate”was made into a proverb. The 36 Strategies, Chi- nese proverbs on strategy and the art of war, make many ChuHan War references.
The Glorious Han Dynasty
The Chinese people consider the Han Dynasty to be one of the greatest periods in the entire history of China. As a result, the members of the ethnic majority of Chinese people to this day still call themselves “people of Han”, and their language “Han Language”.
During the Han Dynasty, China officially became a Confucian state and prospered domestically: agriculture, handicrafts and commerce flourished, and the population reached 50million. Meanwhile, the em- pire extended its political and cultural influence over Vietnam, Central Asia, Mongolia, and Korea.
Intellectual, literary, and artistic endeavors revived and flourished during the Han Dynasty. The Han period produced China’s most fa- mous historian, Sima Qian (145— 87 BC), whose Records of the Grand Historian provides a detailed chronicle from the time of Yellow Emper- or to that of the Emperor Wu (141—87 BC). Technological advances also marked this period. One of the great Chinese inventions, paper, dates from Han times.
It is fair enough to state that contemporary empires of the Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire were the two superpowers of the known world. Several Roman embassies to China are recounted in Chinese history, starting with a History of the Later Han account of a Roman convoy set out by emperor Antoninus Pius(D that reached the Chinese capital Luoyang in 166 AD and was greeted by Emperor Huan .
From 138 BC, Emperor Wu dispatched Zhang Qian twice as his envoy to the Western regions, and in the process pioneered the route known as the Silk Road from Chang’an, through Xinjiang and Central Asia, and on to the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
Following Zhang Qian’s embassy and report, commercial relations between China and Central as well as Western Asia flourished, as many Chinese missions were sent throughout the 1st century BC, initiating the development of the Silk Road.
The Splendid Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty with the most populous city in the world at the time, is regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization equal, or even superior, to the Han period. Its territory was greater than that of the Han. Stimulated by the contact with India and the Middle East, the Em- pire saw a flowering of creativity in many fields. Buddhism, originating in India around the time of Confucius, continued to flourish during the Tang period and was adopted by the imperial family, becoming thor- oughly sinicized and a permanent part of Chinese traditional culture. The Tang period was the golden age of Chinese literature and art. Block printing made the written words vastly available to greater audiences.
The early decades of the eighth century was ultimately considered the zenith point of the Tang Dynasty if not the whole Chinese civilization. Emperor Tang Xuanzong brought China to its golden age, and Tang influences reached all the way to Japan and Korea in the east, Vietnam in the south and central and western Asia in the west. The turning point came in 755 during the closing years of Xuanzong’s reign, where the An Lushan-Shi Siming Rebellion all but destroyed the Tang Dynasty and the prosperity that took years to build up. It left the Dynasty weakened, and for the remaining 150 years the Tang Dynasty never regained its glory days of the 7th and 8th century.
Near the end of the Tang Dynasty, regional military governors became increasingly powerful, and began to function more like inde- pendent regimes on their own right. The dynasty was ended when one of the military governors, Zhu Wen, deposed the last emperor and took the throne for himself, thereby beginning the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period.
It was also during the Tang Dynasty that the only female monarch of China, Empress Wu Zetian made her mark. Her rule would be only a handful of examples where women seized power and ruled China and the only one in Chinese history to rule in her own right.
The “Chinese Renaissance” in the Song Dynasty
After the Tang and the Five Dynasties period, a time full of unrest and wars, the Song Dynasty was a time of consolidation for Chinese culture. The traditional state of civil administration fully developed and brought up a revival of Confucian thought—the so-called “Neo-Con- fucianism”, with many scholars commenting the traditional books, but also developing a more metaphysical worldview of the rather state-ori- ented “old” Confucianism. The Song Dynasty is often called a “Chinese Renaissance” because, similar to the European Renaissance, progress in technology and inventions, the upcoming of new philosophical in- terpretations of the classic texts meant a renewal of the old and the cre- ation of new streaming. The Song Dynasty is marked by a revival of old Confucian traditions after the Tang age of Buddhism, and the prevail- ing position of civil scholars over the military age of the Tang and the Five Dynasties. But Song culture was also a culmination of the heritage of 2,000 years of culture, and from this point on, Chinese thinking be- came orthodox; culture became sterile as if it had been unchanged since thousands of years ago. A power balance with the northern empires of Liao and Jin made it possible for the Song rulers to peacefully develop a blooming urban economy with new technical instruments. Trade now oriented more to the sea because the traditional trade routes to Inner Asia had been cut off.
