www.UsHumans.net: Chapter 14
Our civilization, from ancient to modern
To better understand today's world, we'll have a look at Ancient Athenian democracy and then the world of the Middle Ages, which occurred about halfway between ancient and modern times. This chapter contains a description of the development of our current ideas of civilization, including our ideas of history, mathematics, science, the factory, government by and for the people, political and religious tolerance, individual liberty, and economic and social justice. Our ideas of liberty came as a response to having lived for a time under unjust conditions. They were not sudden realizations of ours but reactions to unjust demands of authoritarian leaders. We have seen that it is in our social nature to demand mutually beneficial systems. (In Chapter 19 we will see examples of the techniques modern authoritarian regimes use to limit public discussion of their system's performance or of particular excesses.)
In the previous chapters we followed our transition from gatherer-hunter to farmer and then to city dwellers and saw that the daily lives of all city dwellers, anywhere on the Earth, share much in common. Our civilization began with the development of farming villages and with our invention of the city that housed the expanded population. Our collective ideas of civilization and the goals we have in mind have been continuously maturing.
Throughout our history, there have been just a handful of governmental types, economic systems, and religious institutions. This book does not contain long lists of successive kings and queens, nations, presidents, church leaders, technologies, and factories. It is instead concerned with the origination of the idea of each of these things. We have seen that occasionally a political figure temporarily rearranges the map, a charismatic religious leader begins to spread a new viewpoint of the path to living a proper life, or scientists come to better understand nature, our society, and ourselves. Throughout the centuries, technology continually adds additional techniques, tools, machines, and procedures to reduce the physical burden of our lives. As it has been said, our machines were originally made to save time, but lately, they are often made just to fill time.
Astronomy, mathematics, and reading tea-leaves
Astronomy, geometry, and mathematics began to be studied by the people of the very first states. Mathematics helps in planning, bureaucracy, and record keeping. Geometry was studied because builders needed to know the properties of squares, circles, and triangles and such. For example, a builder wants to know if a marked out foundation is square before stacking any bricks to make its walls. If the builder already knows about the geometric properties of a square, he or she will make the following test. One string is stretched from one corner across to the opposite corner of the foundation marks while a second string is stretched between the two remaining corners. Next, the builder looks at the point where the two strings cross each other. If the two strings make a ninety-degree angle then the building will be square.
Astronomy is important because it helps us identify the dates at which seasons begin and end and tells us when to plant or harvest and when to perform certain religious ceremonies. For example, when the star Sirius began to rise at sunrise, the Ancient Egyptians knew it was the time of year in which the Nile would soon flood and irrigate their crops. Astronomical observations of the annually repeating motions of the stars produces an accurate calendar. There are also annually repeating plant and animal cycles. The Lakota calendar has month-names indicating the time of ripening of various fruits and crops, calving cycles, and temperature extremes, see www.nps.gov/jeff/LewisClark2/TheJourney/NativeAmericans/LakotaSioux.htm.
In the big city today, we barely see the stars and planets because of all the street lights. Before cities became flooded with street lights, about one-hundred years ago, everyone could see that all stars rotate as a group while making nightly and annual motions. The stars do not move relative to each other but move as an entire group. However, there are seven special "stars" that wander around within the pattern of fixed stars. These are the visible planets (“planet” is the Ancient Greek word for "wandering star"). The two most-distant planets, Uranus and Pluto, are visible only with a telescope. Astronomy is the endeavor to observe the heavens while astrology is the attempt to predict the future from those observations.
Throughout history, we humans have spent considerable effort in our futile attempt to predict the future. Some ancient states tried to make predictions about the future by observing the random patterns and motions of various objects: the twisting flight of a flock of birds, the entrails of a sacrificial animal, the motions of tea leaves and rising smoke, or the positions of the planets. Archaeologists have found 4,000-year-old Mesopotamian tablets containing astrological discussions. These ancient records show that humans have always been the same in that we seem able to take comfort in any explanation containing any seemingly logical element–for example, flock swirls moving from left to right "predict" that we'll move from famine to feast because both left-right and famine-feast are in alphabetical order. In the next chapter we will see that until about one-hundred years ago, astrology played a much larger role in daily life than it does today. For example, the timing of a hog-slaughter was influenced by the phase of the moon. Astrology plays a smaller role today because the time at which we begin and end work at the factory is already set. Astrology today doesn't go much beyond its daily appearance in our "newspapers." Today we recognize astrology to be nonsense because it fails to provide repeatable results. We can use its acceptance today as a measure of the scientific illiteracy of a population. The only nice thing I can think of to say about astrology is that it is yet another example showing that our civilization today has many direct links back to the first cities and states. Our civilization has been accumulating ideas and techniques since its beginning. Except for our attempts to predict the future, most of our ideas and efforts have enabled us to build something new and useful.
We saw in Chapter 4 that every 26,000 years, the Earth's axis of rotation processes through a complete cycle–or circle–just as a spinning top makes a wide, slow circle as it rapidly spins. (For video clips of the precession of a spinning wheel, visit http://wind.caspercollege.edu/~marquard/astronomy/movies/wheel.avi or the website http://230nsc1.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/rotv3.html.) For the spinning-top-like Earth, the direction toward an apparent “north-star” slowly wobbles through a circle once every 26,000 years. This means that in about 13,000 years the star Vega (in the constellation Lyra) will be the "north star" and that after another 13,000 years have elapsed, the sky will be back to the way it is today with Polaris being the north star. This also means that the constellations have moved by 4/26 = 15% of an entire cycle or circle since the time in which the astrological constellations were defined, which was 4,000 years ago. Fifteen percent of a year is about one month. Through the last 4,000 years, the constellations have rotated in the sky by 15% of a full circle, which means they rise about one month later today than they did 4,000 years ago.
My friend Kelley likes to explain to astronomy students that the apparent positions of the constellations of the zodiac have rotated by one month, out of twelve, since the time at which they were defined. For example, those persons born between March 20 and April 20 are said to be born in the constellation of Aries. If you were born 4,000 years ago, on March 27, then the sun's position at noon on your birthday was indeed within the constellation of Aries. But if you were born on March 27 during some year within the nineteenth century then the Sun's position at noon on your birthday was not in Aries but actually in Pisces. (For the correct signs, see www.jas.org.jo/zodiac.html.) Kelley says there is an occasional reaction such as "What, I'm a Pisces not an Aries; I can't be a Pisces." Astrology and its “prediction” procedures are even older than our realization, by Copernicus in 1543 ad, that the Earth and the other planets orbit around the Sun: its procedures are performed with the assumption that the planets and the Sun instead orbit the Earth. (To see a copy of the original publication by Copernicus, visit www.bj.uj.edu.pl/bjmanus/revol/titlpg_e.html)
The mathematics, geometry, and astronomy of the people of the first cities have been extended by each successive generation, as is still occurring today. Unlike astrology, these subjects have been more productive in that they have improved the quality of life of all of us by building the objects, tools, and procedures of our civilization: astrology may have sent us on a few “goose chases” but has not built any portion of our civilization. Some stepping stone in mathematics include the geometry of the triangle, algebra, and calculus. Everyone is familiar with the Pythagorean Theorem, which is the relationship between the sides of a triangle. This relationship was found in the sixth century bc. In the eighth century ad, the Persian al-Khwarizmi, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khwarizmi, developed the mathematical subject of algebra. This is another important milestone in the development of the mathematics of our civilization. It allowed many previously cumbersome problems to be more-easily solved. (This also means that if we teach our high school students how to do no more mathematics than algebra then when are restricting our children to the mathematics that built our eighth-century civilization.) Calculus was invented in the seventeenth century by Isacc Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz, see http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Leibniz.html.
The Ancient Greeks present our first explanations of nature not given in terms of deities
The people of ancient Greece (sixth to third century bc) built upon the mathematics and technology of the previous states of the Middle East. Continuity from the ancient Greeks backward in time is illustrated by the fact that the initial growth of many city-states within ancient Greece (and of the pre-Roman Etruscans) was due to their commercial ties with the older states of the Middle East. Continuity forward in time from the ancient Greeks is seen in the continuing convention of using Greek architecture in important buildings. Another indication of our direct link back to ancient Greece is illustrated by the fact that we all know of Zeus, Hercules, Plato, Aristotle, philosophy, ethics, and democracy. The Hellenistic culture of ancient Greece greatly influenced the entire Mediterranean and Middle East for hundreds of years. (Visit http://classics.mit.edu/Browse for Greek texts and visit www.stoa.org/metis for panoramic views of numerous Greek sites.)
The Ancient Greeks were the first to attempt rational explanations of natural phenomena. Before then, every explanation was given in terms of deities. This was a major stepping stone in the history of our civilization. For example, before that time we would explain an annual river rise in terms of the flood god, but after that time we would explain the rising rivers in terms of the melting snows of nearby mountains. This rational thinking has enabled us to develop more useful machines then would have been possible if we instead explained things in terms of gods. For example, a radio might never have been devised through using predicted interactions between the inductor and capacitor gods who convince the resonance god to react to the electromagnetic wave god.
There may have been other people who thought nondeistically about nature but the Ancient Greeks were the first to record and to develop this way of thinking. It was mentioned above that half the male citizens of Ancient Athens were literate, whereas literacy rates were more commonly 1% in nearby states. The democratic Athenians openly debated ideas. The uniquely literate, open, and democratic aspects of Greek society may have had a lot to do with their being the first in many intellectual pursuits–in contrast to many times and places of the world in which our kings and queens produce centuries-long environments of overly constrained lives and unfree thought.
In The Origins of Greek Thought, Jean-Pierre Vernant describes the beginnings of this new rational thought. In the early sixth-century bc town of Miletus, the three philosophers Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Thales, ushered in a new way of thinking about nature. For them, nature was the object of a detached and systematic investigation, and they began to offer a comprehensive view of the workings of nature that was free of deities. At the time this was heretical thinking. After the shock had subsided, it began to be believed that the entire world might be accessible to human intelligence. Before this time, our mythological beginnings explained how today's world came into being; after this time, it was turned around such that the intelligible world of the present provided an explanation of our beginnings.
For the first time, the origin and operation of nature became an explicitly posed problem in which rational and non-mysterious answers would be sought. Knowledge was de-sacrilized. Vernant says this was an intellectual revolution and that its light of reason could never be forgotten and has never ceased to guide the progress of the human mind. This new way of thinking bounced around the planet, from one person to another, and has continued to be improved upon through the centuries.
It was the beginning of a kind of thought that was outside religion. The old nature-deities would no longer suffice to explain the world. For example, the geometry of squares has no analogy in myth and indicates that the old deities are somehow lacking. Pythagoras did not explain the properties of triangles in terms of the personalities of deities.
Throughout the world, we began to replace the deities of nature with rational explanations of nature. However, it didn't yet occur to us to test our explanations by making measurements. The value of making repeatable measurements was realized only as we began developing the scientific method during the Renaissance and Enlightenment of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries ad. Since then, the improving accuracy of our measurements continually improves the accuracy of our explanations. The peoples of ancient Greece contributed many advances to our way of thinking about nature. Its philosophers thought deeply about what can and cannot be known about nature but they did not perform experiments. Aristotle gave rational explanations of many phenomena but nobody got around to testing these explanations until 1,000 years later.
The Ancient Greeks contributed much to our civilization. They improved the alphabetic writing system of the earlier Phoenicians–who had made improvements of the yet-earlier Mesopotamian systems. They developed formal logic. They debated the nature of being and knowing. They asked what is reality and how can we prove that something is real. Is a number a real object? Is an idea real? Is a horse real or does it just represent the idea of horseness? How can we distinguish between the natural and the supernatural? (Until the last few centuries, the distinction was uncertain.) They also made many technological advances. They made labor saving machines that multiplied the work one person could do.
Their writings about ethics came to the same conclusions as has each of today's major religions. The Greek classics exhibit the virtues of humans. Their moral principles have justice, sanctity, and truth. At the time that the literature of other ancient states mainly discussed gods and rulers, Greek literature contained many heroes who were not gods but were people who overcame challenging situations. The Greek comedies made fun of everybody, even the wealthy citizen who had financed the play's production.
Athenian democracy is described in The Classical Athenian Democracy by David Stockton. Stockton explains that in classical Athens, democracy meant that the people held power in common and that there was equality under the law for both rich and poor. Democracy was meant to protect the people from the random laws of a small, economically privileged portion of society and serve the interests of all citizens, not just the privileged. Through the decades, classical Athens contained 25,000 to 40,000 adult males. About 40% of them were defined to be "citizens" because they held a minimal amount of assets and so were allowed to vote and to hold office–females could not. (Just before the Great Reform Act of 1867, only 40% of the adult males in England had been allowed to vote.) Though only males were allowed to be citizens, every male citizen was allowed to give his view during official, public meetings; women were not allowed to take part.
There are as many reasons for political systems as there are groups of peoples. The people of each region of the world have chosen their own system in response to their own history, culture, circumstances, and preferences. Two particularly important, early viewpoints have been voiced by the ancient Israelite distrust of kings and queens and the classical Athenian distrust of power concentrated in the hands of a few rich persons.
In Early Greece, The Bronze and Archaic Ages, M.I. Finley explains that democracy originated in response to the growing oppression of city residents by the rich few. The first step toward citizen-shared power was taken in 594 bc by the leader Solon. He complained that the unrighteous, privileged leaders could not restrain their excesses and grew rich by stealing for themselves. Solon warned that the widespread economic exploitation, discontent, corruption, and indifference of the powerful was in danger of causing civil strife or even tyranny. He said that he wanted to restrain and correct this unjust situation.
In The Origins of Greek Thought, Jean-Pierre Vernant describes how a royal palace system had began to develop in Mycenaen Greece around 2000 bc. This royal system was similar to those of the many city-states throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. The Mycenaen palace system was destroyed around 1200 bc when the Dorian people migrated into Greece. This was followed by a political Dark Age lasting for several centuries, in which there were no kings. A dramatic change then occurred in Greece as part of society became involved in overseas trade with the older Middle Eastern states. This portion of the people began to accumulate and display a great wealth and luxury that was furiously denounced by the people of Athens. The people said those who have the most today want twice as much tomorrow and that wealth makes one mad, has no object but itself, and is insatiable. At the root of wealth is a corrupted disposition–a perverse will. Wealth would bring injustice, oppression, and disorder by enslaving the masses.
Before Athens became democratic, politics consisted of the maneuvering combinations of the leading personages of the aristocracy. The people had no say in their government except that they were sometimes expected to rally behind a certain leader or group. Their new democratic wisdom would bring moderation, proportion, fair limits, the golden mean, and nothing in extreme. The people represented civic values as opposed to rich extravagance.
You may have heard of the ancient Greek tyrants. A tyrant was a town-boss who could have his way because he owned much of the town. Foreign trade had brought excessive wealth and social and economic injustice, and in response, the assembly of equal citizens was created. The citizens were equal in that law now applied equally to all. Each citizen could take part in the assembly and each person's vote counted equally. Each person could also take any other person to court.
In several ways, democracy in ancient Athens was more extensive than today's version. For one thing, the daily operations of the city–down to the smallest detail–were discussed in public meetings or assemblies. The entire voting public would meet to decide whether or not to construct a building and who would be paid to do the construction or whether or not to send a cargo ship to a certain port. They would also decide whether their city would go to war with another city. When the citizens voted for war, they knew that they themselves would be the soldiers who would fight and die. Each citizen was allowed to stand and speak during assembly meetings. Each speaker was expected to express his view in a short and to-the-point message. Each man could speak only once per issue and would be ridiculed if he talked too long or strayed from the issue. The leading citizens were those whose advice regularly proved to be good. These men were often expected to speak so that other citizens would know and follow their advised course of action. After this public debate, decisions were obtained by counting votes cast by a show of hands.
The citizens met in an assembly to vote on the issues of the week; there were about forty assembly meetings per year. These issues were preselected by a council of five hundred citizens, each of whom were selected by lot to serve for one year. The city of Athens was divided into ten districts, and to better guarantee a cross section of people throughout the city, the council of five-hundred consisted of fifty persons from each of these ten regions. Before each meeting, the council posted the current issues for all to see and discuss–literacy and public debate were essential. Any citizen could propose a new law or action but if it were shown to be inconsistent with previous laws he would lose his citizenship rights for a few years. Citizens were paid a small fee to attend the assembly meetings so that it would be attended by all, not just those wealthy enough to have free time. (How are new laws proposed, debated, and approved in your nation?)
Democracy in ancient Athens was also more extensive than today's version in that individual involvement occurred as citizens took turns holding various offices. There were no elected officials in Ancient Athens. Instead, governmental positions, such as those of the councilors, were filled by random drawings in which names were picked from a box. The selected persons served for about a year, and no person could serve twice in their lifetime. Where the knowledge of professionals was needed, there would be permanent positions but most governmental positions were temporary. Many Athenians felt that the benefits of more-experienced politicians and officials would be spoiled by a growth in corruption. Today we sometimes find that long-term positions for career politicians leads to aspirations of power and selfish actions.
Today's democracy consists of elections of professional, lifelong politicians who are hired to make our daily decisions for us. Since we have the technology today to make decisions by "a show of hands"–through the internet, for example–it seems to be a safe bet that a change will be coming to today's more-limited form of democracy. Will we all agree to have such an arrangement?
Trials were also decided by the vote of the citizens. Before the time of democracy, if one didn't have wealth and influence it was hard to get access to justice. It was also hard to get justice from wealthy persons because they were conducting the court. Athenian democracy placed the administration of the courts into the hands of the citizens. There were no paid professional judges or district attorneys. The judge and jury were amateurs. The jury were judges of facts and law, and they determined verdicts and penalties. The number of jurymen depended on the severity of the charges. Every sixty-year-old citizen was required to be available to serve as a court arbitrator. He was an ordinary person but had considerable experience of life. At any time, there were several of these arbitrators. Each case was assigned by lot to one of the arbitrators.
Anyone could bring a court charge against any other person. (Do you feel that today you could take court action against any person or corporation, which is organization of persons, that has done you wrong?) A convicted defendant would be fined, lose his civic rights or property, or even his life. The accuser was rewarded if the case was won. However, the accusers would have to pay a fee if they failed to get at least 20% of the jury to agree that the defendant was guilty.
Each year, about 3% of citizens were serving in the government. Through any twenty-five-year period, one-quarter to one-third of the citizens had served in their government. Each year, 15 to 20 percent of Athenian citizens were registered to serve in the courts. Today's parliament and assembly members consist of a much smaller portion of the population, and each member tries to serve permanently. It is also true that the members are not a cross section of the people of the nation. Do you think people today would like to be randomly selected and paid to serve a one-year term in an assembly?
More so than it does today, Athenian democracy meant self-government, individual involvement, participation, and random representation in the daily decision making processes. There was everywhere an ingrained suspicion of the corruptive effects of power. Their system was inefficient in time and labor, unprofessional, cumbersome, uncoordinated, and plagued by annual discontinuity. But never since have the citizens held full control over the daily operation of their own city and government. The people of Athens had total control over the legislative, executive, and judicial portions of their government because the people of Athens were the government. The citizens felt that they were in charge of their own affairs. There was no feeling of "us versus them" as occurs in some of today's representational governments of career politicians. The Athenians knew that only thirty miles away, government was very different.
The Athenian society was open and tolerant of public expression, criticism, and dissent. They wanted democracy because it protected them from the random laws of a small privileged section of society. (In Chapter 19 we will see that still today, these are the characteristics of a people choosing democracy as their form of government.) Legal decisions were no longer made by the upper class who were operating to safeguard their own interests. The people simply wanted freedom and its power along with political equality and freedom from exploitation and injustice. Since we innately react against any interaction that is not mutually beneficial to its participants, we can all sympathize with the desire of the Athenians to protect themselves from the injustice of being overrun by the seekers of wealth and power.
The richest persons of Athens had to pay special taxes for the privilege of being wealthy. They might have to pay the annual expenses of a naval vessel or the costs of a musical presentation or theatrical play–and maybe even be the object of its ridicule. The Athenians later modified this such that the 1,250 richest persons paid for these items in proportion to their wealth.
In The Athenian Constitution, see http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.html, Aristotle described the following essential features of full democracy. If all citizens are to be equal then the people must be sovereign. The will of the people is determined by majority vote in a popular assembly open to all citizens, regardless of wealth or rank. There should be no governing class, instead all citizens should take turns holding office. The officers of the state should be appointed randomly except where it is clear that some expertise is needed. There should be no property qualifications for office and tenure should be short and infrequent. The citizens should be paid for attending the assembly and for serving as jurors in the court. As an argument against professional politicians, Aristotle said that the combined knowledge of many novices exceeded the knowledge of one experienced person. Which of Aristotle’s features of democracy are part of your nation's democracy today?
One group of thirty wealthy persons did manage to take control of Athens for a seven-year period. They wanted to put an end to the egalitarian society so that they could control the wealth of Athens for their own benefit. They managed to do this by pretending that many extreme measures were necessary because of a war that was occurring at that time. For example, instead of all citizens attending the assembly, they "temporarily" restricted its access to just the wealthiest persons, who were then free to act in their own interests. The man Alcibiades of Samos was privy to the real motives of this group and exposed them. Athenian democracy then lasted until Alexander the Great's Macedonians put an end to it by conquering the region. The Athenians enjoyed their full democracy for just a few centuries and then had to wait many more centuries before democracy would return.
In most of our modern democracies, we elect lawmakers from a group of professional politicians. These elected officials take care of the day-to-day business of running the city or state. There are regions (cantons) today in Switzerland (see www.about.ch/administration/index.html#CH_Admin_Kantone) that have assemblies in which citizens meet to decide local issues by a show of hands. Do you think that you would like to be involved in every decision of your local communities' government or would you rather spend your time elsewhere and just leave these things up to an elected official? Can you control every elected official? Will excesses occur if you do not monitor your elected officials? For example, can elected officials take the nation to war on their own whim without needing permission from the general population? If they can then the people are not in control of the members of their government. The Athenian government was a form of democracy that was different from modern forms. If you would like for your city to be totally governed or operated by the people in the same way as occurred in ancient Athens, all you have to do is raise the issue in your hometown and find out if others agree. Luckily today, we less often have to die while improving our government.
The Greek empire was soon replaced by the Roman empire. (We saw that the Roman empire developed two or three thousand years after the formation of our first city-states.) After the fall of Rome in 450 ad, the region of Europe no longer had a single, central political authority. The evaporation of the Roman Empire was followed by a few centuries of rule by local lords. The region saw reduced arts, trade, cooperative activity, and communal projects. (We saw a similar "Dark Age" in Ancient Mesopotamia around the year 1000 bc.)
In the following sections we'll see some of the details of Europe's feudal and manorial system, which lasted several centuries until being replaced by nation-sized kingdoms. The feudal system was a hierarchy of lords and overlords created from a tangled web of obligations. Lords obtained their income from taxes and fees imposed on the peasants living within their manor.
From the time of the first empires of the Middle-East in 2000 bc until just the last century or two, the concerns and goals of our governments were simply those of the king and queen–usually, the expansion of the territory and power of the king and queen. We’ll see that much of the development of European democracy, tolerance, and liberty during the last five hundred years occurred as reactions to the sometimes oppressive manner in which these leaders acted. The concerns of our governments today are more closely aligned with those of the general population: we more often debate health care than the pursuit of foreign conquests. To see how this transition came about, we next have a look at the world of the Middle Ages that occurred about halfway between today and the time of the formation of the Roman Empire.
We saw that full-time farming began about 10,000 years ago as the peoples of various regions of the world found they could not maintain population levels by gathering and hunting as had been done since the time of the first humans. We humans do not want to change our way of life, which has been demonstrably working, unless something forces us to do so. The first people shifting to farming were forced to do so when a drying climate resulted in insufficient wild plant and animal quantities to feed the human population. By chance, full-time farming allows population levels to increase dramatically; farming is soon followed by villages which grow into cities and city-states. The percentage of us humans who were farming increased through each successive millennium. We saw that farming spread outward–sometimes at a rate of ten miles (sixteen kilometers) per generation–from several centers of origination. Some details of farming and city development were given in Chapter 12 for the case of Ancient Mesopotamia.
The world consists of numerous cultural regions. With each successive millennium, there was an increase in the number of those regions that had been organized into region-wide political units. By one-thousand years ago, most every five-hundred-mile-wide (eight-hundred km) region throughout the Earth contained at least one such political unit. Today, the humans of the Earth are organized into about two hundred nations.
By one-thousand years ago, we humans had also completed our expansion onto even the most remote islands of the oceans. The stone statues on Easter Island (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island) were made at this time. (We see that one way in which we humans celebrate life is by creating works of art, which often express our view of those aspects of life most sacred to us.) Such megalithic monuments were common throughout the world. Also by one-thousand years ago, the Islamic equator was full of trade and artistic and technology activity, see www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1d.html. During the twelfth century ad, the Hindu temple at Angkor Wat, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat, was built in Cambodia and during the same century, the Buddhist temple Dhammayangyi was built in Burma by the Mon culture, see www.hsdejong.nl/burma/bagan/target_pages/dhammayangyi_pahto_1.html. There were burgeoning urban centers in Central and Southern America, too. In Chapter 12 we had a brief look at thirteenth-century Cahokia in North America and the more recent ways of the Yoruba of Africa. You might like to read about our various cultures and accomplishments in volumes three and four of the Illustrated History of Humankind, edited by Goran Burenhult: Old World Civilizations (volume three) and New World and Pacific Civilizations, Cultures of America, Asia, and the Pacific, which is volume four.
The peoples of every region of our medieval world were busy with life. There is space here for just a few examples. After a partial but illustrative list of Medieval African cities we'll have a closer look at life in Medieval China and Europe. We'll see that in the thirteenth century, few European cities had populations of 10,000 persons while those of China contained one million persons–and necessarily contained extensive commercial activity.
There were many large cities in Africa during the Medieval ages, as described by Hull in African Cities and Towns before the European Conquest. Some of the older cities include Meroe, founded in 560 bc. Meroe, see www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/um/uml.html, was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Kush and today it is the capital of Sudan. The capital of ancient Ethiopia was Axum, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axum, which traded goods with Mediterranean cities and Ptolemaic Egypt. The capital of the ancient Ghanhian Empire was Kumbi-Saleh, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbi_Saleh, which had an eleventh-century population of 15,000 persons.
Great Zimbabwe was the capitol of the rural Rozvi Mutapa empire, which thrived between 1000 and 1500 ad, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mwene_Mutapa. Zimbabwe was the center of a group of 150 to 200 towns. By the year 1300 ad, the leaders of Zimbabwe were controlling large cattle herds and the gold trade. Still today, you can see its conical brick towers, which are thirty-four feet (ten meters) tall.
Timbuktu, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu, and Djenne, see www.nmafa.si.edu/educ/mali and http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=116, were the largest cities in western Sudan and were educational and Islamic centers. In the year 1495 ad, the residents of Timbuktu dug a twelve-mile-long canal connecting their city to the port of Kabara. Timbuktu was also a cloth center. At one point it had twenty-six tailors each employing fifty to one-hundred apprentices embroidering tapestries. Some contemporary European cloth made its way to Timbuktu.
Many cities of more than 5,000 inhabitants were located along the Congo river. Kinshasha was the largest with 30,000 persons and was founded in 1530 ad. Merchants in Eastern Africa were trading with Arab, Persian, and Indian counterparts who in turn traded with those from China. There were forty Swahili market towns by the year 1600. The Congoan city of Mbanza-Kongo had a population of 30,000 persons by the year 1700. In the year 1800, the city of Segu had 30,000 persons while Katsina had 100,000.
Many of these were Islamic cities. We saw in Chapter 13 that around the year 600 ad. Islam began spreading across Africa, the Middle East, and along the equator toward Indonesia. In each new region, Islam arrived first in the cities and then spread to the outlying rural areas. Islam formalized education and increased literacy rates wherever it went. Most towns had an Islamic school and every region had its center of learning.
As occurred in many places around the world, African towns and cities were sleeping quarters for farmers who commuted out to their fields. Weaving, dyeing, sewing, metal and craft work were done in the city. Town populations, food surplus levels, and political structures grew simultaneously.
Rulers in Africa collected land taxes, cattle taxes, poll taxes, road tolls, and tribute in the form of agricultural goods, cattle, and luxury items. Taxes were used to pay for public buildings and road construction and safety. Some royal income was used to support artisans working in brass, leather, wood, metal, or pottery. In Medieval Ghana, the king charged a tax on salt entering or leaving his region. Some larger cities collected occupational taxes on butchers, brokers or middleman, farm tool manufacturers, honey collectors, foreign merchants, cloth dyers, palm oil, tanners, and pumpkin sellers and such. Some cities taxed peanuts, cotton cloth, cassavas, nuts, and salt and such. Goods were mostly bartered but some cities minted metal coins.
If the entire supply of a particular item–for example, cowrie or Nzimbu shells–could be controlled then that item could be used for currency. This is really no different than any other medium of exchange, except that it does not have to be manufactured. The only reason certain strips of paper are said to have a particular value today is because its government organization says it has. This is done by stamping denominations on decorated paper and exchanging them for equivalent amounts of goods or labor.
African cities were periodically invaded by Turkish and Arabic peoples and were invaded by Europeans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Chapter 19, we'll see some of the political processes that occurred as the European colonies came to an end in Africa after World War II.
China contains many climates, cultures, and languages and extends across a large area. (The nations with the greatest land area today are, in order, Russia, Canada, China, the U.S., and Brazil. For some scenes of China today, visit www.flyingmonk.com/china.html and www.naatanet.org/heritagemonth/2004/china21.html.) About 10,000 years ago, settled farming villages began to appear in the region of the world occupied by today's China. For example, the village of Banpo (present-day Xian) was occupied 6,000 years ago, as described by Fairbank in China, A New History. The villagers kept pigs and dogs, domesticated water buffalo, made clothing from hemp, and stored their food in decorated pottery. Around the year 3,000 bc, bronze metalworking first made its way to China from Thailand.
It was about this time that those of us humans living in China figured out how to make silk clothing from hand-raised silkworms. About one hundred pounds (45 kg) of mulberry leaves are fed to silkworms to create fifteen pounds (7 kg) of cocoons that can be unwound to produce one pound (0.5 kg) of silk. The resulting silk has to be spun into thread and woven into fabric. (Visit www.hkbu.edu.hk/~inrem/n/g_dp_silk.htm for a video that shows silkworm cocoons being unwound.) Silk remained a Chinese monopoly until the sixth century ad. It astounds me that a few thousand years ago, a person looked at a silkworm cocoon and figured out that it could be used to make clothing. It is surprising how we figure out these complicated, multi-step procedures; we’ve seen that, beginning as gatherer-hunters, we developed intricate plant- and animal-processing procedures and combined efforts on these problems through the generations and throughout the world. For a description of science in ancient and medieval China, see www.rit.edu/~flwstv/china.html.
The first three political dynasties in China developed along the Yellow River and were the Xia (2000 bc), Shang (1600 - 1100 bc), and the feudal-based Zhou (1100 - 220 bc). These were followed by the Qin (221- 206 bc), Han (206 bc - 220 ad.), Sui (589 - 618 ad.), Tang (618 - 907 ad.), Sung (960-1279), Yuan (1279-1368), Ming (1368-1644), and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties. You might like to visit www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/ChinaHistory/HISTORY.HTM for information about each dynasty. See also www.allempires.com/site/historysections/fareast.htm and www.chaos.umd.edu/history/time_line.html. For a timeline, history, and culture, visit www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/china/timeline.html. During these early dynasties, society was still arranged along kinship lines. It should be pointed out that in the development of the first dynasties, the Yellow River was used neither as an irrigation aid nor as a means of transportation because its current was too strong.
Fairbank explains that Zhou leaders believed a ruling family must be morally worthy to receive the responsibility of rule. While other kingdoms asserted either the divine or inherited right to rule, Chinese rule quickly acquired a moral-backed mandate. (In the previous chapter we saw that this idea was incorporated into Confucianism.) As early as the Xia dynasty, the large geographical extent of China was becoming a single society supporting the supremacy of the state over all other activities, including agricultural, technological, commercial, military, religious, and artistic. This state-driven unity of distinct cultures and dialects across China’s large region is similar to the unity created in Western Europe by Christianity. Nearly from the start, the state was the central power in Chinese society, with morality, rites, indoctrination, military monopoly, and exemplary behavior being the means of government. Until the last few centuries, the monopoly of power held by the Chinese ruler was unknown in other regions of the world. Other similarly-sized regions–for example, Europe–have usually been a collection of separate entities controlling only the military and political aspects of society–not its commercial, religious, or agricultural pursuits.
China is also a mixture of religions. We have seen that Confucianism emerged in China around 500 bc at the time that the collapsing empire was being replaced by warring states. Buddhism spread through China during the sixth through tenth centuries ad. Taoism is a later, smaller-scale offshoot of Buddhism involving physical and mental asceticism and magic. Taoist monks are sought for exorcism and for amulets that provide protection from demons. Those of us humans who are Chinese simultaneously practice the ethical and societal guide of Confucianism, the way-of-life and behavioral guide of Buddhism, and the magic of Taoism. These three religions are practiced simultaneously because the three aspects of life that they guide do not overlap. This mixture is explained by Adeline Yen Mah in Watching the Tree, A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Tradition, and Spiritual Wisdom. She also explains that the I'ching religion involves the divination of change in life. For example, ten coins are stacked in one pile and then the changes between sequences of heads and tails can be read to divine future changes in life. The I'ching fully explains the use of a set of tossed sticks directing questioners to a numbered answer tabulated in the book of I’ching. About the same time that the ancient and mythical king Fu Xi was promoting the adoption of agriculture, 5,000 years ago, the I'ching pointed out that “the only constant in life is change.” In addition, some Chinese are Christian or Muslim; by the year 900 ad, half the people of the province of Canton had become Muslim.
Chinese rulers saw to the construction of large, public works. The Great Wall of China was built just before 200 bc during the Qin dynasty (221 to 206 bc) and designed to keep the northern Mongols at bay. A picture of the Great Wall can be seen at http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/images/gtwall-1.gif. For many images of China, visit www.chinapictures.org/type/travel/great-wall-of-china/. About 700,000 persons built the wall. The Qin ruler also built a mausoleum for himself that housed six thousand, life-sized clay soldiers along with horses and some chariots. The floor of the mausoleum contained a map of the empire while its roof had a map of the heavens. Visit www.chinapictures.org/photo/travel/xian/40219135325707/ to see photos figures of the so-called terra cotta army.
During the sixth through tenth centuries ad,the tribal Mongol nomads of the steppes bordering northern China were organizing into the militaristic system that harassed people as far away as western Europe. (For information about the Mongol Empire, visit www.allempires.com/empires/mongol/mongol1.htm.and www.lacma.org/khan/index_flash.htm.) This harassment prompted one Chinese official to post notices around town: "If the horsemen from the north arrive, I am prepared to die rather than flee." As everywhere, war meant bloodshed and ruin for the countryside and long sieges of walled cities attacked with ladders, wheeled contraptions, and raised causeways. After the Sung dynasty fell to the Mongols, students were taught to hate these invaders but also to acknowledge the people's role in their own defeat. To defend against such attacks, most Chinese cities were walled. Some city walls were thirty feet (10 meters) high and ten miles (16 km) long, and were usually white-washed every third month. In the year 893, one city extended its walls by 18 miles (29 km) by combining the efforts of 200,000 residents.
Mongols captured the Sung capital of Kaifeng in the year 1126 ad. The Sung capital had then to be moved south to Hangchow, which was called Lin-an at the time. Urbanization increased in the south as people moved away from the border with the northern barbarians. In turn, Hangchow was sacked by the Mongols in 1276 to end the Sung Dynasty and begin the Yuan dynasty (1279-1386). The Mongols did not know how to rule China and even allowed foreigners like Marco Polo (see www.korcula.net/mpolo) to take administrative positions. The daily lives of those of us living in China were not as affected by the invasion as was our political system. When the Mongols were ejected by the newly formed Ming dynasty (1368-1644) in 1368 ad, the Great Wall of China was extended in length to 4000 miles, which is about 6400 km.
Jacques Gernet describes the medieval city of Hangchow just before the Mongol invasion in Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion 1250-1276. A summary of his book is given here. (For some additional information, a time line, and many pictures, visit http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/contents.htm. Some images from http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/images.html#Historical%20Illustrations will be referred to below. The city of Hangchow is also referred to as Hangzhou. For some images of Hangchow, visit http://www.chinapictures.org/type/travel/hangzhou/1/. The University of British Columbia has information about the medieval city of Quanzhou, see http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/plan545b/quanzhou/qzintro.htm. For reconstructions of thirteenth-century Dadu, which would later be called Beijing, including a temple, home, and canal visit www.taisei.co.jp/cg_e/ancient_world/daito/adaito.html. Taisei also has images and a video showing a reconstruction of a later Ch’in Empire temple at www.taisei.co.jp/cg_e/ancient_world/xian/axian.html. Visit http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/ for information about Chinese culture, history, and religion, including on-line versions of religious texts. Visit www.xinhuanet.com/english/index.htm for current news from the Chinese state news agency.
China had the most advanced art (see http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/painting/4ptgssla.htm), technology, and bureaucratic institutions in the world. The government had been taking a periodic census since the third century bc and conducted a census every three years during Tang and Sung times. Populations were recorded by district, sub-prefecture, prefecture, and province. The location and amount of cultivated land was recorded and so were the names and ages of family members living within each home. The Mongol invaders required these names be displayed on each house. When this information is combined with business records and descriptions of life made by numerous painters and writers, we get a detailed picture of daily life in thirteenth-century China. Documents describe every shop along a street and even provide rankings of fan shops and restaurants–just as is done today. Some aspects of the city are recorded in great detail, including things ranging from the number of stones in certain streets to the names of courtesans.
Confucian respect for helpful elders binds families, society, and government
Explanations of order within nature, society, and the human body were given in terms of a balanced push and pull among interacting components of temperamental personalities. Order was due to a dynamic balance between changing elements; it was not due to pre-set and strict laws dictating interactions in a never changing cause and effect manner. Each interacting piece learned from the examples of good behavior demonstrated by others and adapted in response.
We have seen that in Confucian ideals, morals and politics were one (see Chapter 13). Confucian ideals teach that stable societies are built from stable families that are bound through the respect earned by benevolent elders. Such a relationship exists between benefactor and recipient and between social superior and inferior, too. Confucian ideals grew children who believed in and practiced respect for parents, elders, bosses, social superiors, officials, and the state.
It was believed that people were good by nature; people would behave badly only when following a bad example shown by an elder or superior. Gernet explains it was believed that people usually conform and behave morally unless they are starving or suffering from extreme cold and such. People's belief in the value of social life was synonymous with faith in human nature and in a tolerance of other people. People wanted to experience life. (These are also Buddhist and humanist ideals.) People preferred social harmony over a disruption of tradition so that original or independent actions might be discouraged (in Chapter 19 we’ll see how the political aspects of culture affect the type of political system used within its region). Still, anarchistic tendencies and unusual mystical views also existed.
Emperor, administration, and a bureaucratic system based on merit
Since the third century bc, China's administrative system was based on each individual's merit, record of accomplishments, recommendations of supervisors, and competitive exams. The lowest bureaucratic positions were filled through a system of qualifying examinations taken by candidates. Tests were first graded by two judges working independently and then by a third judge who had the final decision. To help guarantee impartiality, the graders did not know which test-taker had submitted which test. Since it was usually only the children of the wealthy who had the opportunity to obtain the education needed to prepare for the exams, the resulting government consisted mostly of people from wealthy families who then fervently supported that government in order to defend their own interests.
Those beginning bureaucrats showing the most accomplishment and having the best reviews from their superiors were advanced up the ranks from local to regional and then on to national positions. To reduce personal favoritism, promotions were given only by the central office, which maintained folders on each bureaucrat to record his or her achievements, character, morality, and mistakes. An official typically spent two or three years at each level of government before moving up to the next. This merit-based system was unheard of in contemporary Europe. In fact, eighteenth-century Europeans were shocked when they first learned of this ancient and efficient system. Of course the Chinese merit system was not perfect–for example, central officials sometimes promoted family members or friends. At the end of their career, officials typically retired at age sixty-eight but no retirement pension was paid because, as we have seen, Confucian tradition said children were to take care of aging parents.
Officials had every tenth day off work plus a fifty-four-day vacation each year. They were also given the day off on the anniversaries of the death of a parent and a few days off for their child's wedding. Once every three years they were given a fifteen- to thirty-day holiday with their family; the number of days depended on the distance one had to travel to reach his or her family's home. When an official's parent died, he or she was given three years leave. During leave they would edit literary works, do calligraphy, or paint and such. Merchants and peddlers had few days off work: New Year's day, the anniversary of the patron of their guild, or when in mourning or attending the weddings of their children. Many officials owned pawn shops, rented apartment rooms, and owned large farms outside town. Since officials were also immune from common offenses, Fan Wei piled up a record of misdemeanors of historic proportion.
The governments of the world are sometimes ruined by ignoring troubles, sticking to traditional and outdated methods, corruption, or an inefficient bureaucracy. The bureaucracies of some of the world's governments were hereditary systems passing office positions from parent to offspring. This is often a ruinous approach because it is usually the case that children do not have the same interests and the same talents for the same fields as do their parents. For example, when the offices of ancient Egyptian bureaucracies became hereditary, the resulting inefficiencies sometimes played a role in the dissolution of the dynasty. Corruption played a role in the fall of many Chinese dynasties. When officials are paid too little they sometimes resort to corruption. For example, one governmental warehouse was supposed to distribute free medicinal drugs to the poor but corrupt officials obtained it all to sell at great profit.
The emperor of China had supreme power and will was sacredly followed. He chose ranks and titles for everyone, decried law, and performed rituals maintaining both the empire and his family dynasty along with its ancestral honor. These rituals were simultaneously administrative and sacred acts as there was no distinction between these two aspects of society. Outside the palace, a 150-foot (50 meter) tall sign read "10,000 years for the emperor" while another read "The emperor shares his pleasures with his people." (For images of emperors and the court, see http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/painting/4ptgcour.htm.)
The emperor had a council of three to five ministers who met daily. Under these ministers were administrative heads and censors who monitored all officials and their procedures and academicians who executed imperial decisions and published edicts. Below this group were the heads of the departments of finance, rites, war, justice, civil service, and public works. By the seventh century, there were separate offices for sacrifices, banquets, insignia, stables, currency, agriculture, military equipment, education, canals, foreign relations, special legal decisions, communication between provincial and national levels of government, and the family cult of the Emperor. The empire of the southern Sung (1127-1279) divided the nation into sixteen bureaucratic provinces, each having ten prefectures divided into three to five sub-prefectures containing a population of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
In the year 1046, one hundred million Chinese were being administered by just 18,700 officials–0.02% of the population–including 6,000 military officials who were subordinate to civil authorities. We'll see below that contemporary Europe had no continent-wide government, only more-localized feudal webs of militaristic obligations. Village peasants funded this web through taxes paid in labor and goods to the local lord but were not personally involved in the web. We'll also see in Chapter 15 that in the year 1860, the U.S. government consisted of 36,000 officials–0.1% of the population–governing 36 million persons. The operations of the U.S. government today involves as much as one-third of that nation's Gross Domestic Product.
Other than taxes, there was little governmental intrusion into the everyday lives of the general population of China. (We'll see below how today's computerized bureaucracies regulate many details of daily life.) Occasionally the government organized labor for public works projects that involved hundreds of thousands of people. Work was organized hierarchically, with supervision for each level. At the lowest level, the members of each family worked together under the supervision of its elders. Groups of families formed the next level, just under that of the entire village. At the top-most level were collections of villages. Sometimes the population was organized to defend against a revolt, which usually occurred in response to widespread famine or injustice. Terrible repression would be used against rebellion.
The principle concern of the administration was for peace to exist in the land. Following Confucian teachings, peace in the country was sought through collective responsibility within each village and the esteemed authority of family heads, village heads, and the emperor. No stirring of trouble was allowed. If even accused of stirring trouble, a person would be placed in jail for disturbing the peace.
Jail conditions were wretched and sentences were long. Prisoners were given no food except for that brought by their family. In the hope of discouraging everyone from going to court, the entire judicial system was harsh. Defendants were shackled and were sometimes forced to confess by being beaten and whipped. But the courts did require proof: in the case of theft, the stolen item needed to be presented and in a murder case, they expected evidence of violence to be found on the victim.
The calendar consisted of both lunar and solar cycles. The first day of a new year occurs on the second new moon after the winter solstice, which varies between January 16th and February 13th. The year consisted of twelve or sometimes thirteen moons of twenty-nine or thirty days, giving a total of 354 days per year. To keep an average of 365 days per year and to keep the seasons in the right time of the year, seven moons were added per decade. This meant that some years had as many as 384 days. (For a visual comparison of calendars from around the world, visit http://emr.cs.iit.edu/home/reingold/calendar-book/images.)
The emperor was the master and regulator of time and would distribute calendars each year. The calendar was set by court astronomers and used by farmers to choose planting days. Farmers also used almanacs containing such things as divinations and lists of lucky and unlucky days for taking journeys, conducting business, performing burials, or making buildings. Almanacs also listed the cyclic sign for each day. Signs consisted of sets of ten and twelve symbols combined into sixty different pairs.
Months contained either twenty-nine or thirty days. Thirty-day months were divided into three ten-day periods while twenty-nine day months were divided into two ten-day periods and one nine-day period. The day was divided into twelve parts of 1.5 to 2.5 hours, depending on the length of sunlight, and each division was announced in the city by the beat of a drum. The day also consisted of one hundred quarter-hours of about fifteen minutes each.
People woke at four or five in the morning as bells rang in the Buddhist and Taoist monasteries. Monks would then go through town to receive food from the townspeople. While walking, monks would pound either on iron or on fish-shaped resonators. Townspeople also gave alms to monks on the first and fifteenth of the month and on feast days, too. Monks would also announce any court receptions scheduled for the day. Since imperial audiences were held at five or six in the morning–and begun with a drum, gong, or clapper–officials were done with their day's work by the late afternoon.
Religious festivals, deities, and the ancestor cult
A festival celebrates a certain aspect of life. The New Year's festival was meant to renew life itself: the world was never more than one year old. Since each year began with its own supply of virtues that would be exhausted by its end, the New Year would be welcomed because it began with a fresh supply of virtues. New clothes would be worn and, within the home, the painted images of Chung K'uei the demon-tamer (for an image, see www.npm.gov.tw/english/exhbition/efes0101/selec04.htm) and of the door gods would be replaced with new ones. Also, new peach-wood amulets were hung on the door along with new red streamers.
Many things occurred on New Year's Day. Sacrifices were made to the family ancestors and to the deities protecting the home, including the door, courtyard, well, bed, and hearth gods and the god of the bed who protected the fertility of the parents. Other gods protected against poverty, death, giving birth to only girls, or having clumsy daughters or one who can not embroider. The gods were offered flowers, incense, and food as they were asked to bring peace and health to the new year. On New Year's Day, the image of each god was renewed. Also on New Year’s Day, the god of the hearth reported to heaven about the past year's conduct of each family member. This deity was given special attention just before that report was due. Each village had similar deities for similar protections, as did the empire.
Popular deities were ancient sages, great poets, warrior heroes, illustrious monks, and great Buddhist saints along with Buddhist and Taoist gods. Many deities were appealed to throughout the year and many had a feast day on which they were celebrated. Each god was considered to be obliging and was spoken to as an equal. No god was considered to be all-powerful and each had no function other than its specific protection. Deities were slightly personified but only a few had been given human or animal form. For example, some were given the form of a dog, pig, fox, or of a beautiful woman. The collection of deities changed slowly in time. For example, the gods of the soil and ramparts merged with those of water and earth and were worshiped in many temples and at certain trees, rocks, rivers, and mountains. A uniquely shaped rock at a pool of water might be whipped to end a drought or flood caused by a divine dragon living in the water. People also threw worn out women's shoes and dead pigs into these pools. Some deities were associated with the abilities of mediums, visionaries, and prophets. Holiness or prophecy was often incarnate in the most contemptible of persons, including beggars, madmen, idiots, and struggling peddlers. These special persons employed alcohol, fasting, magical sex, or ecstatic dance while doing their work. The world was also filled with spirits, genies, demons, and ghosts who might take animal form. Some ghosts were thought to be un-avenged murder victims or deceased persons who have not received offerings from their living relatives. These were chased away by loud noises, special potions, or by using written characters believed to be magical.
In addition to virtue, each new year also had evil influences and would experience pestilence. The year consisted of the interplay between temperamental evil and virtue. To ward off pestilence, every family placed willow branches above their door on the first day of the Cold Blood Festival, temporarily making the city much more green. Evil and pestilence would also be chased away with loud noises, drum-banging, and firecrackers that were made by placing a little gunpowder inside bamboo tubes. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks fro the history of fireworks.) The danger coming from solar and lunar eclipses was also fought by loudly banging on pots. People would stand outside banging pots until they could tell the danger had left because the sun or moon returned to its normal shape. It has been noted that this worked every time.
Personal festivals were held to inaugurate a lucky period, encourage beneficial influences, conduct merry-making, or to celebrate a promotion. (During the Sung dynasty, the role of magic in the festivals was decreasing.) A festival's date was scheduled on either the lunar or solar calendar. City-wide festivals included games, theater, clowns, jugglers, feasts, drinking, and games. Games included a third-century ad. version of backgammon, dominos, mahjong (which we'll see becomes popular in the U.S. during the 1920s), a chess-like game, and card games having four kings–one for each of the four cardinal directions. The difficult game of narrow-neck involved the attempt to bounce darts off a wall and into a narrow-necked jar. During a festival, the streets were always filled with dancers, acrobats, musicians, and marionette show makers. Long, wicker dragons concealed dancers who made those dragons appear to fly through the air. (Visit www.chcp.org/mpeg to view a dragon video.) Dragon-boat jousts were held on lakes using boats decorated with flowers and flags. As two boats faced each other, men used pikes in an attempt to push their opponents overboard while spectators lined the shore, drinking and cheering. During festival periods, shopkeepers might give paper horses to their customers and pharmacists might give small amulets or bags of evil-fighting powders. To wish many descendants, friends exchanged little bags containing cereal grains along with melon and fruit seeds. Processions of people dressed as gods emerged from the imperial palace wearing masks and carrying staffs, silvered pikes, or wooden swords along with five-colored flags. These flags had the colors of the four cardinal points–green, red, black, and white–along with yellow, which was the color of the point at the center of time and space. Some festival rice was similarly colored, as were glass lanterns, too.
The Feast of Lanterns was held during the first new moon of the year, typically occurring near February 15th, in which lanterns lit the city all night long. Scenes painted on the lanterns depicted landscapes, people, flowers, bamboo, birds, or furry animals and such. Some were fifty inches (125 cm) in height and some were made to rotate by the force of a trickle of running water; others were shaped liked boats or chairs. Some people suspended a lantern from which they hung pendants or feathered ornaments. Crowds gathered to view the most elaborate lanterns.
The Feast of the Dead was held fifteen days after the spring equinox, which is around April 5th. On this day, many families left the city to visit the graves of deceased relatives in the cemeteries outside town. Family members cleaned the graves, placed food at them, and burned incense. Other families picnicked at a park or lake, and everyone stayed outside to watch the new moon rise at sunset. No new fires were lit during the three days prior to the festival and then an official at the palace bored willow wood to make the first new flame. A new flame still held all of its virtue and so was used to light numerous torches which were then carried around town to lit other fires. (Visit www.deathonline.net/movies/qt/chingming1.mov for a video of today’s ceremony, as held in Australia.)
Some annual festivals were held on numerically important days of the year. People wore charms and amulets on the fifth day of the fifth moon of the year because it was considered to be an unlucky day. The seventh day of the seventh moon was the Festival of Weaving; on this day, children wore new clothes. Since the Che river outside Hangchow always experienced a particularly high tide during the eighth moon, in the year 1066–the year William the Conqueror became king of England–a royal decree was made that forbid daredevils from attempting to swim across the Che river during this high tide.
A festival was part of either the Buddhist, Taoist, family ancestral, or official state religion. For example, the birthday of the saint Lao-Tzu was celebrated by Taoists while the day Buddha first obtained nirvana was celebrated by Buddhists by bathing statues or by ceremonially releasing captured animals. There was little overlap between the festivals of these religions but some festivals were common to all of them at once. The official state religion often involved worship of the emperor's ancestry. A family's ancestral worship and the deities of the home were separate from Buddhism and Taoism. Each person practiced all of these non-overlapping religions.
The ancestral cult sought to maintain links between the living members of the family–including newborn family members and newcomers marrying into the family–and deceased parents, several generations of grandparents, and with clan and lineage heads. The ancestral cult was important because each family was seen to have its own past and its own destiny. The name of each deceased ancestor was written on a tablet and placed on the ancestral altar within the home. Small drops of blood were placed on the tablets to signify eyes and ears as the spirit of the deceased parent was believed to reside in these tablets. Both rich and poor families practiced ancestor worship but wealthy families could be more observant; the emperor's family was the most observant of all. The emperor built ancestral temples, the wealthy built sanctuaries, and the poor made an altar in the main room of their home.
From these few examples, we can see that there was little overlap in the functions of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, the ancestor cult, and the official state cult. The ethics of Confucianism taught right and wrong and blended everywhere with the proper way of living taught in Buddhist morality. Taoism had less to do with ethics and morality than with magic and exorcism. The ancestral and official cults had no overlap with Confucianism, Buddhism, or Taoism. (Every few centuries, some attempts were made to unify Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism into a single religious view.)
There was a social club for most every hobby and concern, including literary, sporting, and religious societies. Soldiers formed archery clubs, while merchants liked to join football and polo societies (polo came from Iran). The Su family maintained a puppeteer society comprised of many neighbors from their street. There was also the Buddhist society for carrying out pious works. One large Buddhist society had tens of thousands of members. These also served as mutual aid societies that helped members pay the costs of weddings and funerals. Some of these groups still exist today. (In Chapter 15 we'll see that numerous social clubs existed in the farming villages of nineteenth-century New England.)
One gained security, dignity, and respect in the community by forging relationships with as many others as possible. Gernet explains that society consisted of a network of individual relationships binding person to person, family to family, and helper to protector. The practice of religion and the building of social prestige were one and the same endeavor.
From birth, children were taught to be polite, good-natured, sociable, gentle, and obedient (for examples of filial piety, see www.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/filial.html) and to keep good relations with family, to prize self-restraint, to practice the art of give and take, and to be content with one's place in society. (We saw in Chapter 13 that obedience is especially Confucian and that being content and practicing give and take are especially Buddhist practices.) Excessive affection was not to be displayed. Belligerence was discouraged but the ideals of obedience and contentment were not to stifle individuality, ambition, rebellion, or a fighting spirit. (What do you teach to your children?) Those families who obtained these ideals were the heroes of society and were given public recognition by governmental officials. (What sorts of people are the heroes of your society?) These ideals were more easily attainable by the wealthiest families.
To make ends meet, poorer families could not always adhere to the tradition of having all generations living together in one home. Sons were often forced to setup on their own even while their parents were still alive. Poor families sometimes resorted to drowning any newborn who arrived after the distribution of inheritance had been fully allotted. Some mothers tried abortive drugs that sometimes left her or her born-anyway child ill for years. Parents hoped for boys to carry the family line but girls were more easily employed, often as servants in wealthy homes. Since some poor parents resorted to abandoning their infant in the street, hoping that he or she would have a better life in another family, this practice was outlawed in the year 1138 ad. The king instead funded hospitals to care for these children, who arrived at the rate of 20,000 per year. Rich families were allowed to adopt as many children as they liked. In wealthy homes, newborn babies were bathed in warm, scented water placed in large silver bowls. The minute, hour, and date of each child's birth was carefully recorded to help soothsayers and astrologers advising them later in life. Parents would sentimentally keep lockets of their baby’s hair in gold or silver boxes.
Despite the earlier warning by Confucius against trying to force behavior through decree, Tang law dictated that the child who strikes his or her parent or grandparent would be beheaded. Anyone striking a sibling could be punished with two years in prison. The punishment for striking an older cousin was one hundred cane strikes. If a parent broke the bone of a child while administering guidance then the penalty was less severe than if the bone of a stranger had been broken. Servants who killed their master were to be strangled but a master who killed a servant would be given a one-year prison term.
Childhood is universal but each culture includes its unique aspects. On the child's first birthday, various objects–including scales, cloth, knives, Buddhist books, flowers, and thread–would be placed around him or her to see which would be grasped as this was thought to indicate the child's future occupation. Children were rarely spanked. Instead, they would be threatened with visits by either Liv the Barbarian or Big-Eyed Yang "who had a terrifying voice." On the farm, children collected firewood, fetched water, and took the family’s buffalo to water. In town, they helped in the family shop or helped with household chores (did you grow up on a farm or in the city?). Children freely roamed the streets. To mark the coming of age, fifteen-year-old females had their first hairpins placed in their hair and twenty-year-old males received their first cap.
In previous centuries there had been a passion for sports, including boxing, fencing, archery, football, and polo. These physical sports were going out of fashion in the thirteenth century. Marco Polo remarked that the people of China knew nothing of weapons handling, as was popular in Europe, and kept none in their homes because law forbid the possession of arms. He said that neighborhoods were calm and had few quarrels.
In general, girls were taught little except to spin and embroider and meant that a women had few choices for a profession: she might be a midwife, wet nurse, or domestic servant. Women had no independence and were considered subordinate to men. But on the farm and in the shop, the efforts of both husband and wife were needed to make ends meet. This resulted in a practical equality between the pair–except for the occasional husband or wife who acted as a tyrant.
There were a few woman poets, like Li Ching-Chao (1081-1140). Empress Wu Tse-tien (685-704) asked a particular seven year old girl to improvise a poem about her brother's leaving. She expressed her happiness that "In the pavilion of separation, the leaves suddenly blew away. On the road of farewell, the clouds lifted all of a sudden. Ah! How I regret that men are not like the wild geese who go on their way together." (When my older sister married and left, she too enjoyed giving me one last kick.)
The mutilating practice of foot-binding rates in brutality with female circumcision, and both are even more extreme than the practice of some cultures to strap boards to the skulls of growing infants in order to shape their heads, see www.sfu.ca/archaeology/museum/world/ceramicf/t1-3.htm. Fairbank describes how boards are used in foot binding to cause toes to painfully curl under a girl's foot as she grows. This was done because someone had said that small feet are more attractive–or rather, that small shoes are more attractive: nobody could bear to observe the resulting disfigurement. (For a disturbing but explanatory picture, you might visit http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/images/bndfeet2.gif.) Foot binding began in the tenth century. Mothers helped their daughters get through the pain using tricks passed through the generations. For example, a girl would be told to elevate her feet until they became numb so the pain would subside. Its practice began to go out of style in the 1930s. (To learn more about the changing place of women in modern Asian and Arabic human societies, you might like to read some of the books listed in the chapter bibliography.)
Marriages were arranged to form alliances between families. In the same way, many princesses were married off to barbarian rulers in the attempt to promote friendship. Some wealthy families attempted to arrange marriages between their child and the top scorers in the bureaucratic entrance exams. In addition to the tradition of arranging marriages, there were popular stories of love at first sight and of women who could "overturn a kingdom." The parents of poor families sometimes married off their children in hopes of gaining another son or daughter to support them in their old age. There was more chance for poor children to choose their own spouse. Marriages among the poor were accomplished with little ceremony.
Marriages among the wealthy were full of ceremony and tradition involving properly-attired go-betweens and the exchange of many symbolically significant gifts. Soothsayers were told the date and hour of birth of the proposed husband and of the proposed wife. If favorably "soothed," the two families exchanged brightly-colored cards listing all official functions held by family members through the last three generations. The cards also contained a description of the prospective groom's administrative functions, the numerical order of the bride and groom among their siblings, a list of tabooed names that should never be written, and a list of property to be assigned to the bride and groom on their wedding day, including cultivated land, houses, gold, hairpins, pearls, curtains, and fields.
Promises were then exchanged in person as the groom-to-be drank four cups of rice-wine and the bride-to-be drank two. He then placed a hairpin in her chignon to show acceptance or instead sent two pieces of satin to her home to show his rejection. In some regions, this decision was made by a relative who indicated acceptance by sending cloth, rings, two sticks, two onions, and two bowls with four red fish. The richest families would send sticks and fish made of gold. If the engaged couple were yet children, many years would pass before they were married. Until then, more gifts were exchanged on each anniversary of the agreement and again just before the wedding. Each of these gifts were displayed on the wedding day.
The bride moved into the home of her husband's family, and she rarely saw her own family after that. The bride was carried to her new home by honor maids accompanied by singing girls carrying flowers. The procession was lead by one maid walking backwards with the aid of a mirror. Upon arrival at her new home, the bride was placed on a green mat in the doorway and she then stepped over a horse saddle and a scale, though the symbolic meaning of these items has been forgotten, just as the Kalapalo could no longer remember the meaning of certain, ceremonial words. As she first entered her new home, seeds, fruits, and coins were tossed in the doorway to repel bad influences. Children scrambled to pick up these items. (For more information about wedding ceremonies, visit www.chcp.org/wedding.html.)
Wives were usually several years younger than their husbands; their age difference could not be more than that because the generations were not to be mixed. A wife was to be modest, chaste, devoted to her in-laws, and faithful to her husband. Government officials publicly honored those wives who attained these ideals or those, for example, sticking by a husband who was gambling drunkard. A bad wife might be returned to her own family–unless her own parents were dead–for being disobedient, jealous, epileptic, chatterous, or insulting or if she strikes others. If sterile, either she is sent back or her husband might move a concubine into the home to bear children. Of course, he might be the sterile one and the concubine might be impregnated by yet another man. In the city, a wife might have one or more "complimentary husbands." Divorce could occur through the mutual consent of the two spouses.
The funeral ceremony transformed the deceased person into an ancestor. Upon death, the body was washed and dressed as lamentations were said. An expert in geomancy, which is also called Feng Shui, was consulted to choose the burial location. When a wealthy person died, paper copies of servants and carriage and horse were buried to accompany him or her into the other world. Surviving relatives wore coarse clothing and avoided enjoyment.
Confucianism believed it was disrespectful to burn the dead unless the body was too far from home to be easily transported overland. Despite this belief, the poor could afford only to be cremated. In some regions, tradition required the ashes be kept in an urn but in Hangchow the ashes would be scattered to the wind.
Buddhists viewed the cremation as a kind of regenerating transformation of the body. Buddhist monks were always cremated. Beginning in the fifth century ad, a few chose to be burned alive. Cremations were done in Buddhist monasteries, within a large oven, and were accompanied by singing and dancing. Paintings would be burned with the body so that the depicted images could be taken on the journey. It was believed that a similar tribute was being performed on the other side to welcome the deceased's arrival in the other world as life was beginning anew.
It was believed that the world of the dead had a bureaucracy similar to that of the living and that sometimes a scribe in the world of the dead incorrectly wrote down a name, causing that person to temporarily die until the mistake was corrected. This explained comas and such. Sometimes a temporarily-dead person would have the chance to read a scribe’s list of names of people who would die soon; there were many such stories of things considered strange and wondrous.
The children of the poor remained illiterate for life while others attended school, generally from ages seven through thirteen. Through these years, students learned to write twenty new characters each day out of the thousands making up the Chinese writing system. Some parents joined together to employ a teacher for their children. As a person passed a classroom, the children could be heard reciting lessons and playing musical instruments. The emperor's heir had daily lessons in history, astronomy, and the classics while also studying city-plans and layouts.
During the thirteenth century, Hangchow had four universities: the Imperial Academy, the Military Academy, a medical school with two hundred students, and the National University which had fifteen teachers and two thousand students. Students enjoyed free room and board paid by school foundations and took monthly and semi-annual exams. They performed ceremonies honoring deities, the Earth Mother, great generals, sages, and the heroes of old. They studied the classics, memorizing many parts, and were to be familiar with both modern and ancient poets but most instruction was geared toward the exams for entrance into the bureaucracy. In the year 1071, the educational reformer Wong An-shih encouraged additional study of political philosophy and practical administration techniques. Private schools emphasized the culture of the classics. Some students obtained degrees enabling them to become military or medical officials, while other students chose to obtain a doctorate in written works or in history and ritual because the doctorate of letters opened the door to the most prestigious careers. Students usually did not setup their own home until they were thirty years old. By the way, a lawyer had already written a textbook explaining chicanery, dishonest tricks, slander, and blackmail.
The philosophy of order through balanced interactions influenced medical practice: the human body was believed to be healthy when its components of yin and yang were in balance and there were proper circulations of the warm, cold, dry, moist, and fiery breaths. Some related the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys to the elements water, fire, wood, metal, and earth. Excessive joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, hate, or desire might cause illness.
To cure the patient, the doctor gave drugs containing mixtures of twenty or so substances, including gems and insect or animals parts. The patient was warned to take the drugs at the right astrological moment or his or her symptoms would worsen. About 800 different drugs were being used. Pharmacists hung a dried calabash over their door to indicate their business and sold medicinal plants and herbs and some ready-made mixtures meant for specific illnesses.
It was believed that the patient's pulse rate identified his or her illness. The doctor might massage the top of one of the patient's thumbs or some other small area of the patient's body. Sometimes the patient was cauterized or treated with acupuncture. (Acupuncture shops were identified by the sign of a white rabbit hung over their door.) Taoist and Buddhist monks performed ancient exorcisms, while surgery was a new approach that was performed only for abscesses and fractures. In the year 1080, the emperor asked all doctors to describe their most successful remedies. Patients often tried several remedies simultaneously and preferred those doctors whose family had been in medicine for at least three generations. Doctors might distribute printed notices describing their services and specialized in such things as arthritis and paralysis, eyes, obstetrics, teeth and throat, charms and amulets, or moxibustion and acupuncture.
Forensic medicine was developed to help the courts distinguish deaths due to strangulation, drowning, blows, and poison; forensic texts gave first-aid instructions for persons found near death in each of these situations. For example, the use of artificial respiration was recommended when a possible victim of drowning was found. (The first European text of forensic medicine was published by Roderic de Castro around the year 1600.)
With a population of one-million persons in the year 1275 ad, Hangchow was the largest and richest city in the world. At this time the largest cities of Europe, which had just recently been permanently settled, had five or ten thousand people–just two had 50,000. (The video Jing, A Chinese Girl, features a typical Saturday and Sunday in the life of a fifth-grade student in today’s (1990) Hangchow; for information about this and other videos, visit www.coe.ohio-state.edu/globaled/display.cfm?parent=32&child=49. For Marco Polo’s description of Hangchow, see www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/polo-kinsay.html.) Since the land area available to the city of Hangchow is limited by its surrounding mountains, rivers, and lakes, the population density was very high–about two hundred persons per acre (one hundred per hectare). Multi-story homes housed the large population while a shop often occupied the lower floor. For paintings of urban scenes, see http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/painting/4urbcomm.htm and for photos of modern Hangchow, visit www.orientalarchitecture.com/hangzhou/hangzhoumapindex.htm
There was a daily flow of goods and merchants from the suburbs into the city center each morning and then out again after the merchants had their evening meal, and this flow gave the city a "daily heartbeat." From dawn until the evening meal, there was incessant activity in the city as shopkeepers, peddlers, shoppers, and entertainers carried on their business. Since some shops were open as late as 2 a.m., people carried lanterns to visit taverns, restaurants, singing-girl houses, and tea-houses. Tea was known in China by the third century ad and was widely used by the eighth century, see http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/images/c-tea.jpg. Its use then spread to Islamic lands and, centuries later, to Europe.
Though spotters on watch towers looked for erupting fires, the bamboo and wood buildings closely packed along narrow alleys allowed fires to spread rapidly, as fast as two miles per hour (3.2 km per hour). In the years 1132 and 1137, about ten thousand homes were burned–50,000 more were burned in each of 1208, 1237, and 1275. After a fire, displaced families lived in temporary homes on the edge of town or were housed in Buddhist or Taoist monasteries. To help in reconstruction, the sales tax would be suspended on building materials. Valuables could be stored in high-rent storage buildings that were surrounded by water.
Hangchow is located 120 miles (190 km) southwest of Shanghai and 100 miles (160 km) south of the Yangtze river. Over this distance, Hangchow was connected to the Yangtze by an eighteen-foot (6 meter) wide canal, which was built around the year 600 ad. (In Chapter 15, we will see the arrival of canals in the U.S. as the Erie Canal was constructed with a length of 363 miles [580 km].) There was a network of canals throughout China, linking many towns to the major rivers and carrying much daily traffic in goods and travelers.
Canals brought food and supplies into Hangchow from the surrounding areas and were also used to remove the city's trash. Enough rice was brought into Hangchow to supply each of one million residents with 2.5 pounds (one kilogram) per day. Rice came into town by canal and also by ocean from as far away as Canton, which was 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south. By the dawn of each day, about two hundred pigs were brought into town and slaughtered. By the way, we can calculate that if each pig weighs one hundred kilograms (two hundred pounds) then this provides only twenty grams (one ounce) per resident per day–or one kilogram (2.5 pounds) for each of 20,000 wealthier families.
There were numerous canals within the city of Hangchow itself. Lotus flowers were placed in them during the springtime and they were lined with colorful plum, pear, apricot, and peach trees. (Peach trees are native to China and were taken around the world by travelers.) Stone balustrades lined the canal tops to keep people from falling into them, and rainbow shaped bridges, which required a maintenance department, allowed road traffic over the canals. The twenty-foot (seven-meter) wide canals allowed two barges to pass each other. Barges carried rice, salt, wood, coal, bricks, and tiles and such. Until a sluice gate was built during the years 1086 through 1093, each canal had to be cleared of mud every five years. Hangchow's canals were connected to the freshwater lake on the edge of town. This lake was two miles in diameter and was created by damming a number of rivers.
Many boaters provided freight and taxi services throughout the canal system. The boat owner's family lived on the boat and propelled it by pushing a pole against the canal bottom or by raising a sail when out on the open lake. It was easiest to move goods around town on the canals but carters, carriers, and donkeys also used the stone-paved streets. Hangchow's main street was three miles (five km) long, 60 yards (60 meters) wide, and lined with covered shops. Wealthy people rode on horseback, sat in chairs carried on poles by bearers, or rode in six-person, cushioned carts that had curtains. See http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/painting/4urbtran.htm for paintings of boats, carts, shoulder-poles, and donkeys.
In some winters the canals would freeze over. During such times, northern visitors might show the people of Hangchow how to store ice in underground chambers for use in the summer. Every year, the emperor would have northern ice brought to Hangchow in fast moving boats that traveled through both nights and days. (In the next two chapters, we’ll see how eighteenth-century Kentuckians stored winter ice and how the ice harvesting industry disappeared as the use of ice-making machines spread through our homes in the 1950s.)
There were many public parks and gardens around Hangchow. Some people went to the park simply to sit and play musical instruments, while other people went to be entertained by the jugglers, acrobats, tight-rope walkers, marionettes, shadow plays, storytellers, acrobats, and theaters presenting acts, dancing, singing, and music. The entertainers earned their living this way. Every social occasion required singing girls, who often played zithers or guitar-like pi-pas as they sang.
People enjoyed sailboat and paddle-boat rides on the three-mile-wide (5 km) lake. Hundreds of boats might be on the lake at once. Many boats were ornamented with carvings and brightly colored paint. Some of the boats were one or two hundred foot (30-70m) long and carried fifty to one hundred persons who would be fed dinner while on board. Following the Buddhist tradition, passengers might choose to buy and then release a turtle or shellfish. Some wealthy families built vacation homes on stilts over the lake water. For photos of the West Lake in today’s Hangchow, visit www.orientalarchitecture.com/hangzhou/WESTLAKE.htm.
In the north, homes faced inward so that only a back wall was presented to the street, but southern homes faced outward in a more neighborly manner. (See http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/home/3homintr.htm for some images and information about homes.) A home made of bamboo and wood could be erected in a few hours and was light enough to be moved. The roof was the most important component; it usually had two slopes and its timbers might be carved and painted. Stone was not used in home construction or in governmental buildings; it was to be used only in building Buddhist towers, street paving, ramparts, dikes, and some bridges.
Government buildings and the homes of high-ranking officials began to have upturned edges after 1000 ad, making Eastern buildings curved in comparison to the flat Western styles. A decree dictated that only these two types of buildings were allowed to have either upturned edges or terra cotta ornamentation. A terra cotta figure placed along an eave or the roof ridge usually depicted a dragon or phoenix. Some temple photographs can be found at the Hamilton College website www.hamilton.edu/academics/Asian/TempleCulture.html.
In wealthy homes, scrolls with fine calligraphy were hung on the walls or a landscape scene might be made to cover an entire wall, see http://academic.reed.edu/chinese/chin-hum/landscapepaintings/landscape.html. Antiques, perfume, incense, mosquito smoke, and terra cotta animal figures were used as home decoration. Decorative flowers included peonies, chrysanthemums, daphne, magnolia, orchids, and blossoms from fruit trees. The fanciest homes also had pine tree, flower, and rock gardens and had ponds with gold- and silver-colored fish. These decorative fish were raised in commercial quantities on the edge of town. The homeowner might build little hills duplicating the layout of famous mountain sites, complete with winding streams and waterfalls. (Visit http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/home/3garintr.htm for examples of home gardens.) Some families kept cats and dogs for pets.
People sat cross-legged in wide armchairs that had heavy backs. Smaller chairs began arriving from India after 1000 ad. Small, rectangular tables were placed low to the ground. Bedding consisted of rush mats, screens and a pillow. Beds were sometimes enclosed on three sides by panels painted with landscape scenery. The furniture of wealthy people were painted black; only the emperor was allowed to have a red-painted bed. In some homes, beds were placed on hollow pipes that received heat from the cooking stove.
