Classical Chinese Culture

1.

Throughout classical China’s history, China has experienced a consistent existence with its culture. There are numerous causes of why China in the classical era had such a unified and unbroken culture. Firstly, the classical Chinese people were not really under any threat of outside invasions from other factions except for some periodic raids form nomadic hordes from central Asia. With no external threat, the Chinese could have much easily preserved their culture. Secondly, classical China was not interested in learning anything from culture to technology from other cultures even thought they had the opportunities with India and southern Asian civilizations. Without adopting new cultural idea, art style, or any outside detail from

This society authored by the Chinese had its benefits and its drawbacks. To begin with, the Chinese society had many positive attributes which greatly shaped classical China. Firstly, slavery in China was found within the aristocratic estates, but the Chinese did not really rely on slavery as the engine to its economy, so relatively the slave population in China was small. Secondly, the Chinese people were “religiously” diverse by accepting belief systems from Confucianism, to Daoism, to Legalism, and even the polytheist religion during the prime of the Zhou dynasty. This sharing and diversity of religious thought greatly shaped the Chinese Empire as a divine culture and in intellectual advance. Thirdly, uncommon in other civilizations the peasantry in China was ranked relatively higher than usual , where in many civilizations the common man is ranked at the bottom of the social pyramid. The fact that the peasantry has given a larger dose of power, it kind of adds a democratic spice the Chinese social hierarchy, even though China was a democratic civilization, in that a portion of the power belongs to the people. The final major positive Chinese society was that the Chinese youth was greatly disciplined and respectful of the older. Majorly impacted the various belief systems, especially Confucianism, Chinese children were greatly obedient and respectful if their parents and to elder family members. Even though the Chinese society had many positives, in today standards there is also many negatives present in classical Chinese society. First, in the Chinese world women were greatly underappreciated and heavily discriminated. For instance, women could not take part any political activities, they did not receive the father’s inheritance when he died, and finally female infants were killed off at birth many times to control the population.