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The history of China underwent many ups and downs, but Chinese culture
have always been among the richest in the world. The first civilizations in
the Chinese history arose in the Yangtze
river and Yellow river valleys at the same time when Mesopotamia,
Egypt and India developed their first civilizations. For many centuries
of China's history, Chinese culture stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences. Paper, gunpowder, compass and printing
including both block and movable type are among the four most famous inventions
in ancient China history. Ancient China's contributions to the human
society in many other fields such as astronomy, medicine, mathematics and physics were also
extensive and impressive. A heliocentric model of the solar system
was discovered in an ancient Chinese tomb, some 1,700 years before Copernicus. In mathematics, "Pythagoras' theorem" and "Pascal's triangle" were
already known in ancient China centuries before their Western discoverers even lived.
 Ancient China was also the first civilization
in the history to implement meritocracy of any form, meaning that unlike in other ancient cultures, official posts were not hereditary but instead had to be earned through a series of examinations.
Such as a system was first setup during the Han Dynasty, and further refined into the Imperial Examination System and opened to all regardless of family background during the Tang Dynasty.
China's vast historical influence is also evident on traditional
culture of some of its neighbors, most notably , Vietnam, Korea and Japan. These
nations even adopted the Chinese writing system at some point, some of which
are still in use even today.
The ancient
China also explored the world and traded extensively with other nations. By the 5th
to 6th centuries AD in China's history, voyages to Indian and the Arabic countries had
already become
routine. In the Ming Dynasty of the 15th century, the fleets led by Admiral Zheng He reached as far as East Africa.
The voyages effectively spread ancient China culture, which wrote a wonderful
page in the Chinese history. The
vessels used very advanced technologies at that time; they were much larger than
the European ships and also equipped with a system of watertight compartments that Europe was not
be able to match for several centuries.
However, the ancient China culture tended to be inward-looking. Name "China" is
"Zhong Guo" in
Chinese spelling, meaning "center land" or "middle kingdom" in translation; all others are
interestingly termed as "waiguoren", meaning "people from outside land" or "barbarians".
In the ancient China history, Emperors did not receive ambassadors, only tribute bearers. Around
year 1425, China's inward attitude reach a peak, with records of the great trading voyages
being destroyed and the ship vessels being allowed to rot. There was a long
period of "closing door" in the ancient history of China.
Beginning of Interaction with the western world in the history of China
 In
the traceable Chinese history, the first Westerner to visit China and write about
China and Chinese culture was Marco Polo in the late 13th century. He wrote of Hangzhou "the city is beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world" and rated Quanzhou as one of the two busiest ports on Earth
along with Alexandria. Among the Chinese innovations that Europeans first heard of from Polo were paper money, window glass, and coal.
When seaborne Western traders arrived in the 16th century, China was initially hostile to them. The first Western base was Portugal's colony Macau, near Guangzhou
in Canton.
The ancient China Emperor imposed strict restrictions on foreign trade, allowing Westerns to trade only at
one location, i.e., Canton
or Guangzhou in mandarin, only with payment in silver, and only with a government-approved
trader monopoly called the Cohong. Export of items that would break Chinese monopolies, such as tea seeds or silk worms, was strictly forbidden.
Perhaps that was why tea culture and silk culture had later in the history
become the unique cultures of China. However, some traders eventually smuggled both
tea seeds and silk worms out, causing India to create two of its greatest industries. Western traders resented these restrictions and struggled to interest the Chinese in Western goods, without notable success.
By the 19th century, several Western powers had occupied various pieces of China's
land and established trade system in these regions, which to certain
extent rewrote China's history and altered the traditional Chinese culture. The relationship, however, was fraught with difficulties. Westerners tended to see China as corrupt and decadent. Chinese often viewed the West as greedy and contemptible. Both
might be right, at least part of the time in history.
 One
of the great issues in the Chinese history of the 19th century was something to do with opium,
an episode of disgraceful Chinese culture. At that time, the profitable commodities
for the west were "pigs and poison", implying indentured laborers and opium. Britain's balance of trade, paying for tea and silk in silver and being quite unable to interest Chinese in most British products, would have been disastrous without opium. However, by growing opium in India and exporting
huge amounts to China, they were able to achieve a nice trade surplus. Many Chinese were involved, some
even made fortune from it. However, every generation of Chinese government from the Qing to the present has been
unequivocally opposing to the trade.
A series of the wars were fought inside China in that century of the history.
Two Opium Wars, taking place in 1839-1842 and 1856-1860 respectively, pitted China against Western powers.
Unfortunately, China lost both opium wars. After the first opium war, Britain got Hong Kong island
& five "treaty ports", including Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai and Ningbo, were opened to Western trade. After the second
war, Britain took Kowloon that is part of Hong Kong Special District now, and
several large inland cities including Nanjing and Wuhan were also completely opened
up for international trades. There were several Muslim rebellions in
Western China.
The Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864) was led by a young man claiming to be Christ's younger brother. It was largely a peasant revolt; its program included land reform and eliminations
of slavery, concubinage, arranged marriage, opium, female foot binding, judicial torture, and idolatry. The Qing government, with some help
from the west, eventually defeated them after the Taiping had ruled much of China for over ten years. This was one of the bloodiest wars ever fought
in China history, only nest to World War II in terms of fatality. Nanjing, the
Taiping's capital during that period of Chinese history, now has an Taiping museum open to
tourists. In 1895, China lost the Sino-Japanese war and ceded Taiwan to Japan.
In addition, it had to relinquish control of Korea, which had been a tributary
state of China for a long time.
1898 marks another history of explosive feelings in China. The Boxers were another largely peasant religious-political movement,
with a clear goal to drive out evil foreign influences in culture and trade. Some believed kung fu and pray would stop bullets. They had some support from the Qing court and regional officials. They killed some missionaries and many Chinese Christians and eventually besieged the embassies in Beijing. A force was sent up from Tianjin and freed the legations. The Qing had to accept foreign troops permanently posted in Beijing as result.
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