Chinese History for Beginners
Condensed China is an introduction to Chinese history. It exists to inform, enlighten, and attract netizens interested in China. It is not a complete history of China; I deliberately skipped over and left out a lot of information. This is more like ''Chinese History: the Cliff Notes version" or "Chinese History's Greatest Hits" than a full-fledged history. If I left out something you feel is important, please email me and I will put it in the next time I revise the text.
Table of Contents
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: c. 2200 - 221 BC
- Xia: c. 2200 - c. 1750 BC
- Shang: c. 1750 - c. 1040 BC
- Western Zhou: c. 1100 - 771 BC
- Eastern Zhou, The Spring & Autumn Period, and the Warring States: 771 - 221 BC
The Early Empire: 221 BC - AD 589
- Qin: 221 - 206 BC
- Earlier Han, the Wang Man Interregnum, and the Later Han
- The Three Kingdoms and the Dynasties of the North and South
- Sui: 589 - 618
- Tang: 618 - 907
- Northern and Southern Song: 960 - 1279
- Yuan (Mongol): 1279 - 1368
- Ming: 1368 - 1644
The Birth of Modern China: 1644 - present
- Qing (Manchu): 1644 - 1911
- Republican China: 1911 - 1949
- The People's Republic of China: 1949 - present
Condensed China has become substantially more popular than I had dared hope when I first put this up; I'm averaging more than 6,000 hits a month, no doubt due to being linked from the Washington Post, Popular Science, and GameSpot, as well as from all the major online libraries of Chinese and Asian links. It was also selected as Hong Kong Supernet's first ever "Super exSITEment" user site of the month.
I know, I'm way behind in updating the site. Hong Kong handover coverage will be added soon. My new excuse is that I'm waiting for the Party Congress to finish....
The Birth of Modern China | Bibliography ]
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