The ENTIRE History of China Explained

The entire history of China in one video: the millet farmers of the Yellow River and the oracle bones of Anyang, the Shang kings and Fu Hao, the Zhou and the Mandate of Heaven; Confucius and the hundred schools, the Warring States and the battle of Changping, Shang Yang's reforms and the Dujiangyan canals, Qin Shi Huangdi uniting China in 221 BC, one script, one coin, the first Great Wall and the terracotta army; the Han: Gaozu the peasant emperor, Zhang Qian and the Silk Road, Sima Qian, the census of AD 2, paper and the seismoscope, the Yellow Turbans and the battle of Red Cliffs; the Three Kingdoms, the Grand Canal, the Sui and the Tang: Changan, the biggest city on Earth, Wu Zetian the only woman emperor, the An Lushan rebellion and the Diamond Sutra; how China actually worked: twenty thousand officials, the imperial exam from 605 to 1905 and the Forbidden City; the Song and the age of inventions: paper money, gunpowder, movable type and 125,000 tons of iron a year; the Mongols: Genghis Khan crossing the Gobi, the 45-year conquest of the Song, Diaoyu and Xiangyang, Kublai and the Yuan, and the boy emperor and the sea; the Ming: Zhu Yuanzhang from begging monk to Hongwu, the Forbidden City, and Zheng He's treasure ships ninety years before Columbus; the Manchus: the Qing taking Beijing in 1644, the hair-cutting order, Kangxi, Qianlong and a China of 300 million people; the century of humiliation: the Macartney embassy, opium, the Opium War and the Treaty of Nanjing, the Taiping, the Summer Palace, Cixi and the Boxer rising; and what came after the emperors: 1911, the last abdication in 1912, the Long March, 1949, the famine and the Cultural Revolution, Shenzhen and 45,000 kilometres of high-speed rail. Five thousand years in about thirty two minutes. Chapters: 00:00 A dynasty ends in one night 01:24 I. The Yellow River and the Oracle Bones (5000 to 1046 BC) 03:50 II. Confucius and the Warring States (1046 to 221 BC) 06:19 III. The First Emperor (246 to 206 BC) 09:01 IV. The Han (206 BC to AD 220) 11:42 V. Three Kingdoms, Grand Canal and the Tang (220 to 907) 14:40 VI. How China Worked 17:09 VII. The Song: the Age of Inventions (960 to 1279) 19:31 VIII. The Mongols (1211 to 1368) 21:54 IX. The Ming: the Beggar Emperor and the Treasure Fleet (1368 to 1644) 24:27 X. The Manchus (1644 to 1800) 26:45 XI. The Century of Humiliation (1839 to 1912) 29:38 XII. After the Emperors (1912 to today) DISCLAIMER - This video is intended for entertainment and educational purposes. To fit five thousand years into half an hour, events are simplified; many numbers (the size of armies at Changping and Red Cliffs, the death tolls of the Taiping and the Great Famine, population figures, the length of Zheng He's ships) are traditional claims or modern estimates on which historians disagree, and the video says so. Main sources: the oracle bones of Anyang; the Shiji of Sima Qian; the Book of Han; the Records of the Three Kingdoms; the Zizhi Tongjian; the History of Song; the Ming Shi; the Veritable Records of the Qing; the diary of Lord Macartney; Lin Zexu's letters to Queen Victoria; the Treaty of Nanjing; the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom documents; Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China; Michael Loewe, The Cambridge History of China; Mark Edward Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires; John Keay, China: A History; Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road; Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China; Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance; Kenneth Pomeranz; the Terracotta Army museum reports; the Dunhuang manuscripts; Britannica. The dialogue scenes are dramatized. Don't rely on a single video, go explore the sources yourself.