During the days of Yao, the ranks of officials were denoted by the objects painted on their official costumes; such as the sun, moon, stars, constellations, dragons, and other animals. Among the Zhou officials, we find people whose function was to paint official garments. The three dynasties of Xia, Shang, and Zhou had all made use of jade or malachite rings, tablets, scepters, and so on as marks of official rank.
Silk was universally known. That the women were mostly engaged in rearing silkworms, the Book of Odes abundantly testifies. Even the queen had to set an example in this industry at appointed times each year if she did not have to do the actual work. No cotton was known, so the poorer classes wore garments of hempen materials. In the cold weather, furs were used. Dyeing too was largely practiced.
The Zhou Dynasty had regularly appointed officials whose business was to teach the people how to take ores out of the mines and to manure their land; but as to how far this useful knowledge had been acquired, we have very little information.
Historians agree that the Shang mechanics were the best. This belief seems to have been based upon a statement of Confucius that he preferred the state carriage of the Shang Dynasty because of its workmanship.
6. The Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC)
6.a. General statement: We have seen that the Chinese established themselves first in tribal groups here and there along the course of the Yellow River at a remote period. In course of time the tribal government developed into a feudal system with hundreds of petty states scattered throughout the land which they called the Middle Kingdom. The next movement was towards consolidation which reduced the number of states to seven. The union of the Seven States into one homogeneous whole was inevitable, and finally came in 221 BC as the result of the statesmanship of Prince Zheng of Qin. While his dynasty lasted only fifteen years, still he left many permanent traces of his rule.
6.b. His early life: Very little is known of his early life, save that he inherited his father's princely throne at a very tender age. Tradition says that Prince Zheng was not the son of Zhuang Xiang Wang, his reputed father. The latter, as the story goes, had been held as a hostage in the state of Zhao. While there he met a wealthy merchant named Lu Puwei, who, pretending to show his devotion to the young prince, made him take to wife a beautiful woman, already pregnant.
It seems that this story was of later invention, and the work of personal prejudice. At any rate the son to whom Zhuang Xiang Wang's wife gave birth was one of the greatest empire builders of antiquity. During his minority, Lu Puwei was his first prime minister and in that capacity exercised much of the royal power.
6.c. Conquest of the six states: The Zhou Dynasty with its eight-hundred years of power was already a thing of the past when Prince Zheng became king of the state of Qin. The last representative of the family of Zhou had already been made away with by one of his predecessors. The work that was left for him to accomplish, therefore, was not the overthrow of the ruling house but the conquest of the six sister states.
The policy pursued by Prince Zheng, or rather by his statesmen and generals, is best summed up in a statement of Xu Dai, a contemporary politician. "This morning," said he, "when crossing the river, I saw a mussel open its shell to sun itself. Immediately an oyster catcher thrust its bill in to eat the mussel; but the latter closed its shell and held the bird fast. 'If it doesn't rain today or tomorrow,' cried the oyster catcher, 'there will be a dead mussel.' 'And if you don't get out of this by today or tomorrow, there will be a dead oyster catcher,' retorted the mussel. Meanwhile up came a fisherman and carried off both of them. I fear that the state of Qin will some day be our fisherman."
In other words, Qin played off one state against another till they were all exhausted and then conquered them one by one. Han, the smallest of the states, was annexed first and the rest were added in the following order: Wei, Chu, Zhao, Yan, and Qi, the last being the easternmost state.
6.d. Shi Huangdi, or the First Emperor: Prince Zheng made a new title for himself. This title, Huangdi, signifies in his own words, that "the holder is equal to the Three Divine Rulers in virtue and the Five Emperors in achievements." It was retained by his successors down to the last of the Manchus, and has been rendered "emperor" in English. He also discontinued the practice of giving a deceased ruler a posthumous name. He decreed that thenceforth he was to be known as Shi Huangdi, or First Emperor, his immediate successor, Er Shi, or Second Emperor, and so on even down to the ten-thousandth generation.
As regards the name of his dynasty, he let it be known under the old name of his state. "It is interesting to note," says the author of "A Sketch of Chinese History," "that the name China is probably derived from this name, Qin (pronounced Ch'in), for the first westerners who knew anything about the Chinese, spoke of them as the people of the land of Ch'in, which afterwards became the word 'China.'"
6.e. End of feudalism: Having built an empire on the ruins of the old feudal system, the question arose as to how this huge territory should be governed. The majority of the statesmen, the slaves of tradition, would have partitioned it out among a number of feudal lords as had been the custom with the Zhous. Such an idea, of course, was offensive to a man who wanted history to begin anew with himself. Divided it must be, but there must be no feudal lords.
Accordingly, Shi Huangdi divided it into thirty-six provinces, each of which was subdivided into districts, governed by agents directly responsible to him. One agent looked after civil matters, another after military affairs, and a third acted as a sort of inspector or intelligence officer of the Throne. Such was the form of government he introduced, and such has been the form of government that has come down to modern times, although in two thousand years, it has undergone many changes in name and detail. All ownership of land and its inhabitants was vested in Shi Huangdi.
6.f. The burning of classics: No radical change call take place in China without encountering the opposition of the literati. This was no less the case then than it is now. To abolish feudalism by one stroke was a radical change indeed. Whether the change was for the better or the worse, the people of letters took no time to inquire; whatever was good enough for their fathers was good enough for them and their children. They found numerous authorities in the classics to support their contention, and these they freely quoted to show that Shi Huangdi was wrong. They continued to criticize the government to such an extent that something had to be done to silence the voice of antiquity.
As a consequence, an order came from the Throne, directing every subject in the empire, under pain of branding and banishment, to send all the literature he possessed, except works on agriculture, medicine, and divination, to the nearest official to be destroyed by fire.
As to how far this decree was enforced, it is hard to say. At any rate, it exempted all libraries of the government, or such as were in possession of a class of officials called Learned Men. If any real damage was done to Chinese literature under the decree in question, it is safe to say that it was not of such a nature as later writers would have us believe. Still, this extreme measure failed to secure the desired end, and a number of the people of letters in Xianyang, the capital, was subsequently buried alive.