Free About 1 hr0 learners Rev. 2026-10-21 0

How do you govern a hundred million people with a few tens of thousands of officials, no telegraph and roads that turned to mud every spring? Chinese emperors managed it, on and off, for two thousand years, with written law, examinations, family loyalty and a bold idea: that Heaven could take back the right to rule from a ruler who misused it. That idea outlived every dynasty that claimed it.

You will read a Shang king's questions scratched on bone, follow a bolt of silk across Asia, sit in an exam cell at Nanjing, watch a giraffe arrive at the Ming court and stand on the shore at Humen as opium dissolves into the sea. Along the way you will learn to test a famous story against documents of its own time, to treat a translated quotation with healthy suspicion, and to see why China's imperial past still shapes arguments about merit, legitimacy and foreign power.

Levels

  1. 1 1. Shang, Zhou and the Mandate of Heaven 5-question quiz
  2. 2 2. Qin and the First Emperor 5-question quiz
  3. 3 3. The Han Dynasty and the Silk Road 5-question quiz
  4. 4 4. Examinations and Scholar-Officials 5-question quiz
  5. 5 5. Tang and Song: Cities, Printing and Gunpowder 5-question quiz
  6. 6 6. The Mongol Yuan and the Ming 5-question quiz
  7. 7 7. The Qing: Conquest, Expansion and Prosperity 5-question quiz
  8. 8 8. Opium, Rebellion and the Fall of the Empire 5-question quiz

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