1 00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:23,480 China is the oldest nation on earth. 2 00:00:24,560 --> 00:00:28,400 For thousands of years its rulers believed their task was to keep 3 00:00:28,400 --> 00:00:33,080 human society in balance with the eternal order of the universe. 4 00:00:35,520 --> 00:00:38,400 The emperor who achieved that harmony would receive 5 00:00:38,400 --> 00:00:42,360 the mandate of heaven, blessed by the ancestors. 6 00:00:44,520 --> 00:00:47,960 But in the late 19th century the collision with the West shook 7 00:00:47,960 --> 00:00:49,560 China to its core. 8 00:00:51,360 --> 00:00:56,160 In midwinter 1899, the emperor came here to the Altar of Heaven 9 00:00:56,160 --> 00:01:02,480 in Beijing to ask the ancestors for support in China's hour of crisis, 10 00:01:02,480 --> 00:01:06,560 as the empire crumbled in the face of rebellion and foreign armies. 11 00:01:09,680 --> 00:01:12,600 It was the last time the ritual was performed. 12 00:01:16,800 --> 00:01:21,040 Here, just before dawn on the winter solstice... 13 00:01:23,440 --> 00:01:28,800 ..the emperor prostrated himself before the powers of the universe. 14 00:01:32,440 --> 00:01:36,640 He performed rituals that they believed went back 15 00:01:36,640 --> 00:01:40,760 5,000 years to the Yellow Emperor, the mythical first founder of China. 16 00:01:43,520 --> 00:01:46,960 He made a report to the ancestors about the state of the empire. 17 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:51,720 But that winter of 1899... 18 00:01:51,720 --> 00:01:54,760 China faced disaster. 19 00:01:57,920 --> 00:02:03,240 The following year, 1900, China was plunged into catastrophe 20 00:02:03,240 --> 00:02:05,840 with rebellion, flood and famine... 21 00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:08,920 ..foreign aggression... 22 00:02:12,360 --> 00:02:17,160 ..and the new century saw swiftly the fall of the Empire, 23 00:02:17,160 --> 00:02:21,160 short-lived republic, Communist revolution 24 00:02:21,160 --> 00:02:25,080 and then the insane madness of the Cultural Revolution. 25 00:02:27,240 --> 00:02:30,560 But despite the tragedies of the 20th century, 26 00:02:30,560 --> 00:02:32,920 the Chinese people have come through. 27 00:02:35,760 --> 00:02:40,840 Today China is writing its own story once more, under a new mandate. 28 00:02:42,760 --> 00:02:47,560 So long the greatest civilisation on earth, China is rising again. 29 00:02:48,680 --> 00:02:52,960 It's a great time to be looking at the events which have shaped 30 00:02:52,960 --> 00:02:57,840 the history of China and the ideals which have made its culture 31 00:02:57,840 --> 00:03:02,680 so distinctive and so brilliant for so long. 32 00:03:42,240 --> 00:03:45,000 Every year in spring millions of Chinese people 33 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:46,920 set off on the journey home. 34 00:03:49,800 --> 00:03:52,000 It's the time of the Qingming Festival, 35 00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:53,880 the festival of light, 36 00:03:53,880 --> 00:03:57,800 when, since ancient times, the Chinese have honoured the ancestors. 37 00:04:01,680 --> 00:04:04,200 I'm heading down to the city of Wuxi 38 00:04:04,200 --> 00:04:08,160 for a very special occasion, a family reunion. 39 00:04:10,360 --> 00:04:15,440 For the last 30 years Chinese people have grown up in a consumer society. 40 00:04:16,920 --> 00:04:20,680 After the break with Communism, China has been on a headlong 41 00:04:20,680 --> 00:04:23,000 rush into the future. 42 00:04:28,040 --> 00:04:31,640 But there's a deeper China, for as new freedoms beckon, 43 00:04:31,640 --> 00:04:34,360 the people themselves are reaching back to the things 44 00:04:34,360 --> 00:04:37,560 that have mattered most to them in their history. 45 00:04:37,560 --> 00:04:42,280 And for the Chinese people, identity begins with the family. 46 00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:48,880 Sometimes the new proves less enticing than was first thought 47 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:54,040 and the old far more durable than anyone had ever imagined. 48 00:05:02,720 --> 00:05:05,040 This is the Qin family of Wuxi. 49 00:05:15,080 --> 00:05:16,400 BIRDS CHIRP 50 00:05:28,680 --> 00:05:32,800 It's dawn on the day of the ancestors, what the Chinese call 51 00:05:32,800 --> 00:05:34,280 Tomb-Sweeping Day. 52 00:05:36,680 --> 00:05:38,960 And the Qin family gather at the grave of their 53 00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:42,640 founding ancestor, Qin Guan, 54 00:05:42,640 --> 00:05:44,960 a poet who lived 1,000 years ago. 55 00:05:50,880 --> 00:05:52,760 They have come from all over China 56 00:05:52,760 --> 00:05:57,040 and further afield to make their own report to the ancestors. 57 00:05:57,040 --> 00:05:58,840 To tell them how the family is doing 58 00:05:58,840 --> 00:06:03,040 and how the ancestors and their values still live on in us. 59 00:06:04,560 --> 00:06:08,840 As the ancients used to say, repaying our roots. 60 00:06:12,160 --> 00:06:14,440 Amazing scene, isn't it? 61 00:06:14,440 --> 00:06:18,680 It recalls the whole of Chinese history over the last 100 years, 62 00:06:18,680 --> 00:06:23,480 wars, revolutions, famines, families broken up 63 00:06:23,480 --> 00:06:27,360 and cast to the four winds, and yet they come back with this 64 00:06:27,360 --> 00:06:31,920 kind of homing instinct, almost, to the tomb of the founder, 65 00:06:31,920 --> 00:06:35,280 as if everything can be reconstituted again. 66 00:06:38,280 --> 00:06:41,120 These rituals were banned in the Communist era 67 00:06:41,120 --> 00:06:45,320 and the grave was lost after the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. 68 00:06:46,600 --> 00:06:50,280 But when the revolutionary time drew to a close, Frank Ching 69 00:06:50,280 --> 00:06:52,960 and his sister came searching for the tomb. 70 00:06:54,080 --> 00:06:58,160 Back in 1982, when I found that gravestone, 71 00:06:58,160 --> 00:07:00,440 none of these things existed. 72 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:04,160 When I first sought it out I was like a blank slate, 73 00:07:04,160 --> 00:07:06,520 I didn't know what existed. 74 00:07:06,520 --> 00:07:08,880 It's really very exciting that this is happening. 75 00:07:08,880 --> 00:07:11,520 I certainly never expected anything like this to happen 76 00:07:11,520 --> 00:07:16,000 when I started my own journey of discovery. 77 00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:44,560 Like everyone in China, the Qin family have experienced 78 00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:47,200 dizzying change since the end of empire. 79 00:07:49,240 --> 00:07:53,040 From colonial subjects to emigres seeking a better life, 80 00:07:53,040 --> 00:07:57,320 Communist revolutionaries on the long march with Chairman Mao 81 00:07:57,320 --> 00:08:00,240 and even glamour on the Shanghai stage. 82 00:08:03,920 --> 00:08:07,000 Their family story mirrors the story of the nation. 83 00:08:09,400 --> 00:08:13,360 And now the meaning of that history is flooding back. 84 00:09:00,720 --> 00:09:03,040 THEY TOAST 85 00:09:04,560 --> 00:09:06,200 I'm going to regret this. 86 00:09:09,600 --> 00:09:13,440 So the Chinese people have found again the warmth of home... 87 00:09:15,280 --> 00:09:19,680 ..after the vast and terrifying dislocation of the mid-20th century 88 00:09:19,680 --> 00:09:23,640 when for a time China turned its back on its past. 89 00:09:26,200 --> 00:09:29,440 The Qin family, like the nation itself, 90 00:09:29,440 --> 00:09:32,520 are seeking a renewed identity, 91 00:09:32,520 --> 00:09:38,080 a distinctively Chinese way forward, anchored in the Chinese past. 92 00:09:41,840 --> 00:09:45,520 And that past goes back thousands of years. 93 00:09:48,160 --> 00:09:51,280 China is the oldest continuous state on earth. 94 00:09:53,520 --> 00:09:57,400 There are no historical texts that describe its birth 95 00:09:57,400 --> 00:09:59,960 but later myths and traditions take us to 96 00:09:59,960 --> 00:10:05,440 the Yellow River plain that gave China its name, Zhonggou, 97 00:10:05,440 --> 00:10:06,720 the middle land. 98 00:10:14,440 --> 00:10:18,520 And here you can still reach back to those beginnings. 99 00:10:22,880 --> 00:10:25,480 This is a rural fair at an ancient temple, 100 00:10:25,480 --> 00:10:27,680 closed down in the Communist era. 101 00:10:33,560 --> 00:10:37,200 I'm at a great farmers festival in the plain of the Yellow River 102 00:10:37,200 --> 00:10:39,880 with a million people all around me. 103 00:10:42,440 --> 00:10:46,560 And these vast crowds have come to celebrate an ancient myth 104 00:10:46,560 --> 00:10:49,600 that tells of the origins of the Chinese people. 105 00:10:52,520 --> 00:10:56,120 As in many ancient cultures, it's the women who have treasured 106 00:10:56,120 --> 00:10:58,120 the tales and handed them down. 107 00:10:59,320 --> 00:11:01,160 How much? 108 00:11:01,160 --> 00:11:02,640 Three? 109 00:11:02,640 --> 00:11:05,560 Especially the tale of the mother goddess of the Chinese people, 110 00:11:05,560 --> 00:11:07,640 Nuwa. 111 00:11:07,640 --> 00:11:10,960 Little dog. It's great, isn't it? 112 00:11:10,960 --> 00:11:16,760 This whole great festival is to two ancient gods in Chinese mythology, 113 00:11:16,760 --> 00:11:21,360 Fuxi, the male god, and Nuwa, the female god. 114 00:11:21,360 --> 00:11:25,360 And she's famous because she created humanity out of the yellow mud 115 00:11:25,360 --> 00:11:27,680 of the Yellow River. And the mud 116 00:11:27,680 --> 00:11:31,600 that was left over she made dogs and chickens, according to the myth. 117 00:12:17,400 --> 00:12:22,160 These myths have been handed down for over 4,000 years. 118 00:12:22,160 --> 00:12:24,360 And they contain a crucial idea, 119 00:12:24,360 --> 00:12:27,120 the uniqueness of Chinese ethnic identity. 120 00:12:30,160 --> 00:12:35,800 China is a huge and diverse country, with so many languages and cultures. 121 00:12:37,760 --> 00:12:43,600 But the vast majority of its people see themselves as Han Chinese, 122 00:12:43,600 --> 00:12:45,800 part of the biggest tribe in the world. 123 00:12:50,080 --> 00:12:54,880 The myths also tell us about the origins of the Chinese state... 124 00:12:55,960 --> 00:12:58,120 ..by the banks of the Yellow River. 125 00:13:03,800 --> 00:13:06,360 All four of the great old world civilisations 126 00:13:06,360 --> 00:13:08,200 began on rivers - 127 00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:11,080 the Nile, the Euphrates, the Indus 128 00:13:11,080 --> 00:13:12,840 and the Yellow River. 129 00:13:12,840 --> 00:13:15,680 China alone has come down until today. 130 00:13:16,800 --> 00:13:19,840 It was the ability to harness the waters of the river 131 00:13:19,840 --> 00:13:24,360 for irrigation that enabled ancient people to feed bigger and bigger 132 00:13:24,360 --> 00:13:29,480 populations and eventually to create cities and make civilisation. 133 00:13:30,840 --> 00:13:34,400 But where the rising of the Nile, for example, was predictable 134 00:13:34,400 --> 00:13:39,880 to the day and seen by the Egyptians as a joyful and benign 135 00:13:39,880 --> 00:13:45,960 source of life, the Yellow River here in China has been a destroyer. 136 00:13:45,960 --> 00:13:50,200 The killer of millions in its great floods throughout Chinese history, 137 00:13:50,200 --> 00:13:52,160 right up to the 20th century. 138 00:13:53,520 --> 00:13:59,080 And so the beginnings of Chinese history, the control of the river 139 00:13:59,080 --> 00:14:02,640 and its environment, lay at the very heart of political power. 140 00:14:07,640 --> 00:14:11,800 And the tale of the king who tamed the mighty Yellow River 141 00:14:11,800 --> 00:14:14,440 and claimed the right to rule the hundreds of tribes 142 00:14:14,440 --> 00:14:20,360 along its banks became a myth still told by today's storytellers. 143 00:14:42,680 --> 00:14:44,880 THUNDER RUMBLES 144 00:15:09,320 --> 00:15:10,680 Look at this. 145 00:15:18,600 --> 00:15:20,480 THUNDER RUMBLES 146 00:15:31,720 --> 00:15:36,480 This is a Ming Dynasty temple that was built in the 1520s 147 00:15:36,480 --> 00:15:38,880 but on a very, very ancient terrace. 148 00:15:41,800 --> 00:15:43,320 And that is King Yu. 149 00:15:45,720 --> 00:15:49,840 Historians have always thought the tale of King Yu was just a myth, 150 00:15:49,840 --> 00:15:54,240 but the recent find of a bronze bowl nearly 3,000 years old 151 00:15:54,240 --> 00:15:59,520 engraved with his story proves the tale goes back to the Bronze Age. 152 00:16:07,720 --> 00:16:11,640 The legend says that King Yu was the founder of China's first 153 00:16:11,640 --> 00:16:14,200 dynasty 4,000 years ago. 154 00:16:16,800 --> 00:16:18,440 They were called the Xia 155 00:16:18,440 --> 00:16:21,480 and they came from the middle plain of the middle land, 156 00:16:21,480 --> 00:16:23,040 here in Henan. 157 00:16:27,040 --> 00:16:29,480 And at the village of Erlitou, 158 00:16:29,480 --> 00:16:32,400 traditions survived until modern times 159 00:16:32,400 --> 00:16:36,000 that this had been the seat of China's first rulers. 160 00:16:38,560 --> 00:16:40,920 SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE 161 00:16:40,920 --> 00:16:43,000 The most ancient site in the world? 162 00:16:48,800 --> 00:16:51,280 No? Incredible! 163 00:16:51,280 --> 00:16:55,240 Ancient Greece, ancient Iraq, ancient Egypt... 164 00:16:55,240 --> 00:16:59,400 Wherever you look, some memory survives on site. 165 00:16:59,400 --> 00:17:04,320 Here, towns first emerged out of China's myriad Stone Age villages. 166 00:17:14,200 --> 00:17:18,880 Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, the original Emperor of China. 167 00:17:32,960 --> 00:17:36,480 Under these wheat fields the archaeologists excavated 168 00:17:36,480 --> 00:17:39,800 a settlement which had thousands of people 169 00:17:39,800 --> 00:17:42,000 and a huge walled enclosure. 170 00:17:47,240 --> 00:17:50,720 Inside it were pillared halls, 171 00:17:50,720 --> 00:17:55,960 palaces from different periods between 2000 and 1500 BC. 172 00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:02,000 They stood on rammed earth platforms, one of them 173 00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:07,280 with a triple gate, the pattern of all later Chinese royal cities. 174 00:18:13,800 --> 00:18:16,800 The Xia are still a mystery. 175 00:18:16,800 --> 00:18:18,960 But here at Erlitou 176 00:18:18,960 --> 00:18:22,400 archaeologists have found tantalizing clues - 177 00:18:22,400 --> 00:18:30,400 pottery, bronze casting and most intriguing of all a burial with 178 00:18:30,400 --> 00:18:37,320 a sceptre made of 2,000 pieces of turquoise in the shape of a dragon, 179 00:18:37,320 --> 00:18:41,240 the symbol of royalty all the way through Chinese civilisation. 180 00:18:48,960 --> 00:18:51,720 Whether the Xia were China's first dynasty 181 00:18:51,720 --> 00:18:56,000 and whether this was their capital is still not known 182 00:18:56,000 --> 00:18:59,840 and that's because we lack the key evidence - writing. 183 00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:04,160 Do you think that this was the capital of the Xia 184 00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:05,600 or what do you think? 185 00:19:05,600 --> 00:19:07,240 THEY LAUGH 186 00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:08,600 Difficult question. 187 00:19:29,960 --> 00:19:34,160 If it this was the capital of the Xia, for the Chinese, 188 00:19:34,160 --> 00:19:36,840 myth would become history, 189 00:19:36,840 --> 00:19:40,000 for they would have found the root of the Chinese state. 190 00:19:50,800 --> 00:19:53,520 As it is, though, we now have to leap forward 191 00:19:53,520 --> 00:19:55,880 to around 1200 BC 192 00:19:55,880 --> 00:20:01,320 to find China's first historical rulers, the Shang Dynasty. 193 00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:06,280 And we know about the Shang because they have left us 194 00:20:06,280 --> 00:20:08,080 the first Chinese writing. 195 00:20:14,080 --> 00:20:17,720 The modern discovery of the Shang is one of the most exciting 196 00:20:17,720 --> 00:20:19,680 stories in world archaeology. 197 00:20:22,120 --> 00:20:26,480 And it began by chance in one of those storehouses of age-old 198 00:20:26,480 --> 00:20:30,520 Chinese wisdom, a traditional pharmacy... 199 00:20:34,120 --> 00:20:37,960 ..where beliefs and practices going back into prehistory 200 00:20:37,960 --> 00:20:39,720 have come down to us today. 201 00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:48,440 And the clues to the mystery of the Shang, unbelievably, 202 00:20:48,440 --> 00:20:53,080 were found inside a packet of over-the-counter medicine. 203 00:20:53,080 --> 00:20:58,200 The story goes like this - 1899, Chinese scholar called Wang Yirong, 204 00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:01,280 who was the Chancellor of the Imperial Academy in Beijing, 205 00:21:01,280 --> 00:21:05,320 a great scholar and a collector of ancient bronzes. 206 00:21:05,320 --> 00:21:08,560 He was interested in the earliest Chinese writing systems. 207 00:21:08,560 --> 00:21:13,960 He falls ill with malaria and his local pharmacy, just like this one, 208 00:21:13,960 --> 00:21:18,840 delivers a series of ingredients which include... 209 00:21:18,840 --> 00:21:20,560 dragon bones. 210 00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:24,160 These were animal bones... Just like this, they use them today. 211 00:21:24,160 --> 00:21:28,560 ..which you ground up and boiled and drank to alleviate the fever. 212 00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:34,000 When he opened the packet, to his amazement, 213 00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:35,560 this is what he saw. 214 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:43,080 Some of the bones were inscribed with what he could see were primitive 215 00:21:43,080 --> 00:21:49,200 forms of the old writing that he knew from the inscriptions on his bronzes. 216 00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:53,680 And eventually these dragon bones were traced back to a little place in 217 00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:58,200 the lower valley of the Yellow River, a country town called Anyang. 218 00:22:00,720 --> 00:22:05,240 At Anyang, Chinese archaeologists made their greatest discovery. 219 00:22:06,640 --> 00:22:11,640 Huge tombs of the last Shang kings with mass human sacrifice 220 00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:16,880 and crucially, written texts on oracle bones. 221 00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:24,680 1928 they finally found the location and they started the excavation. 222 00:22:26,120 --> 00:22:30,480 From the excavation they found nearly 30,000 oracle bones... 223 00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:37,440 ..documenting divination performed on behalf of nine late Shang kings. 224 00:22:42,280 --> 00:22:44,800 - I love all the portraits of the people. - Yes, yes. 225 00:22:44,800 --> 00:22:48,000 There is something so optimistic about their faces. 226 00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:56,240 They thought that their task is to prove that Chinese history was true. 227 00:22:57,800 --> 00:23:00,880 Epoch-making, in world archaeology, really. 228 00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:02,200 Absolutely, yes. 229 00:23:04,480 --> 00:23:07,280 - Now we knew that they were historical. - Yes. 230 00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:14,040 Anyang was the final capital of the Shang Dynasty. 231 00:23:14,040 --> 00:23:18,040 They ruled for 500 years, controlling the whole of central China. 232 00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:21,240 The first Chinese state. 233 00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:30,800 Their authority rested on force but was validated by divination. 234 00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:35,480 The Shang kings and their diviners burned cracks in tortoise shells 235 00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:39,120 or cow bones to speak to the ancestors. 236 00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:44,480 So basically, they chose one piece of bone or shell 237 00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:47,280 and then they drilled some holes, 238 00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:52,320 and then they heat up these holes with some special plants 239 00:23:52,320 --> 00:23:55,160 and then these will create some cracks, 240 00:23:55,160 --> 00:23:58,400 and then they look at the pattern of these cracks. 241 00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:01,160 - And the cracks come the other side, is that right? - Yes. 242 00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:05,400 And then they can read these patterns and make their predictions 243 00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:10,800 about whether these divinations are auspicious or it is 244 00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:14,800 actually against the will of the ancestral spirits, 245 00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:20,600 so they should not be carrying out the activity they were asking for. 246 00:24:20,600 --> 00:24:25,880 - So the diviners are asking for the favour of the ancestral spirits. - Yes. 247 00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:32,240 So basically it's their special way to communicate with their ancestors. 248 00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:36,720 - The ancestors are the key people in their mental universe. - Yes. 249 00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:38,000 Fantastic. 250 00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:41,920 Basically, in every aspect of their society, including, for instance, 251 00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:45,880 the harvest. This one is even about praying for rain. 252 00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:50,520 Rain and water would be a big part of their concerns 253 00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:52,960 living in the Yellow River plain, I suppose. 254 00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:57,280 Yes, for agricultural society it is absolutely crucial. 255 00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:02,760 And unlike the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt or the cuneiform 256 00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:08,000 of Babylonia, the archaeologists had no need of a key to decipher them 257 00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:11,160 for they could see at once that the signs on the oracle bones were 258 00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,800 the direct ancestors of today's Chinese writing. 259 00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:22,440 That's the character for rain in modern language. 260 00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:25,080 And in oracle bones it's like this... 261 00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:30,800 With three drops, so essentially it's the same idea, fundamentally. 262 00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:35,480 - This rain character is characterised by these raindrops. - Yeah, yeah. 263 00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:42,080 Out of these prehistoric pictographs came the modern Chinese script 264 00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:44,840 with its tens of thousands of signs. 265 00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:52,440 So through their script the Chinese people are uniquely connected 266 00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:54,000 to their deep past 267 00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,200 and its ways of thinking. 268 00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:57,560 More so than any other 269 00:25:57,560 --> 00:25:59,080 culture on earth. 270 00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:08,640 There seem to be... Is this fanciful? 271 00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:14,640 There seem to be themes that we trace all the way through Chinese history - 272 00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:18,640 the reverence for the ancestors, the divination, 273 00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:24,600 the control of writing and writing as a source of power. Is that fair? 274 00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:26,600 I agree. 275 00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:31,240 I think communication or interaction between the ancestral spirit 276 00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,640 and the acquisition of social power is 277 00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:38,080 indeed a recurrent theme throughout Chinese history. 278 00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:42,400 So power came from the ancestors. 279 00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:48,440 In the oracle bones there is a sacred place. 280 00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:52,680 It has the same name as the dynasty, Shang. 281 00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:56,480 This is not like the shopping malls of Shanghai, that's for sure. 282 00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:59,520 And the archaeologists now turn to a little town in Henan 283 00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:01,080 with a tantalizing name. 284 00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:06,800 Shangqiu, the mound or ruins of Shang. 285 00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:09,320 We are now inside the Ming Dynasty city. 286 00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:12,960 This was built in 1511, the previous one destroyed by floods. 287 00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:15,480 Lots more underneath it, of course. 288 00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:21,240 What's fascinating is it's still called Shangqiu, the ruins of Shang. 289 00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:28,640 So was this the ancestral place of China's first great dynasty? 290 00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:31,640 HE LAUGHS 291 00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:34,800 That question has intrigued Chinese archaeologists 292 00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:38,760 since their first explorations here in the 1930s. 293 00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:47,400 But the Bronze Age layers here are 30 feet deep in Yellow River silt. 294 00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:55,280 Recently, though, geophysical surveys and test cores have detected 295 00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:58,920 the outline of a much earlier city underneath the town. 296 00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:05,400 And the clues to what it was were in the oracle bones found at Anyang. 297 00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:09,960 In the 1930s a Chinese scholar called Dong Zuobin 298 00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:13,680 worked on the Bronze Age inscriptions 299 00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:18,000 scratched into the oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty. 300 00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,040 Thousand upon thousand of them, 301 00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:26,480 and through the 1930s, when China was driven by civil war 302 00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:31,600 and Japanese invasion, he worked transcribing these inscriptions 303 00:28:31,600 --> 00:28:35,920 in what, I suppose, you could call self-effacing loyalty 304 00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:39,080 to the Chinese past while the catastrophes 305 00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:40,960 of the modern world surrounded him. 306 00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:43,600 You see there his transcription of one 307 00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:48,080 of the turtle shells with all the splits and the inscriptions on them. 308 00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:53,240 And he worked out the order of the Shang kings and their calendar 309 00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:56,840 and their rituals and their journeys. 310 00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:05,800 What he discovered was that the kings came back to do special rituals 311 00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:08,160 at the city called Shang. 312 00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:10,480 That was here. Its name meant 313 00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:13,720 "the place where the ancestors were worshiped". 314 00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:17,120 So state and ancestors were tied together. 315 00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:24,960 And amazingly, cults and legends about the Shang 316 00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:28,880 still survive here at a mysterious temple at the edge of town. 317 00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:35,520 The Mound of Shang, it's a great artificial hill. 318 00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:42,080 The legends say this mound was built before the Great Flood, 319 00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:46,520 that here mankind first got fire, stolen from the gods. 320 00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:50,680 And tradition also said 321 00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:54,240 this had been a kind of observatory where 322 00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:59,880 the Shang kings watched the stars that protected their dynasty. 323 00:29:59,880 --> 00:30:04,520 Because they believed that the stars were powers in heaven 324 00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:07,240 and if we understood them properly 325 00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:10,600 then we'd know best how to run our kingdom. 326 00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:19,320 So the oracle bones and the later myths are clues to early Chinese 327 00:30:19,320 --> 00:30:22,680 beliefs about society and the cosmos. 328 00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:28,840 Divination, ritual and writing were the basis of state power. 329 00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:37,360 For their sacred ceremonies they cast beautiful bronzes to hold food 330 00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:41,200 and wine offerings to the ancestral spirits, which were 331 00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:44,040 consumed at the royal feasts. 332 00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:46,880 Some of them bear the symbols of the different lineages 333 00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:49,680 of the royal and noble families. 334 00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:56,280 Like the ancient Egyptians 335 00:30:56,280 --> 00:31:00,440 and Sumerians, the Shang practised human sacrifice. 336 00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:04,640 The oracle bones list the victims. 337 00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:08,880 They were captives from the subject peoples the Shang ruled, 338 00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:13,520 killed as offerings to the powers of nature, 339 00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:19,560 as the Shang diviners asked the ancestors in heaven for guidance, 340 00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:22,240 anxiously watching the stars 341 00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:24,840 for omens of auspiciousness 342 00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:27,440 and omens of disaster. 343 00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:36,640 To them, time, as revealed in the movements of the stars 344 00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:42,240 and planets, was a truly portentous dimension, 345 00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:45,000 full of danger as well as auspiciousness, 346 00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:50,240 and especially for the rulers, for they knew that in time 347 00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:57,320 the planets would reveal heaven's judgment on their earthly rule. 348 00:31:57,320 --> 00:32:02,600 That brings us to one of the key ideas in early Chinese thought, 349 00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:04,920 the Mandate of Heaven. 350 00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:15,800 The early Chinese believed their rulers should protect the people, 351 00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:19,080 keeping harmony with the order of heaven. 352 00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:21,200 It was said the first Shang king 353 00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:25,240 had even offered himself as a sacrifice in time of drought. 354 00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:34,800 But legend said the last Shang king was so depraved 355 00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:40,400 and cruel that heaven withdrew its mandate, and it gave a sign. 356 00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:45,160 Five planets came together in the rarest of conjunctions. 357 00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:54,880 'As this happens only once every 516 years, we can pin down the very day.' 358 00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:59,480 - So you can follow any single planet? - Yes. - It's just...wonderful. 359 00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:05,360 'We asked the Beijing Planetarium to work out the exact 360 00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:10,120 'date of the omen and to show us the night sky at that moment.' 361 00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,640 So it's what historians always want to do, is actually 362 00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:17,480 go back in time - Mr Liu can do it for us. 363 00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:24,280 He can actually take us back to late May 1058 BC on his computer system, 364 00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:28,920 which is 1059 BC on historians' calculations. 365 00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:36,600 This time, this place, the sky... you can see them. 366 00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:42,080 'The tribes who lived under the Shang tyranny saw the sign 367 00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:46,240 'and made an alliance under a man known for his virtue, 368 00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:49,440 'King Wen of the Zhou.' 369 00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:53,960 This five-planet conjunction happens once every 516 years 370 00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:59,160 but that moment was the closest that has ever happened in human history 371 00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:03,640 and at that time the early Chinese chronicles say... 372 00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:06,760 - VOICEOVER: - ..when the five planets gather in the constellation 373 00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:09,760 called the Chamber 374 00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:14,280 a great vermillion bird landed on the altar 375 00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:16,680 of the earth on Mount Qi. 376 00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:25,840 In its beak was a jade sceptre, and it spoke, saying, 377 00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:28,240 "Heaven has commanded that the King... 378 00:34:28,240 --> 00:34:33,400 "..of the Zhou should overthrow the King of the Shang 379 00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:35,560 "and take the kingdom." 380 00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:38,240 BATTLE CRIES 381 00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:48,240 In the final battle, the wicked Shang king saw his subjects had 382 00:34:48,240 --> 00:34:49,680 turned against him. 383 00:34:52,240 --> 00:34:55,800 So he burned his palace with his treasures and his concubines 384 00:34:55,800 --> 00:35:00,240 and put on his jade suit and walked into the fire. 385 00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:09,400 And so the ancestors passed the mandate to the King of the Zhou. 386 00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:12,880 And he laid down the pattern of rule for future ages. 387 00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:17,280 Rulers must be virtuous and keep harmony between humanity 388 00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:23,240 and the cosmos by observing the rites and the music of the heavens. 389 00:35:23,240 --> 00:35:25,440 RELIGIOUS MUSIC PLAYS 390 00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,680 And, amazingly, some of the ritual traditions of the Zhou have 391 00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:31,560 come down to us today. 392 00:35:34,240 --> 00:35:37,120 China's oldest religion is Taoism. 393 00:35:38,240 --> 00:35:41,720 In their ceremonies and their music the Taoists, 394 00:35:41,720 --> 00:35:43,680 the "seekers after the Way", 395 00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:46,840 are a living link with these ancient ideas 396 00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:50,760 about the relation of the kingdoms of earth and heaven. 397 00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:52,760 CHANTING 398 00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:33,400 And these very ancient customs and beliefs are still 399 00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:38,280 held in affection and practised by the ordinary Chinese people today. 400 00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:07,800 In later times the Zhou came to be seen as model rulers, 401 00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:10,880 fulfilling heaven's mandate. 402 00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:15,840 But China's fate throughout its history 403 00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:18,760 has been to fragment in times of crisis. 404 00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:23,440 HE SCREAMS 405 00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:26,160 Eventually Zhou power disintegrated. 406 00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:31,160 And the heartland of China descended into chaos. 407 00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:41,000 Across the middle land, feuding kings and warlords fought for supremacy. 408 00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:49,120 Surrounded by their armies, even in death. 409 00:38:00,240 --> 00:38:02,000 Amazing sight, isn't it? 410 00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:06,080 This is one of more than a dozen chariot burial pits that have 411 00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:09,920 been uncovered in the middle of Luoyang in the last few years. 412 00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:14,880 This with excavated in 2003 during the modern building boom. 413 00:38:16,240 --> 00:38:19,400 There's 18 chariots and their horses here, 414 00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:23,040 associated with the tombs of the Kings of the Eastern Zhou. 415 00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:27,880 It's the world of Achilles and Hector 416 00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:31,280 in more than just the military hardware. 417 00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:35,800 Politically, just like Agamemnon, the kings here in the central plain 418 00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:41,680 of China depended on the co-operation of vassal states, smaller kingdoms. 419 00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:44,360 Sometimes more than 100 of them. 420 00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:47,200 But these were rivals fighting each other, 421 00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:48,920 just like the Greek heroes 422 00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:52,240 sacking cities and enslaving their populations. 423 00:38:52,240 --> 00:38:57,480 So political instability, warfare and violence were endemic. 424 00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:00,440 And for that reason, perhaps, this is the time 425 00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:04,920 when a ferment of ideas grows about the nature of kingship, 426 00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:11,720 the function of states, duties, obligation and morality. 427 00:39:11,720 --> 00:39:16,960 Out of this begins the first golden age of Chinese philosophy. 428 00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:22,600 Right across the Old World in the sixth century BC, 429 00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:26,080 thinkers and rulers were debating these ideas. 430 00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:34,120 A new age of human thought had dawned, what we call the Axis Age. 431 00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:39,040 The Greek philosophers, the Old Testament prophets, 432 00:39:39,040 --> 00:39:42,640 the Buddha in India, all of them were wrestling with 433 00:39:42,640 --> 00:39:46,360 ideas about conscience and social justice 434 00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:48,160 and human autonomy. 435 00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:55,240 How can a king be just in violent times? 436 00:39:55,240 --> 00:39:58,080 What is law and what is virtue? 437 00:39:59,240 --> 00:40:03,520 Here in China it was said 100 schools bloomed. 438 00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:13,520 And the most famous thinker came from an obscure state in eastern China. 439 00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:21,240 He was descended from a family of Shang diviners, oracle-bone crackers. 440 00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:24,680 And his obsession was not the inner life 441 00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:26,720 but how we act in the public world. 442 00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:33,000 Small-town China, but what a small town. 443 00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:35,520 Because this place, Qufu, 444 00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:39,880 has nearly 3,000 years of continuity, life on this spot. 445 00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:43,880 And it gave birth to one of the most influential figures 446 00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:45,440 in the history of the world, 447 00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:46,760 Confucius. 448 00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:54,360 Ni hao. 449 00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:58,480 Confucius lived in a time of cultural and political crisis. 450 00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:02,600 China divided into many small states that were always 451 00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:06,520 fighting each other and sometimes even divided in themselves, 452 00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:11,480 like this one, the state of Lu, whose capital was Qufu. 453 00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:22,480 Confucius rose eventually to a quite high ministerial job 454 00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:24,760 in which he played a crucial role... 455 00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:29,480 ..brokering a peace deal between three feuding clans 456 00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:33,120 and persuading them to demolish their fortifications 457 00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:36,120 and acknowledge the duke here as their lord. 458 00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:38,480 And that kind of experience gave him 459 00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:42,800 the idea of his mission, which was nothing less than to restore 460 00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:47,080 civilisation by teaching rulers to be virtuous. 461 00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:52,880 Confucius had a very clear vision. 462 00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:55,960 There is definitely this sense of passion in him 463 00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:58,040 that he wants to be recognised. 464 00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:03,480 He wants to contribute to the social order of society and 465 00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:08,960 he wants to make sure that ritual practices are followed very closely. 466 00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:15,920 Confucius was very keen on the idea of humaneness, or benevolence, 467 00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:21,040 and that the ruler set a direct example for the people to follow. 468 00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:26,680 There's a very lively metaphor in the Analects 469 00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:30,720 when the character of the ruler is compared to the wind 470 00:42:30,720 --> 00:42:34,920 and the character of the ordinary people is compared to the grass, 471 00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:40,320 so it's said that when the wind blows the grass naturally bends. 472 00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:43,920 Like Socrates or the Buddha, his sayings were turned into a book 473 00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:46,400 after his death by his disciples. 474 00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:49,400 The Analects. Horrible word, isn't it? 475 00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:53,440 What a mouthful. It means the sort of quotations from... 476 00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:57,000 but really it should be called the conversations of Confucius, 477 00:42:57,000 --> 00:42:58,680 cos that's what it really is. 478 00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:00,440 It's his sayings, 479 00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:04,800 and it's been said that no book in the history of the world, 480 00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:06,920 even the Bible, has exerted 481 00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:11,720 so much influence for such a long period on so many people. 482 00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:16,480 That's Confucius's little blue book. 483 00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:20,320 - 18? - 18. - 18, OK, great. 484 00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:24,320 'The Analects would become China's guide 485 00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:27,040 'to the principles of good government.' 486 00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:33,160 He says that if you govern people by cheng - 487 00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:37,960 it could be translated as "law" or "punishment" - 488 00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:41,920 then you get people who have no sense of shame. 489 00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:48,120 You get order but people don't really know what they're doing wrong. 490 00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:50,560 But then if you govern by de - 491 00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:56,680 a sense of virtue, morality - then people have a sense of shame 492 00:43:56,680 --> 00:44:01,480 and with that idea it's implied that they will have moral progress as well. 493 00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:07,040 It's a very old idea in the story of China 494 00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:09,120 that the basis of all government 495 00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:13,320 is not law but established morality. 496 00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:17,240 And the key end - to preserve the state. 497 00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:26,400 In the West we tend to think of Confucius 498 00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:30,000 as an archconservative, a bit pious and a bit pompous. 499 00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:34,840 But without virtue he thought any rule 500 00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:40,520 is morally bankrupt and should be resisted, even until death. 501 00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:45,400 He travelled the roads of China like some intellectual 502 00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:50,920 trouble-shooter, trying to sell China's local rulers his new deal. 503 00:44:55,200 --> 00:44:59,480 At his tomb I met a group of Confucian teachers from Korea. 504 00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:04,240 These gentlemen are not priests, they're scholars. 505 00:45:05,720 --> 00:45:09,840 And what they're doing is not so much religion as ritual. 506 00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:13,640 An active reverence for the old master 507 00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:17,040 and his ideal of universal brotherhood. 508 00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:26,240 Bowing before his tombstone, which was smashed to pieces 509 00:45:26,240 --> 00:45:29,640 by the Communist Red Guards only 50 years ago 510 00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:31,280 but is now restored. 511 00:45:43,920 --> 00:45:45,760 Ah, very good question! 512 00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:49,160 We are interested in the history of China and Confucius is 513 00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:52,440 so important that that is why we are here. 514 00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:53,800 THEY ALL SPEAK 515 00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:05,240 HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE 516 00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:11,360 Confucius is covering all over the world...love. 517 00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:16,600 Should spread all over the world. Not just individual. 518 00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:20,240 - Love, benevolence, courtesy... - Courtesy. - ..good manners. 519 00:46:20,240 --> 00:46:22,360 These are the way society works, 520 00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:26,920 - when society works well, in Confucius's idea. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. 521 00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:32,280 Confucius was condemned during the Communist revolution as 522 00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:35,960 the embodiment of old ideas and old customs. 523 00:46:35,960 --> 00:46:38,640 But now, once more, he's a national treasure, 524 00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:42,640 praised by the government for his stress on social values, 525 00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:46,480 though not so much perhaps for his insistence that it is 526 00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:49,960 the intellectual's duty to speak truth to power. 527 00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:55,360 But in both he's a symbol of the Chinese way. 528 00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:07,280 Very good! Oh, very good! Xie xie! 529 00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:10,960 Thank you very much! Fantastic! 530 00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:21,520 Confucius was not an innovator, he was 531 00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:27,880 the distiller, the crystalliser of an already ancient tradition. 532 00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:30,440 The idea of the virtuous ruler. 533 00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:34,720 Of filial piety, of ritual and ceremony as the glue that 534 00:47:34,720 --> 00:47:40,360 bound society together and the overruling power of education. 535 00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:45,760 Those are the values that still underlie Chinese values today. 536 00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:49,640 And South Asian values from Korea and Japan 537 00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:52,160 all the way down to Vietnam. 538 00:47:52,160 --> 00:47:53,520 What a legacy. 539 00:48:02,720 --> 00:48:07,280 But the truth is in his own lifetime Confucius was a complete failure. 540 00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:10,960 No ruler bought into his manifesto for change. 541 00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:16,320 After his death in 469 BC the warring states fought each other 542 00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:21,080 for two more centuries until the fall of the last of the Zhou. 543 00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:27,120 And when their end came 544 00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:30,640 no-one was listening to arguments about morality 545 00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:34,800 but only the claims of violence and war. 546 00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:40,160 BATTLE CRIES 547 00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:44,600 And one of those warring states was the Qin. 548 00:48:46,040 --> 00:48:49,120 Through military conquest they swallowed up the Zhou 549 00:48:49,120 --> 00:48:52,200 and the other states of the Yellow River plain. 550 00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:01,600 And in 221 BC they proclaimed their leader 551 00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:03,640 the First Emperor of all China... 552 00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:07,600 ..Qin Shi Huangdi. 553 00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:26,040 The First Emperor imposed his own revolutionary political system 554 00:49:26,040 --> 00:49:28,080 on the conquered lands. 555 00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:34,160 Dispossessing the old aristocracies, creating an enormous captive 556 00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:38,960 labour force to build his new state, the Qin. 557 00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:44,160 That's the source of the name China used today by the outside world, 558 00:49:44,160 --> 00:49:46,760 although not by the Chinese themselves. 559 00:49:54,240 --> 00:49:58,120 Qin Shi Huangdi built the first Great Wall. 560 00:49:58,120 --> 00:50:03,280 He made a new road system linking the 36 military provinces. 561 00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:07,120 For tax and commerce the weights and measures were standardised. 562 00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:09,560 There was to be a uniform coinage. 563 00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:16,600 And the Chinese script itself was simplified so the Emperor's 564 00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:21,480 will could be conveyed right down to the local magistrates, 565 00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:25,280 who administered a population of more than 30 million people. 566 00:50:26,600 --> 00:50:28,680 Almost a third of the world. 567 00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:41,520 And the key to the Qin Emperor's power was the army. 568 00:50:45,040 --> 00:50:51,080 It was the image of the empire - discipline, obedience, hierarchy. 569 00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:58,400 With their mass-produced bronze weapons and mechanical crossbows 570 00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:01,760 there'd been nothing like this in the whole of history. 571 00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:11,320 Infantry, archers and cavalry and charioteers, 572 00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:15,760 so that's really the battle formation of the Qin Dynasty. 573 00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,520 So...how Qin...how the First Emperor 574 00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:22,480 conquered the other states, used his military troops. 575 00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:26,640 - Frightening actually! - Yeah. - When you're faced with them like this! 576 00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:29,880 One of the most amazing discoveries ever, isn't it, really? 577 00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:34,600 - Yeah. - And more recently you've discovered pits, not with warriors 578 00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:37,800 but with other people attached to the court. 579 00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:42,960 We found terracotta acrobats, terracotta musicians 580 00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:46,400 and actually bronze birds, bronze chariots. 581 00:51:48,240 --> 00:51:50,920 All part of the whole tomb complex. 582 00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:53,720 They serve the Emperor in his afterlife. 583 00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:03,200 This pit is one of nearly 200, large and small, found so far. 584 00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:07,200 The more the archaeologists look, the more they find. 585 00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:14,840 I think we are very similar to the doctor. 586 00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:18,640 The only difference is our patient is different. 587 00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:23,000 'Paranoid to the end, the Emperor took no chances, 588 00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:27,200 'magically protected by his army even in the afterlife.' 589 00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:32,000 Do we know what rank he was in the army? 590 00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:34,840 No, he's a normal soldier. 591 00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:37,720 You can tell that by the headdress and the armour? 592 00:52:37,720 --> 00:52:44,080 Depends on his armour and depends on his...his troops, 593 00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:47,680 because general has more detail, 594 00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:49,400 - more... - Posh clothes. - Yeah. 595 00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:55,120 More... 596 00:52:55,120 --> 00:53:00,560 - Yeah! More... - A stern look of command, hasn't he? 597 00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:11,280 We've all become so familiar with the images of the Terracotta Army. 598 00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:14,840 So familiar perhaps that it's easy to forget their significance 599 00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:17,360 in the history of China and of the world. 600 00:53:20,640 --> 00:53:25,280 How this vast and diverse area became one state, 601 00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:28,440 that's one of the great themes of our story. 602 00:53:28,440 --> 00:53:32,320 As we've already seen, it began a long time before, 603 00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:34,920 with the Xia and Shang Dynasties, 604 00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:38,160 but without the Qin Emperor, whose army is 605 00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:42,200 arrayed before us now, it might never have happened. 606 00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:47,480 The beginnings of China as a unitary state, as the world's first 607 00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:53,600 bureaucratic, centralised empire, begin with Qin Shi Huangdi. 608 00:53:56,520 --> 00:54:01,520 But the First Emperor's rule over China was brief, just 11 years, 609 00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:03,640 his son's even briefer, 610 00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:07,760 their hated regime overthrown by a rebellion led by 611 00:54:07,760 --> 00:54:11,080 the peasant Liu Bang, who founded the dynasty 612 00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:14,960 after whom the Chinese still name themselves today, 613 00:54:14,960 --> 00:54:16,400 the Han. 614 00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:18,080 FIREWORKS EXPLODE 615 00:54:24,240 --> 00:54:25,640 HE YELLS 616 00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:30,000 And for all the wars and revolutions, the triumphs 617 00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:34,200 and tragedies that would follow, the idea will never be lost 618 00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:37,800 that China, a land of so many peoples and cultures, 619 00:55:37,800 --> 00:55:41,640 is a single state and a single civilisation. 620 00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:46,160 Still today the Chinese call themselves Han. 621 00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:50,800 They speak of "our Han culture" and "Han speech". 622 00:55:52,280 --> 00:55:54,080 As if one great tribe. 623 00:55:55,560 --> 00:56:01,840 A tribe with many stories but one great story - China itself. 624 00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:09,240 And at the very heart of the story the link between the state 625 00:56:09,240 --> 00:56:12,200 and the family and the ancestors. 626 00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:18,000 Over the next 2,000 years these values will run under 627 00:56:18,000 --> 00:56:21,000 the surface of the great river of Chinese history. 628 00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:26,960 Often tested, sometimes seemingly broken, but still 629 00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:32,400 passed on across even the tyrannies and cruelties of the 20th century. 630 00:56:36,160 --> 00:56:40,240 At the Temple of Nuwa, the mother goddess of the Chinese people, 631 00:56:40,240 --> 00:56:44,480 the pilgrims are gathering again to give thanks to the ancestors. 632 00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:55,680 This prayer ceremony was last done 100 years ago 633 00:56:55,680 --> 00:56:57,880 at the end of the empire. 634 00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:01,280 Now the rituals are brought back to life for today's people, 635 00:57:01,280 --> 00:57:06,440 recreated with words from sacred books over 2,000 years old. 636 00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:09,720 It's a symbol of today's China. 637 00:57:09,720 --> 00:57:13,000 After the ravages of the 20th century 638 00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:17,560 the Chinese people's belief in their history as a source of strength, 639 00:57:17,560 --> 00:57:19,360 not weakness, has returned. 640 00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:25,480 The ideas that nourished their identity for so long handed down now 641 00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:29,600 into an ever more competent and expansive Chinese future. 642 00:57:31,120 --> 00:57:35,640 With a new text, may our country's great traditions be 643 00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:41,000 passed down once more from generation to generation. 644 00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:13,160 So that's the first part of this great adventure, the story of China. 645 00:58:14,600 --> 00:58:16,880 And this is just the beginning. 646 00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:21,120 In the next chapter of the story, China goes out to the world in 647 00:58:21,120 --> 00:58:25,560 one of the greatest epochs in world civilisation, the Tang Dynasty.