When did it happen?

Before writing was invented, people kept the past alive by telling it, from grandparents to children. Pangu opening the sky, Nüwa making people, Shennong tasting a hundred herbs, the Yellow Emperor battling Chiyou — the heroes of these very old tales lived on in the telling. Underground lie even older "clues": stone tools, painted pottery, the village of Banpo, rice grains at Hemudu. They cannot speak, yet they show us how early people farmed, built houses, and lived together. A legend is not the same as a fact — but legends keep the way those first people saw the world. Read the stories next to the objects, and prehistory comes alive.

The Shang is the first Chinese dynasty that left writing of its own. When a Shang king faced a big question, he asked the gods: the question was carved on a turtle shell or an ox bone, fire cracked the shell, and the answer was read from the cracks. Those carved characters are **oracle bone script**, the ancestor of today's Chinese characters. With writing, Shang history stops being legend: Pan Geng moving the capital to Yin, King Wu Ding fighting beside the general Fu Hao, the fall of King Zhou — all leave traces. The great Houmuwu cauldron from the Yinxu ruins weighs more than 800 kilograms; its bronze craft amazes even today's smiths. Here the Shang of the books meets the Shang of the ground.

After the royal house moved east to Luoyi, the Zhou kings kept weakening while the great states kept growing. Big powers competed for the lead under the banner of "honour the king, repel the outsiders" — this is the Spring and Autumn period. Duke Huan of Qi trusted the reformer Guan Zhong; Duke Wen of Jin came home after nineteen years of exile to lead the states; Goujian of Yue "slept on brushwood and tasted the gall". Many of the best-loved idiom stories were born here. In this same age, Confucius traveled from state to state with his students, and Laozi left behind five thousand characters. Beyond the noise of the hegemons, Chinese thought was quietly sprouting.

In 221 BCE, King Zheng of Qin conquered the last rival states and called himself the First Emperor, founding China's first centralized empire. One script for writing, one gauge for axles, one set of weights and coins; highways radiating from the capital, walls joined into the Great Wall, and commanderies replacing feudal lords — the First Emperor carved the word "unified" into the next two thousand years of China. But harsh laws and endless labour soon lit a rebellion. Chen Sheng and Wu Guang rose at Dazexiang; Xiang Yu and Liu Bang followed. The mighty Qin lasted only fifteen years.

The Han dynasty founded by Liu Bang made its capital at Chang'an. After the quiet recovery of the Wen and Jing reigns, under Emperor Wu the Han stood among the strongest states on earth. Zhang Qian rode west and opened the Silk Road; Wei Qing and Huo Qubing pushed back the Xiongnu; Sima Qian endured shame to finish the Records of the Grand Historian. It was also under Emperor Wu that Confucian learning became the court's teaching. Late in the dynasty, the regent Wang Mang seized the throne, and in 8 CE the Western Han ended. But the word "Han" had become one of the deepest names of this people.

As the Eastern Han fell apart, three kingdoms stood in balance: Wei under Cao Cao, who held the emperor to command the nobles; Shu under Liu Bei, who bowed three times at the thatched cottage to invite Zhuge Liang; Wu under Sun Quan in the southeast. Three great battles — Guandu, Red Cliffs, Yiling — drew the map of the tripod. This was an age of heroes and stratagem: Guan Yu's thousand-li ride, Zhao Yun saving the young lord at Changban, Zhuge Liang serving "with all his heart until his death". And an age of letters: the three Caos and the Jian'an style are recited to this day. The Three Kingdoms live so vividly in memory thanks to the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms — seven parts fact, three parts fiction. It is worth reading beside the formal history, Records of the Three Kingdoms.

When the Western Jin fell, Sima Rui rebuilt the dynasty in the south with its capital at Jiankang — the Eastern Jin. As northern families "crossed south in robes and caps", the Jiangnan region grew ever richer. Great clans shared power with the throne, Zu Ti rose at cockcrow to drill, the few routed the many at the Battle of Fei River, Wang Xizhi wrote the Orchid Pavilion, and Tao Yuanming went home to farm. A dynasty huddled in the south, yet its arts thrived. In 420 the general Liu Yu replaced Jin with his own Song, and history entered the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

From 420 to 589, the south and the north of China each ran through a string of dynasties: Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen in the south; in the north, the Northern Wei split into Eastern and Western Wei, then became Northern Qi and Northern Zhou — the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei moved his court to Luoyang, took Chinese surnames, and ordered Chinese speech, drawing the peoples together; the great Buddhas of Yungang and Longmen were carved now. In the south, Zu Chongzhi calculated pi, and Jia Sixie wrote the Qimin Yaoshu on farming. Amid the turmoil Buddhism flourished — "four hundred and eighty temples of the southern courts". In 589 a Sui army crossed the river, destroyed Chen, and China was one again.

The Tang was one of the most open and brilliant dynasties of old China. From Taizong's reign of good order, through China's only woman emperor Wu Zetian, to the splendour of Kaiyuan, Chang'an was the greatest city on earth. Xuanzang walked to India for scriptures; Princess Wencheng married into Tibet; Jianzhen sailed for Japan. The poems of Li Bai, Du Fu, and Bai Juyi are recited to this day; Tang tricolour pottery and the Dunhuang murals keep the colours of that age. The An Lushan rebellion turned splendour to decline; regional armies and palace eunuchs then ate away at the court. In 907 Zhu Wen usurped the throne, and the golden age of poetry closed.

The Song ruled as Northern Song and Southern Song, standing first beside Liao and Xia, then beside Jin, and falling at last to the Mongols. On the battlefield it often stood at a disadvantage; in economy and culture it was a peak of old China. Bi Sheng invented movable type; the compass went to sea; gunpowder became weapons. Along the River at Qingming paints the bustle of Kaifeng; the ci of Su Shi, Li Qingzhao, and Xin Qiji, and the honour of Yue Fei and Wen Tianxiang, all belong to this age. The oath at Chanyuan, the catastrophe of Jingkang, Yue Fei's northern campaigns, the last stand at Yashan — choices of peace and war ran through it all, leaving stories that still move readers.

Zhu Yuanzhang went from cowherd boy and novice monk to founding emperor. The Ming ruled first from Nanjing, then from Beijing. Zheng He sailed seven times to the Western Ocean, his great fleet reaching the east coast of Africa nearly a century before Columbus. The dynasty repaired the Great Wall, raised the Forbidden City, and compiled the Yongle Encyclopedia. Yu Qian defended Beijing, Qi Jiguang fought the pirates, Zhang Juzheng pushed his reforms. Novels bloomed: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Journey to the West all took their lasting shape in Ming times. Late in the dynasty, factional strife and natural disasters multiplied. In 1644 Li Zicheng took Beijing, the Chongzhen emperor died by his own hand, and the Ming fell.

Defeat in the Opium War dragged China into "changes unseen in three thousand years". Power after power arrived; unequal treaties were signed one by one; the burning of the Old Summer Palace seared the country's memory. The Chinese began to save themselves: Lin Zexu opened eyes to the world; the Self-Strengthening movement built ships and mills; the Hundred Days' reform tried to remake the state; Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui called for the end of imperial rule. In 1911 a single shot at Wuchang was answered by province after province. Two thousand years of empire had reached their end.