KeErah Hutchings

World History to 1500s

TR 8:30-9:50am

I watched China: Heritage of the Wild Dragon video. The first thing I noticed was that
the womans voice giving the information was a little annoying but the information was
interesting. I learned that Qin Shi Huangdi was the first emperor to not only have a large tomb
built but the first to have terra cotta soldiers. According to Worlds Together Worlds Apart there
are about 8,000 warriors, 130 chariots, 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses for the emperor
army for the next life (pg. 168)1. They also talked about the armory that they found in the tomb
where they found 5,000 armored suits made of up to 612 small polished stone squares held
together with brass chain. They used stone because when metal is buried it rots, if you use
stone it will last forever. The archeologist estimated that now it would take 100 days to make
one suit of armor. It would have taken them much longer; it makes you appreciate how much
manpower was involved to make the armor and the terra cotta warriors.
I also learned that the Chinese tombs were built like the Egyptian pyramids but they
built them upside down in the ground to be closer to the underworld. It was kind of confusing
when they talked about dynasties because the film called one of the dynasty Yin and the book
called it the Shang dynasty it was hard to tell whether they were the same one. The film also
talked about how the Yin used bronze for weapons and used bronze wear as an intermediary to
pray to the gods and increase the authority of the kings. They talk about how it spread to the
Yangzi River basin and identical bronze pieces were found in two separate cultures the Yinxu
1

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Worlds Together Worlds Apart 3 Edition Volume one, Tignor, Adelman, Brown, Elman, Liu, Pittman, and Shaw.

and Sanxingdui. The film also discussed how many areas in china were deforested because of
the ever growing population that all the lush green areas turned to yellow earth and it wasnt
until recently that the Chinese people really tried to re-forest the land. Sadly it will take time
due to the dry climate.
Even though I learned a lot; the film itself was kind of confusing because it seemed like
they didnt talk about all the content in order it wasnt until they started talking about the
warring states period that I understood what time period they were talking about but Im still
not sure how many time periods they covered. I did like that they added maps and used 3Dimentinal graphs and images to show where all the ancient activity was in modern day china.
For example when they showed an ancient wall that survived in the modern day city and then
use graphics to show where the original complete wall was. It was a great way to show the
viewer how big the city used to be and how it looked when it was first made. Over all I think
this film would be good to watch to learn about the bronze age of China but not what period it
was they were not very clear in my opinion.