Huffor+Jacob

Units of Study this year
 * Fall of the Roman Empire
 * Rise of Islam
 * Africa
 * China
 * Japan
 * The Middle Ages
 * The Renaissance
 * The Reformation
 * The Scientific Revolution
 * The Age of Exploration
 * The Enlightenment

Engineering an Empire: China

In the historical documentary “engineering an Empire: China” on the history channel, the video explored the emperors and achievements in China. Some of the achievements include the great wall of china, the grand canal, the great tomb of Shi Whangdi, and the fleets of many ships. The first achievement that I am going to talk about is the Great Wall of China. It was built entirely of tamped earth in the beginning. Some of it was old walls that they connected, but most of it they built from scratch. Later on they made it into a brick wall and extended it even farther east. It took many years to build. One fourth of all of China’s workers took part in building the wall. One tenth of those people died. Eventually China’s people revolted and destroyed and killed three of the Emperors. The next achievement I am going to talk about is the great tomb of Shi Whangdi. It took many years to build the great tomb of Shi Whangdi. Once again the citizens of China revolted for making them do back breaking work. But before they revolted they dug a 30 foot deep hole in the ground and filled it with many jewels and other rare items and put an entire 400 foot mountain above it all man made. The floor of the tomb was a scale version of the entire city with each building carved out in perfect detail. Instead of dirt for the islands they used gold dust, they made rivers and oceans of mercury, and they made the ceiling slabs of obsidian with pearls to make out the constellation of stars. The Emperor’s coffin was sitting in one of the oceans of mercury. The next achievement is the Grand Canal that connected two rivers and functioned as an aqueduct. It took many years like the tomb and great wall. The peasants of China worked on it and many died on the spot because they were beaten to death by those who ran it. Eventually the Grand Canal was complete, but the citizens were very mad and revolted and killed the Emperor. The next achievement is the fleet of 300 ships. The biggest armada of wooden ships in the entire history of the world. It took many months to finish all the ships, but when they finished, China’s age of exploration began. In the process of building the ships, there were over one thousand carpenters, builders and ship writes working on the ships. The ships were built in dry docks that were deep holes next to the ocean that had a dam in between. China’s age of exploration ended when Zheng He died and the fleet of ships was called back to China and the new emperor gave an order to have all the ships burned to the ground. I would like to learn more about Communist China because the documentary only talked about early China.