Todays Fact: Chinese Dynasties Contn.

Tang Dynasty (618-907)
-Expanded from traditional Chinese teritory to Mongolia.
-Period of progress and stability.
-Block Printing System was invented.

Song Dynasty (960-1279)
-First use of paper currency
-First Chinese dynasty to establish a permanent standing Navy.
-Gunpowder was widely used but not for military purposes.

Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368)
-Mongols ruled China with Kublai Khan as the leader during this period.
-Mongols let all religions thrive, but tried to keep Mongol and Chinese social relations separate.

Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
- Last Dynasty in China
- Under admiral Zheng He, there was widespread growth of fine arts.
- Famous for its porcelain.

Todays Fact: Chinese Dynasties

Chinese Dynasties come up a lot, but its hard to remember them all. Here I will give some facts that are related to each dynasty in the next two days:

Mandate of Heaven was a divine support for the ruling dynasty. Whenever a ruler was deemed to have lost support of the gods, he would be overthrown by someone else. This led to dynastic cycle.

Xia Dynasty- This is probably a mythological dynasty, but it was what the Shang dynasty called the dynasty before them.

Shang Dynasty (1700-1100 B.C.E.)
-Mostly known from oracle bones.
-Development of Chinese pictographic writing system.
-The capital of the dynasty was at Yin (now ruins of Yin).

Zhou Dynasty (1100-256 B.C.E.)
-First use of Mandate of Heaven.
-Longest dynasty in Chinese History.
-practiced a Feudal System.
-There was written script and the use of iron was introduced.
-Confucianism, Daoism and Legalism arose during this dynasty.
-Disintegrated into the Warring States Period.

Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.E.)
-founded under Qin Shi Huang or Shi Huangdi
-Unified China and there was a big road network that was laid out.
-Shi Huangdi built the Great Wall of China and created the terra cotta army.
-He endorsed legalism and executed non-legalists

Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E. - 220 C.E.)
-founded by Liu Bang
-State Religion became Confucianism
-First Civil service, open to anyone who could pass the exams.
-Silk Road gave a big boost to the economy

Sui Dynasty (581-618)
-Completed the Grand Canal, a link between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers.

Today's Fact: Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis comes up a lot. These are probably the facts you need to know for the TossUps.
-First American to win Nobel Prize in 1930.
-Some of his early works were Hike and the Aeroplane (1912) and Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man (1914).
-Refused the Pulitzer Prize in 1926
-Winnemac is a fictional state that exists in many of his novels

Plots of his important Novels
Main Street
- has female protagonist- Carol Milford
-She marries Will Kennicott and moves to a rural small town called Gopher Prairie
-She is dissatisfied with the backwardness of the town and tries to change it. She fails and leaves her husband to the big city.
-She finds that big city life is also hard and not as easy as it looks. She finally comes back and accepts Gopher Prairie for what it is.

Babbitt
-The protagonist- George F. Babbitt
-He lives in a place called Zenith, Winnemac and is basically a white collar worker. He is a businessman and he is going through a mid-life crisis. He rebels against it and loses.

Arrowsmith
-The protagonist- Martin Arrowsmith
-He is born in Elk Mills and becomes a doctor in a small town, Wheatsylvania.
-His friend, Max Gotlieb looks at Arrowsmith's papers and is impressed. Max gets Arrowsmith into a very prestigious institute in NY. Arrowsmith works on a phage to destroy the plague.
-His wife dies of the plague and he loses it. He follows his lifelong dream of practicing in the backwoods of Vermont.

Happy New Year's Day

Hope everyone has a Great and Knowledgeable 2008.