If your teacher was like me, we were coming in hot at the beginning of the course and spending way too much time on these early topics. So today, let's review the major points of 1.1 East Asian. First, get yourself familiar with this map.
I can't believe we didn't talk about the map. You gotta know the map. You gotta know the regions.
You gotta know their names. Cosword will use terms like East Asia, West Africa, so you need to know your directions and you need to know where they're talking about. These are specific regions from this map.
where you will have to recognize them when they talk about them. They may not say India, they may say South Asia. So get familiar with the regions. But today, we're in East Asia in 1200 to 1450. Like we went over yesterday, this period is all about trade.
And 1.1 East Asia is too. Here's a map I made. So you're going to find maps like these all over my site. I tried to make one for nearly every subsection.
So anything that I could possibly map about that section is on that map. Now your teacher wouldn't shut up about China all year. Well, it's kind of a big deal and that starts in 1.1.
Cartographically, East Asia is China, Korea, and Japan. Some teachers throw in Vietnam, but we'll leave that in Southeast Asia for now. And now Korea and Japan will both be a big deal later on in the course, just not here. Which leaves us with the MVP of East Asia, China.
And since the course starts around the year 1200, that means Song China. Now if you know anything about history, Song China doesn't have much time left, as most things don't have much time left as the Mongols are looming. But for now, we're in the end of the Song Dynasty. And for us, that means a Neo-Confucian government ruling over a people of mixed beliefs. The best way I've ever heard the belief systems in China described was a cooking metaphor.
So you take the ingredients of local religious belief systems, Buddhism from India, Daoism and Confucianism from China as ingredients. You put those in a pot, you stir it around, and you bake it. Once you're done, what comes out is China.
So it's really kind of difficult to nail down where one belief system ends and another begins. It's a nice blend. It's baked in the cake, as they say. All right, so we're reviewing. The big ideas for Song China are as follows.
One, the civil service exam. Much like what you're taking in 77 days, the civil service exam was a test people took to determine their placement in the Chinese imperial bureaucracy. This is a true meritocracy. Those who score the highest get the best job. Second, mandate of heaven.
the old ancient Chinese belief that The gods allow you to rule as long as things are going well. If things are going bad, that's a sign of you losing the mandate of heaven. And once you have lost the mandate of heaven, the next group or another group or rebellion or Mongols or someone is going to come in and take advantage of those weaknesses, which is interpreted by the Chinese people as having lost that mandate of heaven.
Think of it as Chinese divine right. Third, filial piety. You know how you have so much respect for your elders? But if you did, you would be showcasing filial piety.
which is a very Confucian belief that you should respect your elders and even to a point worship your elders. If you remember in Mulan, the cartoon one, when her dad is worshiping the elders at the beginning and it's broken up and it's like, I better get back to it. That is filial piety.
Four, chopper rice. I made a whole video about chopper rice. Don't judge me on my video about chopper rice because I had my setting on wrong and it looks really basic and that's my fault.
But what chopper rice does is it's a fast growing strain of rice, which allows for more calories for more people, for more food, which means more people are living, the population of China booms. One of the most significant booms in Chinese population growth ever. And it's all because of this fast-growing strain of rice from Champa, which today is in southern Vietnam. Five, the Grand Canal.
Imagine the two largest, most productive waterways in your country. Both are horizontal. What if you were to connect them with a waterway north to south?
You're basically connecting the two largest waterways in China. Now, they didn't invent this, but they perfect this. and it will allow for trading food from the south to the north and back and forth. It really creates a new trade route. Six foot binding.
That's not in the curriculum, but man, that's gross. Seven, and maybe the most important, is the Song economy. The Song may not have been a political powerhouse.
They were defeated ultimately by the Mongols, but even before that by the Jin to the north. But economically, they could trade. These guys are trading all over Asia. Silk Road. or via the Indian Ocean trade route.
In fact, think of most of the trade routes at the time as pointing towards China. The Romans used to say all roads lead to Rome, but it's more accurate to say that most global tapestry roads lead to China. They traded directly with the Caliphates.
They're trading with India. They're trading with Africa. They had joint stock companies, movable type, steel, paper money, porcelain, silk. Blah, everything. And all of this had massive repercussions as a lot of what they're doing socially and culturally is spread to Korea and across to Japan.
And for 1.1, that's all that the College Board says about East Asia. But remember, this is downtown Earth until the 1800s. China is a huge deal globally. And East Asia 1.1 is just the beginning of that.
The only thing that rivals it in the global tapestry, that first unit, is 1.2 Dar al-Islam. But that is for another day. I will see you tomorrow.
Bye.