essay for Traditional China

Introduction: Please read carefully. Answer all three of the following questions in concise and well-reasoned essays.  Use material drawn from course readings, lectures/class discussions, and, critically, logic and your own reflection.  You may not use non-assigned sources. 

Your answer for each question should be approximately three pages (about 1,000-1,200 words), using Times New Roman 12 pt. font, double-spacing, and one-inch margins.  The total length of your paper will thus be nine pages, or approximately 3,000-3,600 words.  This is a rough guideline. You may write more or less as you deem appropriate to answering the questions.  Cite the readings using a short parenthetical format, for example: (Gernet, p. 35).  Cite lectures by title, for example: (“Qinshi Huangdi and the Founding of Qin”).  Titles of lectures are available on the syllabus.

Hard copies of the exam will not be accepted.  Instead, you should submit your exam on Blackboard, as a single file, using the Submit Assignment tab. If you are unable to upload your document successfully you should e-mail it to Mr. Lei Duan at [email protected]. If you must submit your final by e-mail, please ask Lei for an acknowledgement of its receipt.

Question 1: Advisor to a New President

Imagine that the United States has elected a new president who possesses very little foreign policy knowledge or experience.  He asks you to draft a memo in which you explain to him whether Traditional China was a warlike nation with a history of conquest.  Write that memo based on what you have learned this semester.    

Question 2: Social Mobility in Chinese History

In this class we have frequently spoken of China as a hierarchical society. Given what you have learned this semester, do you think hierarchy kept people from raising their social status (that is, from becoming members of the elite)? If so, explain how hierarchy presented a barrier to social mobility. If no, explain the mechanisms that allowed for upward social mobility.

Question 3:  More Than a Confucian Society?

Early in the semester we studied the period of the Hundred Schools of Thought, when different ideologies competed for dominance.  As we also studied, the Han period saw the triumph of Confucianism as China’s ruling ideology.  Yet, is it possible to say that China was governed by more than Confucianism, and that “Traditional China” should not be considered Confucian-only?  There are various ways to approach this question.  You might, for example, consider the persistence of the other, non-Confucian schools of thought in the post-Han period.  Or you might consider ways in which Confucianism mattered more in theory than in practice.