Chapter 8

China has been an important factor to the whole world. Today many say that China can be the most powerful country of the twenty first century. The chapter begins talking about China’s history, dating back to the Han and Sui dynasty. We read about how these dynasties functioned and how they eventually lost power and collapsed. Because of the success that China had with it’s growing country, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan tried to work with them. All three countries borrowed major elements form the Chinese to use as their own. Both Korea and Vietnam adopted beliefs such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, and they participated in China’s tribute system. During the Tang and Song dynasties, China’s economy growth had an impact outside of their borders. Techniques such as salt production and papermaking spread throughout Europe and Asia. At the same time China was helping the rest of the world, China was also being influenced by its economic growth. China learned new techniques from Vietnam and India, which also helped China’s population spread to the southern region of the Yangzi River. 

The most interesting fact I read here was about the foot binding. During the Song dynasty, foot binding became popular throughout all of China. Foot binding is wrapping a female’s foot tightly for different reasons. It could be for dancing reasons, or to make their feet “smaller”.  Foot binding was also to tell apart from the high-class women to the middle or low class women. This was something not easy to read because it mentioned that the binding would often break the foot because of how tight it was. I find it amazing to believe what women would do for what they believed in. they would go to the extreme in order to make themselves look and feel better than everyone else.