China The Beginning

At the dawn of its history China a country as vast as all of Europe counts dozens of clans All lay claim to very large territories They build cities whose incredible sizes reflect the power of their respective founders And yet most of these kingdoms will crumble in the span of a single generation How do we explain such a quick disappearance

Modern China counts nine official languages but only one written one the Chinese characters logograms All attempts to establish phonetic writing have failed for logograms possess a very ancient power During 700 years from 1500 to 700 BC two dynasties the Shangs and the Zhous will successively forge the Chinese cultural identity an identity built by war bronze and writing

Extremely powerful the Qin Dynasty one of the kingdoms fighting for supremacy defeats all of its foes one after another In 221 BC unification is established and Qin Shi Huang proclaims himself the First Emperor The Chinese Empire is born And will last until 1911