Pieter Brueghel, Children's Games (1560 AD) As European traders began to sail directly to China in the late 1400s AD, they brought back all kinds of new things to Europe: porcelain vases, paper fans, silk cloth. Pieter Brueghel lived in the Netherlands, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire of Charles [...]
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1300s AD) Muromachi family gets power The great families drove out Emperor Do-Gaigo in 1338 AD. Who was the Emperor Do-Gaigo? More Japan articles Then the new shogun was from the Muromachi family. Until about 1400, he and his sons and grandsons fought civil wars. They fought against the emperor's supporters, and against the [...]
An early playing card (Ming Dynasty, ca. 1500 AD) People in T'ang Dynasty China made the first playing cards, about 800 AD. They used their new material, paper, to make the cards, and they called their game "the leaf game". The emperor's daughter, Princess Tongchang, played cards with her husband's family in the [...]
Rice paddy with a Chinese man planting rice During the later Middle Ages, the climate all over the world was a little warmer than usual, just by a few degrees. We call this the Medieval Warm Period. In the Americas, the warm weather caused the Mexica people to move south into Mexico, and [...]
Hung-Wu Emperor (National Palace Museum, Taipei) After the Hungwu Emperor threw the Mongols out in 1368 AD, he established the Ming Dynasty. But the Hungwu Emperor's power was still pretty weak after the Mongol invasion. He only ruled China from the Great Wall to the east of Tibet - smaller borders than modern [...]
A T'ang Dynasty emperor In 220 AD, Han Dynasty China fell apart into three medium-sized kingdoms, so people call this the Three Kingdoms period. In 581 AD, a general named Wen Ti managed to conquer the other two kingdoms and created a new Chinese empire under the Sui dynasty. Wu Ti's son, Yang [...]
Ming Dynasty Chinese art Ming emperors unify Chinese art After the Mongols were thrown out of China, and the Chinese emperors took over again in the Ming Dynasty of the late 1300s AD, the Ming emperors wanted to build up Chinese nationalism. Instead of being part of the huge Mongol Empire, now China [...]
Hall of Supreme Harmony Forbidden City (Beijing, 1406 AD) Early Ming Emperors built Taoist temples to show their power, like the Golden Hall in the Wudang Mountains. But the great achievement of the Ming Dynasty architects was that they built the great palace called the Forbidden City. This was the palace of the [...]
Early Chinese architecture - A typical Chinese house Chinese houses Most people in ancient China could not afford to live in fancy houses. They lived in small houses made of mudbrick, with only one room and a dirt floor, or in larger compounds with a lot of people living in them. This was [...]
Golden Hall (Wudang Mountain, 1416 AD) Ming Dynasty emperors built the Golden Hall palace on the slopes of Wudang Mountain in 1416 AD. The Golden Hall was part of the Ming emperors' addition to a group of buildings that were already there. Wudang Mountain had been an important religious center for Taoists since the 600s [...]
