China is specially interesting because the roots of its society go back to the Stone Age. It is the only one of the early societies which has had an unbroken development all through history. Even today the education of Chinese boys and girls is much the same as the education of the prophet Samuel by Eli. Its writing and records go back to 3000 B.C. Its first book on religion has come down from the time of its first Emperor, and is four or five thousand years old. This first Emperor is said to have made China a united land, the ' Celestial Empire,' or Empire of God. But for hundreds of years of its history—before Christ and after—China was broken up among feudal chiefs.
Between five and six hundred years before Christ, Confucius was living in China, and to this day the
name of this great teacher of religion is deeply respected by his countrymen. He gave them rules for their behaviour to their fathers, teachers, and all men. One of his chief sayings was " Have not ! Be !"
Comment : from a more recent sage I have got : Be ! Do ! Have ! — which seems more practical. (WPT)
Another great landmark in China�s history was the building of the Great Wall across the north to keep out the Huns or Tartars, who, however, did get through it sometimes. It was one thousand eight hundred miles long, and parts of it are still to be seen. It was made in the two hundreds B.C., when the Chinese Empire was almost equal to the Roman. There were great trade-ways from China through Asia, and it was by these roads that the silk used by Roman society women came into Europe.
The Chinese very early became expert at making silks and delicate china, and at painting beautiful pictures ; and they had the art of printing, and made use of gunpowder, and of the ship�s compass for getting their direction at sea, before these inventions came to Europe at the time of the New Learning. In the Middle Ages China was attacked by the Tartar Jenghis Khan, who, with his yellow armies, came over the Great Wall and took Peking. His son�s son, Kublai-Khan, became the ruler of China in 1280, and had under him the greatest Empire of that time, stretching from the Danube to the Pacific.
The Venetian, Marco Polo, noted for his journeys to different countries, was for seventeen years in Peking, living in the house of the Emperor. When he came back he put into a book his story of that strange and beautiful town, of its gold and jewels, its great royal houses, its paintings and works of art. He gave an account of good � hotels � on the roads, of the making of silk and the working of gold, of trade and industry on a great scale, at a time when the towns of Europe were small and poor in comparison. . . .
So strange and surprising were the accounts he gave of Cathay, Burma, Japan, and so on, that they were looked on as fiction by most men. However, great interest was taken in his journeys, and later, when the Turks became a serious danger on the trade-ways to the East and men were looking for a new way to the gold and jewels of Cathay, Columbus himself went through Marco Polo�s book and made notes on it.
For some time relations between China and the West were almost completely broken off, but in the fifteen hundreds the Chinese again came in touch with Europe. Trade with the East was newly started by the Portuguese, and after the traders went the missionaries of the Church to give the news of Christ�s teaching, and took with them much of the science of the West. But the coming of churchmen and traders from Europe did not have much effect
upon Chinese ways or ideas. In fact, taking into account how very old the nation and its learning was, it is not surprising that for a long time China was to the Chinese the world, and themselves the nation.
( pages 132 - 136 )