The Penguin History of the World

In Shang times all the great decisions of state, and many lesser ones, were taken by consulting oracles. This was done by engraving turtle shells or the shoulder-blades of certain animals with written characters and then applying to them a heated bronze pin so as to produce cracks on the reverse side. The direction and length of these cracks in relation to the characters would then be considered and the oracle read accordingly by the king. This was an enormously important practice from the point of view of historians, for such oracles were kept, presumably as records. They provide us with evidence for the foundation of Chinese language, as the characters on the oracle bones (and some early bronzes) are basically those of classical Chinese. The Shang had about 5,000 such characters, though not all can be read.

For centuries writing would remain the jealously guarded privilege of the élite. The readers of the oracles, the so-called shi, were the forerunners of the later scholar-gentry class; they were indispensable experts, the possessors of hieratic and arcane skills. Their monopoly was to pass to the much larger class of scholars and officials in later times. The language thus remained the form of communication of a relatively small élite, which not only found its privileges rooted in its possession but also had an interest in preserving it against corruption or variation. It was of enormous importance as a unifying and stabilizing force because written Chinese became a language of government and culture transcending divisions of dialect, religion and region. By the Warring States Period its use by the élite tied the country together.

Several great determinants of future Chinese history had thus been settled in outline by the third century BC, as the country was about to enter a new form of political organization as an empire. This transformation came after increasing signs of social changes which were affecting the operation of the major institutions. This is not surprising; China long remained basically agricultural, and change was often initiated by the pressure of population upon resources. This accounts for the impact of the introduction of iron, probably in use by about 500 BC. At an early date tools were made by casting, as iron moulds for sickle blades have been found dating from the fourth or fifth century. Chinese technique in handling the new metal was thus advanced in very early times. Whether by development from bronze casting or by experiments with pottery furnaces, which could produce high temperatures, China somehow arrived at the casting of iron at about the same time as knowledge of how to forge it. Exact precedence is unimportant; what is noteworthy is that sufficiently high temperatures for casting were not available elsewhere for another nineteen centuries or so.

Another important change under the period of disunity was a great growth of cities. They tended to be sited on plains near rivers, but the first of them had probably taken their shape and location from the use of landowners’ temples as centres of administration for their estates. This drew to them other temples, those of the popular nature gods, as communities collected about them. Then, from late Zhou, a new scale of government began to make itself felt; we find large-scale ramparts and city walls, specialized aristocratic and court quarters and the remains of very large buildings. By late Zhou times, its principal city of Chengzhou (near present-day Luoyang in Henan) was surrounded by a rectangle of earth walls each nearly 2 miles long.

There were scores of cities by 300 BC and their prevalence implies an increasingly varied society. Many of them had three well-defined areas: a small enclosure where the aristocracy lived, a larger one inhabited by specialized craftsmen and merchants, and the fields outside the walls which fed the city. A merchant class was another important development. It may not have been much regarded by the landowners but currencies were used, which shows a new complexity of economic life and the presence of specialists in trade. Their quarters and those of the craftsmen were distinguished from those of the nobility by walls and ramparts around the latter, but they, too, fell within the walls of the city – a sign of a growing need for defence. In the commercial streets of cities of the Warring States Period could be found shops selling jewellery, curios, food and clothing, as well as taverns, gambling houses and brothels.