The oldest Chinese writing was found in a pharmacy, where people had been grinding it up as medicine. In the three thousand years after it was written, an emperor built an army of 8,000 clay soldiers, a woman took the title of emperor, and the last emperor ended up watering plants as a gardener.

This is the entire history of China, from about 1250 BC to 1912: the Shang and the oracle bones, the Mandate of Heaven, Confucius and the Warring States, Sun Tzu and The Art of War, the First Emperor and the Terracotta Army, the Han and the Silk Road, the Three Kingdoms, the Sui and the Grand Canal, the Tang and Wu Zetian, the Song and the invention of paper money, gunpowder and movable type, the civil service exams, Genghis and Kublai Khan, Zhu Yuanzhang and the Ming, Zheng He's treasure fleet, the Great Wall, the Qing, the Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion, Cixi and Puyi. China fell apart again and again, and every time it came back together. This is how.

⏱️ CHAPTERS
0:00 Writing found in a pharmacy
0:32 The Shang, oracle bones and the Mandate of Heaven
2:16 Confucius, the Warring States and Sun Tzu
3:41 The First Emperor and the Terracotta Army
6:04 The Han and the Silk Road
7:33 Three Kingdoms, the Sui and the Grand Canal
8:58 The Tang and Wu Zetian
10:36 The Song inventions and the Mongols
12:20 The Ming, Zheng He and the Great Wall
14:39 The Qing, opium and the last emperor

📚 SOURCES
Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji). The Analects of Confucius. Sunzi, The Art of War. Shen Kuo, Dream Pool Essays. Wujing Zongyao (1044). The Diamond Sutra (868), British Library. Qianlong's edict to King George III (1793). F. Mote & D. Twitchett (eds.), The Cambridge History of China. P. Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (2010). V. Hansen, The Open Empire (2015). J. Spence, The Search for Modern China (2013). M. E. Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (2007). D. Keightley, Sources of Shang History (1978). L. Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas (1994). E. Dreyer, Zheng He (2007). A. Waldron, The Great Wall of China (1990). J. Spence, God's Chinese Son (1996). J. Lovell, The Opium War (2011). A. Maddison, Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run (2007). Puyi, From Emperor to Citizen (1964).
Map borders: historical-basemaps by A. Ourednik (GPL-3.0), github.com/aourednik/historical-basemaps. Rivers and coastlines: Natural Earth (public domain).
Fonts: Patrick Hand (SIL Open Font License), WenQuanYi Zen Hei (GPL with font exception).

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