- The Story of China
- Sima Qian
- The Sima family (his father had been a court servant under Emperor Wu) we descended from ritualists who, from the Zhou period had recorded royal deeds, sacrifices and omens. They played an important role in interpreting and predicting the course of government. … They were interpretters of the luid relationship between humanity and the cosmos.
- Historians seemed to have more served a political purpose. Justifying the legitimacy of the current government by tying it in with the cosmos
- ”For him, history is a prime source of morality”, large mytic element
- ”For Sima Qian, if evil may triumph in the short term, it is the historians who ensure that in the long term the record of good deeds, human values and justice is passed on.”
- During the Han period they have documents about peasant farmers and their daily lives. Up to 8 people could be working on just 4 acres 2.5 mou. This required hard work and extreme economy in growth of food.
- ”Hand dynasty famers, like Mr Ye [mentioned earlier] in Xheng village, used their skills, ingenuity and energy to wrest a living from the soli. Constant atterntion to detail, unremitting toil and infitite patience”
- Could easily be wiped away however which bred feelings of stoicism and fatalism present in peasant songs from he 8th century BCE
- {{TODO}} Need to set aside time for reading list