chinese inventions

[Guest Anonymous]

people always talk about how the west invented this and that' date=' but what is the west. is russia the west? italy? britain? france? germany? spain? poland? the u.s.? how many states and nations are included in the word "west"? and what abotu china? yes, china is only ONE country! even tho its big, but its still under one leadership. with no sigificant inovative or scientifically competitive country around it, to have done what it has done, to me that is really amazing.

information and inovation flew freely in the west, even discoveries made in the middle east, the west had first access to it.

is it really fair to compare the contributions by so many nations and states against one single state? it's like adding up all the gold medals of the "WEST" in the olympics and compare them against the chinese gold medals.[/quote']

That's very interesting. I've seen many nations bordering the West (namely Russia, and Central and South Americas) have been both included and left out in many instances to make the impression that the name West equals modern and advanced. Personally, under my imrpession, the West generally means any nations that's ruled by Caucasians. Although I have seen Japan being included in the West many times as well.

[pazu]

Have you heard that, toothbrush was invented in China too. Okay, just correct me if you have any other information.

[Guest Anonymous]

I don't know about toothbrush (might be true) but I've heard that "testing" was also first practiced in China. For hundreds of years, tests were held in China for those who wish to obtain a position as a government officials. The test is somewhat different from what we're used to today. It was more of a memorization of a guideline of conducts such as Confucius's teachings.

[Quest]

civil examination

[Guest byoi]

So, back to the inventions.

Was early Chinese ink and paper similar to the styles in Renaissance England?

[Guest BeiRen]

Actually China had never thought of colonising like the western imperialist. The purpose for the western imperialist to do so it to suck the wealth from the colonised teritory. As for China, it's for fux for them to colonise such a backward area. It's more like they claiming the land where their ancestor once controlled. If China wants to colonise a country, she would long ago colonise the whole South-East Asia during the 14th - 15th century where she had archieved a respectful status in ship fleets.

[holyman]

Actually China had never thought of colonising like the western imperialist. The purpose for the western imperialist to do so it to suck the wealth from the colonised teritory. As for China, it's for fux for them to colonise such a backward area. It's more like they claiming the land where their ancestor once controlled. If China wants to colonise a country, she would long ago colonise the whole South-East Asia during the 14th - 15th century where she had archieved a respectful status in ship fleets.

tell me about guangzhou, hainan, guangxi, guilin, yunnan, tibet, xinjiang. or maybe u can tell me where is 'ri'nan' or 'cangwu'.

then maybe tell me about the malacca empire, or how modern vietnam came about.

[Guest Anonymous]

Actually China had never thought of colonising like the western imperialist. The purpose for the western imperialist to do so it to suck the wealth from the colonised teritory. As for China' date=' it's for fux for them to colonise such a backward area. It's more like they claiming the land where their ancestor once controlled. If China wants to colonise a country, she would long ago colonise the whole South-East Asia during the 14th - 15th century where she had archieved a respectful status in ship fleets.[/quote']

tell me about guangzhou, hainan, guangxi, guilin, yunnan, tibet, xinjiang. or maybe u can tell me where is 'ri'nan' or 'cangwu'.

then maybe tell me about the malacca empire, or how modern vietnam came about.

To say that China doesn't colonize at *ALL* would be a lie. Every powerful nation must have colonized at least a little inorder to even survive, considering the harsh world we live in.

However, it is true that China hasn't colonized the world and caused as much "damage" as Western Imperialist forces have, especially in the past two centuries. Yes, pretty much the whole China, except for the Yellow River basin area was "colonized" by the Chinese. But compare that pales in comparison to the colonization of Africa, both North and South Americas, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Asia and the Middle East by the Western Imperialists.

However, most of the Chinese territories were gained and already established in early Chinese history, as opposed to the Europeans who just started their "Age of Imperialism" during the 1700's. So we can say that in early history, the Chinese did colonize its share of land while modern European nations were still being governed by the Roman Empire (who certain colonized as well) or in the Dark Ages. In more recent history, Europeans nearly colonized the whole world while China remained pretty much in its little corner.

[Tsunku]

In more recent history, Europeans nearly colonized the whole world while China remained pretty much in its little corner.

It's a pretty big corner if you ask me. ;)

Western colonialism sucked, but China also had to fight wars to get the land it has today. Nearly every country with any force behind it has conquered people who didn't always want to be conquered. Whether the conquering was justified or not is all a matter of perspective.

[Guest Anonymous]

It's a pretty big corner if you ask me. ;)

China's current territory, not including Mongolia, is no bigger than the continental U.S. It's quite small compare to European colonization of the rest of the world.

Western colonialism sucked, but China also had to fight wars to get the land it has today. Nearly every country with any force behind it has conquered people who didn't always want to be conquered. Whether the conquering was justified or not is all a matter of perspective.

Actually that was almost exactly my point :-)

To say that China doesn't colonize at *ALL* would be a lie. Every powerful nation must have colonized at least a little inorder to even survive, considering the harsh world we live in.

[Ian_Lee]

NOVA has done a documentary on an ancient Chinese invention -- arch bridge. They even got a team to build an arch bridge based on that ancient technology in China.

More Chinese inventions happened in the Northern Sung Dynasty -- a period when China was militarily weak but culturally strong.

[Guest greenpine]

primitive firearms in forms of gun and cannon were developed in china during Song, but the european developed those independently after the mongols passed gunpowder to europe i believe, Ming firearms were generally weaker and less efficient comparing to that of europeans, but not too far behind and frequent communication in late ming helped to catch up, but the later Manchu's firearm was a major setback, during the opium war, its firearms were almost useless that Ming legacy firearms had to be reconstructed to at least do some damage to the enemy.

[Quest]

君主不明，百姓受灾 -- Qing Dynasty.

[芳芳]

Hii!!!

Uh...I'm just asking for a pacific question (Why can't we talk about sciences and evolution without talking about war? Ahlala!)

I'm interested in maths history, and here is the point: without wondering who started what among greeks, egyptians, indians or arabs, a lot of trails have been transmitted by their scientist through manuscripts, books...

But I've not heard yet about any chinese ouvrage in this domain, or any chinese school of maths in ancient times. No chinese name in the hundreds/ thousand of theorems that frighten poor students along their lessons (but this is not really relevant of a maths activity, as far as maths dicoveries don't always carry the name of their first discoverer).

All that speech to say that, despite the few trails of an antic chinese math activity, I can't believe they didn't discover things or explore this domain.

I know, there is the Yiking (not sure of the orthographie) about mutations, but it is more philosophical and it is not mathemathics, but what else?

Maybe was it all oral tradition, but anyway, there must be something, right?

Can someone give me a piece of information about it? -I recognise I don't know much about it.

[Guest 北洋大臣]

around the 500s, Chines mathematician Zhu Chongzi 祖沖之 found the 7th decimal of pi, exactly 1000 year ahead of the first European mathematician ( a german ) in 1573

[芳芳]

Oh yeah!

now you remind it to me I remember of this performance.

That's really impressive!

And it's a sign that there must have been chinese mathematicians of a very high level. I'd like to know them.

I'll begin to make a research on Zhu Chongzi 祖沖之.

Thanks a lot, 北洋大臣!

[yan]

There is also a 'Chinese Remainder Theorem' in Algebra:

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/blue/chinese.shtml

[Quest]

CHinese Mathematics History:

http://www.roma.unisa.edu.au/07305/chinese.htm

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/mathhist/china.html

http://www.saxakali.com/COLOR_ASP/chinamh1.htm

I know Chinese discovered the Pythagorean thereom before Pythagoras, and the Pascal's Triangle before Pascal.

[roddy]

There's a page on Zhu Chongzhi here

[芳芳]

Thanks everybody for these usefull links!

No I'm conforted in my intuition that chinese discovered a lot of things in maths before euuhh...a lot of other people even if few books and fewer teacher really mention them when it comes to discuss about maths history.

So?

give back to chinese what belongs to chinese?

Bah, maths is not a contest after all, the point is that the discover and the way of thinking to make it is more important.