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Historical Figures
The people behind the story: philosophers, statesmen, commanders, writers and inventors.
By occupation
6 of 10 occupations have entries so far. Click one to see just those figures.
- 政治家Statesmen1
- 军事家Strategists1
- 武将Generals0
- 官员Officials1
- 诗人Poets2
- 艺术家Artists0
- 教育家Educators2
- 史学家Historians1
- 科学家Scientists0
- 宗教人士Religious Figures0
Ancient China
上古三代c. 2070 – 256 BC1 dynastyThe three Bronze Age dynasties of the traditional sequence. Writing, bronze casting and the idea of a single ruler over "all under Heaven" all begin here — though the earliest layers are known as much from later texts as from what archaeology has uncovered.
- Confucius Confucius, 551 – 479 BC · Teacher of Lu, founder of the Ru tradition Confucius (551–479 BC), born Kong Qiu in the small state of Lu, was a teacher and thinker who never held high office for long yet reshaped Chinese civilization for the next two thousand years. Teaching that character is formed by ritual, learning, and humaneness, he gathered a circle of disciples whose record of his words, the Analects, became the foundation of a tradition he himself never knew he had founded.
- Mencius Mengzi, c. 372 – 289 BC · The second sage of Confucianism Mencius (Meng Ke, c. 372–289 BC) was a teacher from the small state of Zou who spent some twenty years walking the warring courts offering a government rooted in human goodness, was admired by every ruler and followed by none, and went home to write a book. A thousand years after his death the Song dynasty crowned him the Second Sage of Confucianism, raising his claim that human nature is good and that a ruler who abandons the people forfeits the right to rule into the curriculum of an empire.
- Laozi Lao Dan, c. 6th – 5th century BC · The keeper of the Zhou archives who wrote five thousand characters and vanished Laozi, "the Old Master," was the Zhou court's keeper of archives whom the tradition calls the author of a book of five thousand characters -- and who then rode west through the frontier pass and was never seen again. Whether he existed at all was doubted by Sima Qian himself, who wrote the earliest life of him and quietly listed three different men as candidates; the book attributed to him survived anyway, to become the most translated text in Chinese and the seed of the Daoist religion.
- Jiang Ziya Jiang Ziya (Lü Shang), c. 1128 – 1015 BC · The architect of the Zhou conquest, founder of the state of Qi, and the deified Martial Sage of China Jiang Ziya (Lü Shang, c. 1128–1015 BC) was a poor late-blooming counselor of the fallen eastern aristocracy who met the rising lord of Zhou in old age, planned the conquest that ended the Shang dynasty in 1046 BC, and was enfeoffed as the founding duke of Qi on the Shandong coast.
The First Empires
秦汉221 BC – 220 AD1 dynastyQin's conquests in 221 BC created a single empire for the first time; Han then held it together for four centuries and gave the Chinese their own name for themselves. The Silk Road opened, Confucianism became state doctrine, and the template of imperial rule was set.
The Tang Age
隋唐五代581 – 9601 dynastySui reunified the country and dug the Grand Canal; Tang turned that unity into a cosmopolitan empire whose capital at Chang'an was the largest city on earth. When Tang fell in 907, five short dynasties and ten regional kingdoms divided the country for half a century.
Song and Its Rivals
宋辽夏金916 – 12791 dynastyThe Song never ruled all of China. Liao, Western Xia and the Jurchen Jin held the north and north-west, and the Song paid tribute to buy peace. Inside its borders, though, came printing, paper money, a merchant navy and mass civil-service examinations.