Chinese people

Chinese followers of Buddha, about 600 AD (Musee Guimet, Paris)

Chinese people have always put a lot of emphasis on everybody acting the right way for their position in life. They thought poor people should act different from rich people, and women should act different from men, and city people should act different from country people.

In China, people thought your most important relationship was with your family. Kids often lived in the same house not just with their parents, but also with their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, and their cousins. People thought that family was much more important than friends.

Most boys and girls in China did not go to school, but worked on their parents' farms, picking weeds and planting seeds. Even rich girls did not go to school, but boys from rich families did. The boys worked very hard at school, because doing well on the state examinations was the only way to get political power.

When girls grew up, they got married and left the house they had grown up in to go live in their husband's house, with his family. This was often hard, because girls got married young, and when they went to live in their husband's house they had to do whatever his mother told them to do.

But the lives of slaves were the hardest of all. Many Chinese people were slaves. Most people who were slaves worked in the fields, the same as free people. Some of them worked as servants in rich people's houses. The Emperor owned hundreds of slaves, and some of them worked for the government, collecting taxes or building roads. Some people were born slaves, because their mothers were slaves, and other people were sold into slavery to pay debts.

To find out more about Chinese people, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:

Eyewitness: Ancient China, by Arthur Cotterell, Alan Hills, and Geoff Brightling (2000). For kids, with lots of excellent pictures.

Daily Life in China, on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276, by Jacques Gernet (1962).

The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the SungPeriod, by Patricia Buckley Ebrey (1993).

Women of the Tang Dynasty, by May Holdsworth (1999). A short introduction, with many pictures of T'ang period figurines.

Chinese philosophy
Chinese clothing
Chinese food
Chinese houses
Main people page
Main China page

Educating children is a tough job – let Kidipede make education easier with free online homework help. Homeschooling? Kidipede will also fit right into your homeschool material. And Kidipede’s great for unschoolers, who can surf independently. With Kidipede’s homework or homeschool material, education can be fun instead of a chore!

Teachers - check out our social studies lesson plans for middle school ancient history! Kidipede covers Egyptian Art, the Middle Ages, Ancient Rome, Native Americans and much more. Instant museum in your classroom.

Parents and grandparents – find the perfect gift for your middle school kid in Kidipede’s store! Kidipede has history books and other educational gifts for kids, from Halloween costumes to CD’s and DVD’s to art supplies. Now that’s good parenting! Pay securely through Amazon.

Teens – Kidipede has the best homework help around. Find out about ancient Greek music, medieval clothing fashions, and Native American technology trends. What was trendy clothing in ancient China? Who were the most popular girls in ancient Rome? How did teens decorate their rooms in ancient India?