Front Page News Story

  Soon There Will Be No Invaders

  Great Wall of China Has Begun 

AUGUST, 221 B.C.E- It was an interesting meeting yesterday when Emperor Qin Shi Huang announced that he will be beginning the build of the Great Wall of China. The emperor was influenced to begin this when someone suggested that we do something about protecting our country and making sure China is a safe place during this dynasty.  The options the emperor had according to a reporter were either strengthening our army and building it up, creating the Great Wall of China, or improving the guards of our country!  This wall will begin in the next week according to the Emperor! The whole purpose of building the wall is to add some protection and prevent our enemies from invading!  Everyone at the meeting was all for this idea and that encouraged the Emperor to begin getting workers to begin building! This will be a huge project, but will definitely be completed!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Opinion/Editorial

                                        Great Wall Not Complete?  Get to Work!

Our emperor, Hong Xiu Quan has just announced that they will be slowing down the work on the Great Wall of China.  It was Emporer Hong Xiu Quan’s idea to begin this process and now he wants to give up!  When this project began, he convinced us all that this was a great idea to build the Wall and now he has second thoughts.  Having the Great Wall not completed will not only make it easier for our enemies to invade and steal possessions that people have worked hard to produce. Also, not completing the wall will affect our emperor and his reputation of not getting this wall complete soon enough!   If invaders do invade, it will affect the entire country.  It will also make us look better amongst the other countries of the world a better if we get the wall complete because other countries will look up to us and admire us because we will be the only country that does not have to worry about getting invaded. I understand that building the Great Wall of China is not the most accessible project to complete, but if we keep abandoning this job after 3 hours of work every day, the wall is never going to be completed. We need to get more employees to work on the wall, and have them work more hours on this wall. If our country is going to completely give up on the wall, we should at least build up our army to give our country some protection against the other countries.  Other countries may raid upon our land if we don’t do anything about protecting our country.  China should be hard at work doing something to help our country!

Qin Dynasty Map

               This is a map of China during the Qin Dynasty from 221 B.C to 207 B.C.  The dashed line represents the Qin boundary. China's current boundaries have changed very much since this time period!

The map shown above shows the Qin dynasty in comparison to the present day map of China. The map of China during the Qin dynasty has grown tremendously as you can see in the picture above. The area shaded in yellow is the Qin dynasty, the pink shaded area is now the present day map including the Qin dynasty.

Interview with a "famous" person from your dynasty

Reporter: Hello Emperor Qin Shi Huang!  Thank you for making time for an interview.  I have a few questions. 

Qin Shi Huang: Absolutely! Let's begin.

Reporter: Being the first emperor in your dynasty, what challenges did you face in the process of becoming an emperor?


Qin Shi Huang : Well, almost all emperors face some bumps in the road but they don't usually admit up to it, but I'd have to say that convincing the people of China that I would be the correct ruler for this time period was the most difficult!  There was also no other emperor before my time in the Qin dynasty so I could not say that I would do things differently than other emperors that also ruled in the Qin dynasty. I had to compare myself to rulers from different dynasty's. 






Reporter: Interesting! Thank you for sharing that with us. What were your two greatest achievements to China? How did this help your reputation?


Qin Shi Huang: By far, my two greatest achievements to China were the Great Wall of China and Terracotta Warriors and Horses!  This helped my reputation tremendously because we built the Great Wall of China to protect our country from invaders. No one in this country wanted to be invaded so everyone thought building the Great Wall was a great idea! I hope that the Great Wall will still be around many, many hundreds of years  from this day! 












 
 

Inventions- Compass

 The compass was invented during the Qin dynasty.  This was an important invention during this time period because travelers now had some direction of where they were headed! The first person  that officially recorded to have used the compass was Chinese admiral Zheng He, who made eight sea voyages between 1405 and 1433.  

The picture above shows a very similar
compass to the one created during the
Qin Dynasty! It shows that this
compass was not very advanced and did
tell anything else than the direction
the traveler was headed!

 The inventor of the compass is unknown, according to many sources. The first time the compass was used as a tool of navigation in the history of the compass was in 1117 when Zhu Yu’s book Pingzhou Table Talks came out! Prior to the invention, Chinese referred to magnetism and magnetic needles in many of their books.

The compass had changed many people's lives in multiple ways. For example, people now had a tool that helped them travel. In the modern period, compasses are much more advanced than in the ancient times. In addition, today many different types of compasses have emerged such as: a protractor, map scales, mirrors and sighting devices. 

Religion/Culture

The religion during the Qin dynasty was Taoism. Taoism taught that people gained happiness and peace by living in harmony or agreement with the way of nature. This belief is important because it kept their civilization peaceful and they didn't fight with one another. The also believed that too many laws and social rules only got in the way of living naturally. This was a great belief because people were able to live freely without having any rules or being forced not to do certain things. Another belief that existed during other dynasties in China was Legalism. Legalism was the belief that most people are naturally selfish. They established strict laws strict laws and enforce them with rewards for good behavior and harsh punishments for bad behavior. This is not a good religion for this dynasty because people should be able to learn on their own, showing trust instead of being punished for doing something bad, they should be able to live their life how they choose and learn from their mistakes. In conclusion, Taoism is the better religion for the Qin Dynasty!

Major Events, Culture or Geographical Features

 The book burning of Qin Dynasty is extremely important to know about while learning about the Qin Dynasty! In 213 B.C, all Confucian books were burned and they destroyed all ceremonial books and other written material that some did not agree with. Those who burned these books wanted to cancel one nations culture for many different reasons, but mainly because they did not like this cultures practices or the way the culture taught certain things!