How advanced was medieval China compared to Europe at the same time? Would you live there?
>>18764291More or less on par with France or Italy in the late 1700s or early 1800s.
>>18764291That image of yours is trying to show Qin-Han style architecture so roughly Alexander the Great to Crysis of the Third Century. Not exactly medieval, is it?[spoiler]The lanterns are wrong, these guys were just discovering paper and would need several centuries to find out how to properly scale it up, not making stacks of lanterns out of the stuff.The clothes are also wrong and the buildings are missing decorations on the walls. Same thing with the thin multi-doors, I think? those aren't attested for much longer but I don't remember looking into the evolution of those. It is a very modern style you'd see on Ming-Qing buildings so I'm very skeptical, tho.Much later style of Chinese writing as well.[/spoiler]East Asian civilisation figured out some things ages before Europe and never really cared or even started in others.If I had to pick between living as a serf farmer in Europe circa 1000CE and a wheat or rice farmer in China around the same time, I'd pick the Chinese one as there's much less people trying to fuck you over and legally allowed to do so, there's more things to do to enjoy in life and if you get the right opportunities, you can even step up the hierarchy to create a cushy life for yourself. Which was basically impossible over in Europe and the only paths to advancement (joining the clergy) came through massive self-sacrifice.But thanks, no thanks. I'm good living a modern life instead of the inescapable hardships both pre-modern Chinese and Europeans alike had to live with like your kids dying like flies, no true medicine, endlessly eating the same kind of food unless you got into some better position, famines, etc.
>>18764337>Not exactly medieval, is it?Medieval in Chinese history means after unification, before the end of the empire... it doesn't mean "while some distant part was during the middle ages". The same goes for Japan, it was medieval until 1854.
bump
>>18764344>Medieval in Chinese history means after unification, before the end of the empire...Absolutely not, who the fuck are you reading to have even thought of such nonsense?The traditional Chinese histories mark 中世 as the Zhou period. That's the reason why you see the equivalence of ranks in older books. Marquis of this talked to Earl of that who then asked the King of Zhou for land in the Fiefdom of Western...Modern scholarship tried to synchronise it more with the Western world and that very roughly starts with Jin (destruction of Han, introduction of Buddhism, first colonisation of the south, etc.) and ends with Yuan. With Ming and Qing being Early Modern empires.But you'll find other models which instead put Song-Yuan-Ming-Qing together as one unit, Qin-Tang as another unit and (Xia)-Shang-Zhou as the third unit.But I have yet to hear anyone, not even the retards who call everything Shang-Qing as "Ancient China", calling Imperial China as "Medieval China", that makes about as much sense as calling everything post-1CE "Christian Europe".
>>18764377You don't bump a thread on page 3.
>>18764379>Modern scholarship tried to synchronise it more with the Western worldOnly modern Western scholarship tries to this, and it's considerated a purposeful bad practice for modern Chinese scholarship. The name for this is pidgeon holling, and it's a certain way to ensure you'll not understand.
China was technologically ahead of Europe from like the Han Dynasty (at the latest) clear through to early industrialization in Europe (well, parts of it).By the Early Modern period in Europe, Europeans had arguably gotten further ahead in firearms technology. In most other respects, China was more advanced at this time, as it had been for a long time, and would continue to be for quite a while. Why/how China ultimately fell back, instead of continuing to lead the world in technological and scientific sophistication, is known in the field as the "Needham Question."Where would I prefer to live? It's a long period and I'd have to ask exactly when, too. Big stretches of the traditional Middle Ages in both places had lots of chaos, war, pestilence and social repression. If I have to live the rural life, I might pick Europe and cross my fingers. If urban, probably China. But I guess it also depends where the cutoff is.
>>18764384>Only modern Western scholarship tries to this, and it's considerated a purposeful bad practice for modern Chinese scholarship.I'm perfectly fine without it but if I'm trying to explain something on a forum where the users usually know next to nothing about the topic, I can't talk era names with them, now can I?OP was asking about "medieval" China compared to (presumably) medieval Europe so I don't see what's bad about pointing out the image is trying to show a scene from much earlier before giving at least some semblance of an answer for a question that is still very vague. An Irish peasant lived a completely different life compared to some Byzantine career soldier and the like.And broadening that question with the notion that his "medieval" actually means "Imperial" and thus all of 200BCE-1900CE completely kills any chance at giving a reasonable answer.
>>18764421>I can't talk era names with them, now can I?You can tell then that applying Western historic periods to China is bad practice that can easily misleads. Even the idea of a middle age in Europe is a bit faulty as you've said.
China had the repeated problem throughout dynasties that rich people and officials started annexing land from commoners and then used their power and connections to shirk taxes which were dumped on the ever diminishing amount of commoner land. So the best bet at being a peasant in China would be early dynasty where these problems either didn't exist or they were being cleared. And of course merchants and craftsmen were lower class commoners than farmers.
I read the question as referring to China's situation during Europe's Medieval period.The fact that the technological, social and governmental situations just don't compare between the two regions is getting partway to the answer. In a lot of respects, what we consider "Ancient China" maps more closely to what Westerners identify with the Medieval. Even the idea of "knights in shining armor" dates back to China's "Bronze Age," in the 5th C. BC.
>>18764384>The name for this is pidgeon hollingno, "pidgeon holling" is not the name of anything. learn to spell.
>>18764771I think I've found the mutt. Read to shit up the thread in bad faith?
>>18764291europe surpassed china by the 12th-13th century
Chinkoid dog eaters were never ahead of Europe. The Japanese should have killed more of them. Fuck China
>>18764291>How advanced was medieval China compared to Europe at the same time?Medieval China tended to be more advanced than Europe during the Middle Ages. While we know jackshit about Europe after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, China has far more records and there was clearly more activity going on. But by the Late Middle Ages Europe recovered and was rapidly advancing and it would be the beginning of the Great Divergence.>Would you live there?I'd rather live in Pre-Columbian Americas in the Middle Ages and not face the swarms of diseases and famines that plagued Eurasia until the 19th century.
Bump
>>18764291Chinks were pretty seriously ahead beginning after the crisis of the 3rd century until the collapse of the Song dynasty. After that roughly on par tech and economy wise. Europe only becomes meaningfully more wealthy and advanced than China around the 16th century. The wealth and tech gap only becomes truly staggering in the 18th century.
Kek at the autists ITT who hyper-focus on the exact definition of the Chinese middle ages. Just fucking answer the question lmao. "Middle Ages" = 500AD - 1500AD
