50 Fun Facts About Han Dynasty

In 105 AD the Han court official Cai Lun won the emperor's praise for an improved way of making what?

Paper from Cai Lun's workshop was made of tree bark, hemp waste, old rags and fishnets, and he is still honoured in China as the patron of papermakers.

The Han inventor Zhang Heng's bronze urn dropped a ball from a dragon's head into a toad's mouth to signal what?

An earthquake some 400 km away once set the urn off before anyone at court felt a thing; days later a messenger confirmed a quake in the direction it had pointed.

Most people in modern China still use the Han dynasty's name as the everyday word for what?

Their ethnic group is known as the Han people and the written script as Han characters, so the dynasty's name is still spoken daily two thousand years on.

Which stone, cut into small plaques and sewn with gold or silver thread, made the burial suits of Han royals?

Jade suits had rules on paper: gold thread for emperors, silver for princes and princesses, copper for their children. Prince Liu Sheng's famous suit ignored them and was sewn with gold.

Lady Dai, the Han noblewoman found remarkably preserved at Mawangdui, had eaten which fruit shortly before she died?

Melon seeds were still in her stomach and gut, telling researchers she died in summer within a few hours of eating, probably of a heart attack.

Which trade network linking Han China to the Mediterranean got its familiar name from a German geographer in 1877?

Silk Road translates the German Seidenstraße, a label Ferdinand von Richthofen popularised some two thousand years after Han envoys first travelled the routes west.

Which founder of the Han dynasty, one of the few Chinese emperors born a peasant, began as a village sheriff?

Liu Bang was marching convict labourers to the First Emperor's tomb when he turned rebel; he outlasted every rival and took the throne as Emperor Gaozu.

Peasant rebels who helped bring down the short-lived Xin regime in the 20s AD painted which facial feature red?

Eyebrows dyed red let the fighters tell friend from foe in battle, and the name stuck: the movement is remembered simply as the Red Eyebrows.

Under Emperor Wu, Han officials began training at an imperial academy in the Five Classics linked to which thinker?

Confucius had been dead for some 350 years when the academy opened in 124 BC; by the 2nd century AD it had swelled to over 30,000 students.

The breakup of Han China in 220 began which era of rival states, later retold in a famous 14th-century novel?

Three Kingdoms means Wei, Shu and Wu, whose sixty-year rivalry fills Romance of the Three Kingdoms, counted among the four great classic novels of Chinese literature.

Emperor Wu of Han's 54-year reign stood as the longest of any Chinese emperor until first beaten by which Qing ruler?

Kangxi finally outlasted him more than 1,800 years later, reigning for 61 years; Wu's 54 are still unbeaten among emperors of Han Chinese descent.

Which Han historian chose castration over execution so that he could finish the Records of the Grand Historian?

Sima Qian had angered Emperor Wu by defending a defeated general; he called the penalty the worst of all punishments, yet lived on to complete his history.

Which Han envoy, sent west in 138 BC to find allies, was held captive by nomads for over a decade before returning?

Zhang Qian finally got home with the wife he had married in captivity, and his reports on the peoples of Central Asia opened China's trade routes to the West.

Han general Ma Yuan crushed a revolt led by the Trung sisters, now national heroines of which modern country?

Vietnam named a Hanoi district after the two sisters, who by tradition rose in 40 AD after a Han governor put the elder sister's husband to death.

In 97 AD the Han envoy Gan Ying set out to reach which distant empire, known in China as Daqin?

Rome's eastern provinces lay only weeks ahead when Gan Ying turned back at the sea, after Parthian sailors warned him how vast the crossing would be.

The White Horse Temple, founded by tradition under Emperor Ming of Han, was China's first temple of which faith?

Buddhism arrived along the caravan routes, and the temple is said to honour two Indian monks and the white horses that carried their scriptures to China.

Han envoy Su Wu refused to defect and spent 19 years in exile near Lake Baikal herding which animals?

Sheep it was, and all male: his captors said he could go home once the flock gave birth, yet he never gave in and was freed only after a diplomatic bluff.

A Han tomb mural from Sichuan, dated precisely to 118 AD, shows a man using which labour-saving invention?

Wheelbarrow scenes in Han tombs are the earliest firm evidence of the device, which only turns up in medieval European records between about 1170 and 1250.

The 'heavenly horses' of Ferghana, for which Emperor Wu of Han went to war, were said to sweat what?

Blood on the animals' coats was probably the work of skin parasites, but the legend helped send two Han armies against the state of Dayuan to seize breeding stock.

The Han bronze Flying Horse of Gansu, found in a general's tomb in 1969, is popularly named for treading on which bird?

Swallow is the bird in the statue's popular title, though some scholars doubt the species; China's tourism board later made the galloping horse its national symbol.

Which Western Han capital, near modern Xi'an, became the eastern end of the overland caravan routes to Central Asia?

Chang'an became the seat of government when the first Han emperor moved his court there in 200 BC, and under later dynasties it was at times the largest city in the world.

The Eastern Han takes its name from the capital's move in 25 AD to which city, later home of the Longmen Grottoes?

Luoyang lies about 335 km east of the old capital, which is why historians split the dynasty into a Western half and an Eastern half.

Which regent seized the Han throne in 9 AD and ruled as the only emperor of his own Xin dynasty?

Wang Mang tried sweeping reforms modelled on ancient texts, but they ended in chaos and he was killed when rebels stormed his capital in 23 AD.

Which widow of the first Han emperor ruled China as regent for fifteen years through her son and two boy emperors?

Empress Lü was the first woman in China to hold that title, and she gave her relatives so much power that they were massacred soon after her death.

Followers of the faith healer Zhang Jue wore headscarves of which colour in the uprising against the Han in 184 AD?

Yellow stood for the new sky the rebels believed was about to dawn, and although the rising was crushed, it left the dynasty fatally weakened.

Which warlord, beaten at the Battle of Red Cliffs in 208, kept the last Han emperor under his control for decades?

Cao Cao took in the fugitive teenage emperor in 196 and governed northern China in his name; it was his son who finally ended the dynasty in 220.

Which Chu warlord, the Han founder's great rival, killed himself after his last stand at the Battle of Gaixia?

Xiang Yu had styled himself Hegemon-King of Western Chu; trapped and short of supplies in 202 BC, he is said to have composed a farewell song before the end.

Early Han emperors bought peace by sending brides and gifts under 'heqin' treaties to which steppe confederation?

Xiongnu rulers were promised princesses, but the Han court often sent commoner women passed off as royalty to spare the emperor's own daughters.

Emperor Wu of Han paid for his wars by making state monopolies of iron, liquor and which kitchen staple?

Salt and iron were nationalised in 117 BC after Wu's campaigns had emptied the treasury, and his finance official Sang Hongyang helped build a system many later dynasties copied.

The Han physician Hua Tuo is recorded as the first person in China to use what during surgery?

Anesthesia in his hands meant wine mixed with a herbal powder called mafeisan; the recipe was lost with all his writings after a warlord patient had him executed.

Which scholar, the first known female Chinese historian, finished her brother's Book of Han and wrote Lessons for Women?

Ban Zhao came from a remarkable family: her father was a famous historian, one brother wrote most of the Book of Han and the other was a celebrated general.

Emperor Wu of Han's armies toppled Gojoseon in 108 BC and ruled part of which peninsula through four commanderies?

Korean history remembers Lelang, centred near today's Pyongyang, as the longest-lived of the four: it traded with Chinese dynasties for about four centuries.

Chinese legend credits a Han prince of Huainan who died in 122 BC with inventing which soybean food?

Tofu's true origin is unknown, but the tale of the prince stumbling on it is the most widely told of several rival theories.

The Shuowen Jiezi, compiled by Xu Shen under the Eastern Han, was the first of which kind of book to use radicals?

Dictionary entries in the Shuowen total 9,353, arranged under 540 section headers, and it was the first book to analyse how Chinese characters are built.

The Han-era Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art handled which kind of numbers using red and black counting rods?

Negative numbers come with rules for adding and subtracting them, which the book needs for solving what are now called systems of linear equations.

The 'Ten Attendants' who dominated Emperor Ling of Han's court in the 180s belonged to which class of palace servants?

Eunuchs held such sway that officials plotted to wipe them out; the massacre of 189 left the capital in turmoil and open to the first warlord who marched in.

Han law barred which class from riding horses or holding office, and made them wear white to mark their low status?

Merchants who registered faced these rules from the first Han reign onward, but travelling traders who dodged registration often grew rich all the same.

Which weapon, invented in China around the 6th century BC, was the most common missile arm of Han armies?

Crossbow troops mostly carried a small handheld type with a bronze trigger, and a repeating version that fired bolt after bolt also saw some use.

Pottery ship models from Eastern Han tombs show which new invention, fitted centuries before it appeared in Europe?

Rudder steering from the stern let Chinese junks leave calm inland waters for the open sea; Europe's own hinged design dates from the 12th century.

Cuju, a game Han soldiers trained with, is widely recognised as an early form of which sport?

Soccer's governing body points to a Han military manual that describes the kicking game as training; it spread to the court, where Emperor Wu is said to have enjoyed it.

Which warlord seized the Han capital in 189, swapped one boy emperor for another and was killed by his own officer?

Dong Zhuo's brief rule was a byword for cruelty: he sacked the capital before abandoning it, and fell in 192 to a plot hatched by a court minister.

Which last Han ruler, enthroned as a boy in 189, abdicated in 220 and lived another 14 years in retirement?

Emperor Xian spent his whole reign as the pawn of one warlord after another, yet he outlived the man who took his throne and died peacefully in 234.

Han official Du Shi is credited as the first to harness a waterwheel to work which device in iron smelting?

Bellows driven by water instead of muscle reportedly saved an enormous amount of labour, and the cast iron they helped produce went into farm tools.

Which board game, its moves decided by throwing sticks, turns up again and again among the grave goods of Han tombs?

Liubo faded after the dynasty fell and its rules are now largely lost, though Han tomb art even shows winged immortals playing it on a mountain.

Which Han cavalry general, a nephew of Wei Qing, struck deep into the Gobi and died at only 23?

Huo Qubing first saw combat at 18 under his uncle and helped win the decisive Battle of Mobei in 119 BC, two years before his early death.

The Han dynasty takes its name from Hanzhong, the founder's first fief, which was itself named after what?

A river called the Han, in what is now southwest Shaanxi, gave the small fief its name, and the fief in turn named four centuries of imperial rule.

Han wuzhu coins, first cast in 118 BC and minted for some seven centuries, were round with a hole of what shape?

Square-holed wuzhu poured out of the Han mints in staggering quantities: more than 28 billion were cast in the first 123 years alone.

A gold seal dug up by a farmer in 1784 records Emperor Guangwu of Han's gift to an envoy from which country?

Japan now keeps the seal as a National Treasure: a Chinese chronicle had recorded the gift of 57 AD, and the farmer's find matched it some 1,700 years later.

Emperor Ai of Han is said to have cut off what rather than wake the male favourite asleep beside him?

His sleeve gave Chinese a lasting phrase: 'the passion of the cut sleeve' became a traditional euphemism for love between men.

Emperor Jing of Han's tomb pits at Yangling hold over 50,000 miniature figures, now naked, made of which material?

Terracotta courtiers, servants and farm animals fill the pits; the human figures were buried in fine clothes that rotted away over two thousand years.