Eventually They All End Up In China Quiz

Answer: Mongols

The Mongol Empire was created when the leader of the Mongol Borjigin Clan, Temujin, consolidated his power over the other clans and was proclaimed Genghis Khan (Great Emperor) of all Mongols. The new khan immediately turned to raiding the smallest and most western of the Chinese states, Xi-Xia. Genghis first laid siege to the Xi-Xia capital in 1210 but withdrew after promises of tribute were made by the Xi-Xian Emperor. When the Xians reneged on their promises, Genghis attacked Xi-Xia with the full force of his army. He annihilated the Xians and assimilated them into the Mongol Empire by 1227.

At the same time, Genghis Khan was also attacking the larger and wealthier Jin Empire in Northern China. The Mogols invaded Jin China in 1211, and by 1215 had attacked their capital(modern day Bejing). Devastated, the Jin moved further north and lasted until 1234 before being entirely driven from China by the Mongols. Genghis Khan died in 1227, but his grandson Kublai Khan completed the Mongol unification of China in 1279 and established the Yuan Dynasty.

Answer: Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon was US President from 1969-1975. He was a Republican, who had been a staunch anti-Communist in the US Senate and as vice president to Dwight Eisenhower. Yet at the height of the Cold War, Nixon improved relations with the USSR and became the first sitting US President to visit mainland China. Nixon met with Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong and had substantive discussions with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. The images of China broadcast over US television were some of the first seen in the US in over 20 years. Nixon's visit paved the way for the US to establish normal diplomatic ties with China in 1979.

Herbert Hoover spent considerable time in China and spoke Mandarin before becoming President. U.S. Grant toured China in the late 1870s after he left the Presidency. Dwight Eisenhower, in the wake of Chinese involvement in the Korean War, strengthened US ties to Taiwan and visited that island in 1960. After Nixon each US President, except Jimmy Carter, has made at least one trip to the People's Republic of China.

Answer: Jews

Keifeng is a large prefecture of over 4,600,000 residents in China's central Henan Province. Keifang has been a center of Chinese culture for several thousand years and is one of the so-called Eight Ancient Capitals of China. Sometime between the 7th and 10th Centuries, a community of Jewish people settled in Keifeng.

By the 12th Century, the community was large enough to build its own synagogue. During the 14th Century, at the start of the Ming Dynasty, seven Keifeng Jewish families had risen in prominence to be officially recognized with Imperial surnames.

While the majority of the population of Jews in Keifeng were assimilated into mainstream Chinese culture by the 19th Century, about 100 families were considered active as of 2010.

Answer: Polo travelled between Italy and China several times during his life

Marco Polo was amongst the earliest, but not the first, European to travel to China. Indeed he was not even the first Polo to travel from Venice to China and befriend the Great Khan. Marco's father and uncle spent the first 15 years of Marco's life in China. Marco accompanied his father and uncle back to China on their second trip in 1271. Years before Polo left for China there were reports from various Catholic missionaries describing their journeys to China and the Far East. One such monk, Giovanni da Pian del Carpini, described meeting the Mongol Emperor over 20 years before Polo left Europe.

Polo spent over 20 years in China acting as a tax collector and emissary for Kublai Khan before returning to Venice in 1295. However, three years after his return Marco was captured during a battle between Venice and its rival city-state Genoa. It was in prison that Polo penned his famous account of his years in China. The book was tremendously successful, but often dismissed as fiction, a view that some historians continue to believe. After being released from prison, Polo returned to Venice married and never travelled from his home again before dying in 1324. Whether Polo's accounts were accurate or mere fiction, the tale inspired an age of explorers seeking to return with the vast wealth of the East. Amongst the items Columbus carried with him on his voyages to the New World, was a well-read copy of Polo's book.

Answer: Nanking

The Nanking (Nanjing) massacre or "Rape of Nanking" began in December 1937 and before it ended resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Chinese noncombatants and the torture and sexual abuse of tens of thousands of Chinese women. The incident was documented in graphic and horrific photographs. Unfortunately, while perhaps the most well-known of the abuses perpetrated during the period by Japanese forces, Nanking's treatment was repeated to greater or lesser extents throughout China and Korea.

Japanese military involvement in China started well before the large invasion of 1937. China had fought a disastrous conflict with Japan (First Sino-Japan War) in 1895 losing control of the Korean Peninsula to Japan. The Japanese helped destabilize China during the first part of the 20th century and then invaded and occupied Manchuria in 1931. A full scale invasion of China began in 1937 and by early 1940 the Japanese controlled all Shanghai and much of Eastern China. A strong Chinese resistance that temporarily united the Nationalist Chinese forces under Chang Kai-shek and Communist troops led by Mao Zedong bogged down the Japanese advance. The fall of Japan to Allied forces, hastened by the use of nuclear weapons, ended the Japanese presence in China.

Answer: False

Proving that truth is almost always stranger than fiction, Britain opposed China's desire to curtail the import of opium from India by the British into Chinese ports. The First Opium War between Britain and China began in 1839 when Chinese officials seized 2.6 million pounds (1.22 million kilograms) of opium from British trading vessels. The British Navy protested the confiscation and the economic consequences to its citizens. The war saw the British rout the Chinese on land and sea ending in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking. Under the Treaty, Britain was ceded the territory of Hong Kong and gained entry to otherwise Chinese only trading ports. Further, the Chinese paid the British over twenty million dollars in war reparations, including paying for the seized opium.

The British and Chinese clashed again over the opium in the 1850s. Britain, at the height of its imperial power, demanded that China legalize trade in opium and deregulate its tax and trade system. When China refused the British, this time with the French as their allies, they attacked again. The Second Opium War was fought between 1856 and 1860. Again, the British outmatched the Chinese, burning the Imperial Palaces and causing the Emperor to abandon Beijing for a time. Britain gained Kowloon (adjacent to Hong Kong) as a leased territory and the legalization of opium trading in all of China. As an added insult, the British also received the right to bring indentured Chinese to the US for work on the American railroads.

Answer: Pearl Buck

Pearl S Buck was the daughter of Presbyterian Missionaries Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker. Pearl's parents had been missionaries in China from 1880, but returned to the US briefly in 1892 so that Pearl could be born on US soil. Pearl grew up in China and was fluent in Cantonese. After attending college in the US, Pearl returned to China in 1914. She married another missionary, John Buck, in 1917 and together they lived first in the Suzhou region of Central China and later Nanjing where both Bucks taught at the University of Nanjing. In the early 1930s, Buck determined to end her marriage to John and turned to writing for income. The publication of East Wind: West Wind in1930 and "The Good Earth" in 1931 established Pearl Buck as an author.

"The Good Earth" is the story of the life of Chinese peasants in the early 20th century. The book earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1931. Pearl Buck went on to write "Sons" in 1933 and "A House Divided" in 1935 completing a trilogy of books referred to as "The House of Earth". Buck wrote numerous other novels set in China and in 1938 was the first US woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Buck left China in 1934 and did not return. In the 1960s Buck was denounced as an imperialist and her books banned by the Communist Party. To Buck's great dismay, she was denied a visa to visit China as part of Richard Nixon's entourage in 1972. Buck died shortly thereafter at the age of 80.

Answer: Portugal

The Portuguese were the first of the European maritime nations to establish relations with the Chinese. In the early 16th century, Portuguese naval ships steadily moved east establishing ports in the Persian Gulf (1507), Goa on India's west coast (1510) and Malacca on the Malay Peninsula (1514). The first Portuguese reached Guangzhou, China in 1513. The Chinese (Ming Dynasty) sought to exclude and bar the European traders from docking, however over time the lucrative market for silk and other Chinese goods proved an allure to allow greater rights.

In 1535, the Portuguese were given the right to dock at the small island of Macau close to Guangzhou and Hong Kong. By 1557, the trade on the island was so great that the Portuguese were given a lease of the entire island to act as a port for foreign trading. From Macau, the Portuguese were also able to set up trading arrangements with Japan. In 1887, Macau became a formal colony of Portugal. China regained full sovereignty of the island in 1999.

Answer: Manchus

The Manchus (also called the Junchen) are a distinct tribe that has occupied the Manchuria or the northeast region of modern China since Neolithic times. The Junchen/Manchu invaded China and established a kingdom in the 12th century (Jin Dynasty). The Jin were conquered by the Mongols in 1274 and fled back to the extreme Asian northeast. Slowly over time the remnants of the Jin, who now referred to themselves as Manchu, regained power in the northeast. The Chinese built one of the most fortified areas of The Great Wall at Shanhai to keep the Manchu's out of Central China. When the Ming Emperors lost control over China, the Manchus were able to enter from the undefended pass and take control of the country.

The Manchu rule was called the Qing Dynasty period. During the Qing period, the Manchu ruling class tried to avoid assimilation into the general Chinese (Han) population. Manchu children were taught the Manchu language and intermarriage was prohibited. Slowly the Manchu adopted more of the traditional Chinese culture. The Qing Dynasty remained in power until the Empire was dissolved in 1911 and replaced by the Republic of China.

Answer: Roman

Rome is over 6500 km from the remote Gansu Province village of Zhelaizhai. However, folk tales and the theories of a 1940s era Oxford University professor suggest that Roman soldiers were brought to the area as prisoners of war from the 53 BC Battle of Carrhae. Promotion of the "Romans in China" theory is credited to Oxford Chinese History Professor Homer Dubs. Dubs concluded from Chinese chronicles mentioning mercenaries fighting in a "fish-scale formation" at the 36 BC Battle of Zhizhi, were describing the Roman phalanx formation.

It is odd that many of the people of the Zhelaizhai have aquiline facial features and other characteristics of Mediterranean origin. DNA tests conducted in 2010 confirm that the villagers in Zhelaizhai have on average 56% Caucasian genes. However, the DNA evidence does not define whether the ancestors of the locals were Roman or some other Caucasian group. The local Chinese government's response to the speculation has been equally curious. Officially, the Government denies the validity of the theory. However, local officials tout the Roman connection to interest tourists in the area and have even built replica Roman style pavilions on the top of hills in the town.