10 Shocking Facts About Ancient China

[Music] ten shocking facts about ancient China number ten revenge cannibalism here's a phrase we never thought we'd hear revenge cannibalism it may sound like an expression straight from the blood-stained mouth of Hannibal Lecter but it was actually a practice that has heard numerous times during the Tang Dynasty if the people of a town were angry at their local government official they would chop up his body and consume him in 739 AD an officer of the court took a bribe to cover up his colleagues error that turned out to be a bad idea people found out and beat him almost to death before cutting out his heart and eating his flesh it's a pretty brutal tactic to use to improve local governments but I bet revenge cannibalism would probably get your bins collected on time number nine you're an egg what is your favorite meal if your answer at any point included the word urine stop watching this video and seek help it's pretty hard to imagine kiss enhancing the flavor of any dish yet in the ancient province of dong yang eggs soaked in the urine of prepubescent boys were considered a delicacy called virgin boy eggs the eggs spent an entire day soaking in a simmering pot of way before being served up urine was considered healthy in ancient China and was believed to increase the effectiveness of medicine to this day no one knows why the piss had to come from little boys just that it was always done that way surprisingly virgin boy eggs have held their popularity and are still enjoyed in eastern China they even sell for twice the price of regular eggs much less surprisingly the dish hasn't caught on worldwide number eight exams if you struggle with exams you would have hated the ancient Chinese government no one likes cramming algebra or rote learning how to ask where the swimming pool is in French but at least your tests don't last for 72 hours under the Song Dynasty the exams are join the civil service went on for up to three days during it applicants were locked in a small room with whatever foods they brought aboard for a desk and a bucket to use as a toilet they had to write as many as eight consecutive essays on governance and society as well as demonstrating an almost perfect knowledge of the works of Confucius of course under such conditions people routinely died in the middle of the ten but since no one was allowed to interrupt the exam parents couldn't come and collect their children's bodies instead but it's Easter wrapped in straw mats and tossed over the walls of the building number seven they invented booze if you've ever enjoyed a tall cold one of the weekend you have the Chinese to thank until 2013 historians thought that Sumerians were the first of distilled drinkable alcohol now they think that the ancient Chinese were getting smashed as far back as 7000 BC in fact some archeologists think that the first crops the Chinese group were used for alcohol rather than food yet getting drunk was literally more important than eating the popularity of early liquor actually started to cause problems and by the fifth century AD the Emperor had brought in laws punishing the production sale and consumption of alcohol with the heading the ancient Chinese may have invented booze but before you start toasting them they're also the reason your favourite tipple is so expensive and for a youth brought in the first alcohol tax almost as soon as the hard stuff was invented number six lice lunch lice were widespread in ancient China mainly because of the poor hygiene of most of the citizens the rich might have been able to indulge in bath but most of the peasantry if they wash the tools had to do so with water already used to cook rice predictably this meant that most people were crawling with life the poor was so used to the life that many would compulsorily pluck them off their bodies and eat them well as your alternative is piss-soaked eggs life's probably don't seem so bad it can life became such a habit in China that local doctors had to come up the cure for people who scoffed too many and ended up with life still alive inside them the remedy wasn't much more pleasant than the problem with doctors prescribing ash in boiled water to kill the light inhabiting their patients inside the patients would then have to go to the toilet and pass the dead insects from their system number 5 human sacrifice the aztecs maybe the most famous fans of human sacrifice but the ancient Chinese were just as bloodthirsty starting during the Shang Dynasty over 4000 years ago human sacrifice continued in China until around the 1600s the Chinese mainly sacrifice people to mark the death of a king or queen but they also believed that it was a way to bless new buildings in 2013 archaeologists discovered a wall made out of the skulls of 80 women who had been sacrificed to celebrate the construction of a new city on another occasion the crown prince of Sai was captured by enemy forces in order to strengthen a dam part from being a religious right human sacrifices also served to keep the people avidians after all being killed to appease the gods is not how anyone wants to spend their Friday night number 4 silk to die for apparently the ancient Chinese discovered silk in 2696 BC when the wife of the Yellow Emperor was having tea in the Imperial Gardens silkworm cocoon fell into her cups and she noticed that the cocoon was made of a strong and soft thread whether or not you believe this explanation the Chinese definitely knew how to make silk and it soon became one of their biggest exports the Chinese nobility kept the process secret from the rest of the world for over 1,000 years deciding that a monopoly on silk was too valuable to give up under the Han Dynasty silks became China's main export with over 40 tons of silk carried by six thousand camels being sent to Iran alone by 301 ad the hand government had a surplus of 40 thousand tons of silk stockpiles in the imperial treasury how was such precious information kept hidden for so long well like most things in ancient times it was done with extreme violence anyone caught discussing the silk making process or trying to smuggle silkworms after the country would face the death penalty which meant being boiled alive four-headed all hung drawn and quartered it wasn't until a group of Buddhists escaped China with silkworms hidden sticks of bamboo that the rest of the world finally found out the truth number 3 foot binding foot binding began among the upper class women of the Shang Dynasty in 1600 BC the women would have their toes broken and bound until they grew into a cone shape the crushed misshapen pulp was called a lotus foot and was supposed to be incredibly sexy unbelievably two men at the time it was war play always started with worshipping the feet and the later Ching dynasty even published a sex manual with 48 different ways of fondling venom foot-binding spread quickly to the masses and at its peak in the 1600s around 50% of the female population were getting their feet broken into the shape infection was rife and with blood circulation to the feets almost entirely cut off toes was often rot and fall off it's thought that as many as 10% of the girls who had their feet bound actually died horrifyingly the practice was not banned until 1912 and even then it continued across China until the 1940s the last factory making shoes for women with lotus feet only shut down in 1999 number 2 Chariots of Fire ancient China was not a place you'd want to mess with over the millennia the Chinese created a series of terrifyingly named weapons including the triple crossbow the dragon rocket and the hundred arrow launcher they even invented the first flamethrower using an early form of gasoline called fire oil to power it but the most terrifying military invention the Chinese developed was an early form of the unmanned tank according to legend the Han Empire was trying to quell a rebellion in the lingling district outnumbered by the locals commander yang Shuang designed the world's first unmanned vehicle loading up the row of chariots with automatic crossbows he linked the firing and reloading mechanisms to the wheels meaning the carts would shoot arrows as they moved he then set fire to the tails of the chariot horses causing them to run madly into the enemy unsurprisingly the sudden appearance of self-driving death carts led by flaming horses caused a bit of a panic in the enemy army allowing the hand forces to rush in and defeat them number one caught castration what would you be willing to do for a well tape job during the 15th century the Ming Dynasty ruled from the Forbidden City an enormous Palace complex so named because access to it was extremely limited apart from the Emperor no men were allowed to stay there even the Emperor's male relatives had to leave at night so that there was no chance of them sleeping with his many concubines but working for the inner court of the city was a fast track to success meaning that many poor Chinese men willingly castrated themselves to work in the palaces units he might think that such an unpleasant job requirement resulted in only a few applications but at its peak over 3,000 eunuchs worked in the Forbidden City in fact so many men took a blade to their balls that the palace had to turn applicants away yes they were actually men in ancient China who ended up chopping off their nuts for absolutely nothing those were our 10 shocking facts about ancient China did any surprise you were there any that we missed let us know in the comments below and feel free to share this video see you next time

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Keywords: Alltime10s, 10s, facts, video, list, top 10, China, Sacrifice, Religion, Cannibalism, exams, silk, silk road, trade, history, weapons, technology, castration, foot binding, lotus foot, lotus feet, eunuchs, Imperial Palace, Forbidden City, Emperor, Ancient, invention, Silk Road, lice, wash, alcohol, sumerians, dynasty, military, army, flamethrower, infection, trends, wierd, shocking, disturbing, brutal, Aztecs, ceremony, medicine, Confucious, government, drinking, creation, urine, beer, Death

Id: zWvA5xZwpOw

Length: 9min 34sec (574 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2017