AROUND THE AP WORLD DAY 77: 1 1 EAST ASIA
77 days from today, you will be taking your AP World History Exam. Today we quickly review 1.1 East Asia, which super heavy on Song China.
Need more help? Want a study guide for this unit? How about a key to that Study Guide? How bout a Study Guide and Key for EVERY UNIT... Plus, review videos?!? All of this AND MORE can be found in my ULTIMATE REVIEW PACKET: https://www.ultimatereviewpacket.com/courses/world-history
Install Tubelator On Chrome
Video Summary & Chapters
No chapters for this video generated yet.
Video Transcript
If your teacher was like me, we were coming in hot at the beginning of the course and spending way too much time on these early topics.
So today, let's review the major points of 1.1 East Asia.
First, get yourself familiar with this map.
I can't believe we didn't talk about the map!
You gotta know the map. You gotta know the regions. You gotta know their name.
CosWord will use terms like East Asia, West Africa, so you need to know your
directions and you need to know where they're talking about. These are specific
regions from this map where you will have to recognize them when they talk
about them. They may not say India, they may say South Asia, so get
familiar with the regions. But today we're in East Asia in 1200 to 1450. Like
we went over yesterday, this period is all about trade. At 1.1 East Asia is too.
Here's a map I made. So you're gonna find maps like these all over my site. I tried
to make one for nearly every subsection. So anything that I could possibly map
about that section is on that map. Tell your teacher wouldn't shut up about
China all year. Well it's kind of a big deal and that starts in 1.1.
Cartographically, East Asia is China, Korea, and Japan. Some teachers throw in
Vietnam, but we'll leave that in Southeast Asia for now. And now Korea and
Japan will both be a big deal later on in the course, just not here. Which leaves
us with the MVP of East Asia, China. And since the course starts around the year
1200, that means Song China. Now if you know anything about history, Song China
doesn't have much time left, as most things don't have much time left as the
Mongols are looming. But for now we're in the end of the Song Dynasty. And for us
that means a Neo-Confucian government ruling over a people of
mixed beliefs. The best way I've ever heard the belief systems in China described was a cooking metaphor.
So you take the ingredients of local religious belief systems,
Buddhism from India,
Taoism and
Confucianism from China as ingredients. You put those in a pot, you stir it around, and you bake it. Once you're done,
what comes out is China. So it's really kind of difficult to nail down where one belief system ends and another begins.
It's a nice blend. It's baked in the cake as they say.
All right, so we're reviewing the big ideas for Song China are as follows.
One, the civil service exam.
Much like what you're taking in 77 days, the civil service exam was a test people took to determine their placement in the Chinese imperial bureaucracy.
This is a true meritocracy. Those who score the highest get the best job.
Second, mandate of heaven.
The old ancient Chinese belief that the gods allow you to rule as long as
things are going well. If things are going bad, that's a sign of you losing the mandate
of heaven. And once you have lost the mandate of heaven, the next group or another group
or rebellion or Mongols or someone is going to come in and take advantage of those weaknesses,
which is interpreted by the Chinese people as having lost that mandate of heaven. Think
of it as Chinese divine right. Third, filial piety. You know how you have so much respect
for your elders? But if you did, you would be showcasing filial piety, which is a very
Confucian belief that you should respect your elders and even to a point worship
your elders. If you remember in Mulan, the cartoon one, when her dad is worshiping the
elders at the beginning and it's broken up and it's like, I better get back to it.
That is filial piety.
Four, chomp a rice. I made a whole video about chomp a rice. Don't judge me on my
video about chomp a rice because I had my setting on wrong and it looks really
basic and that's my fault. But what chomp a rice does is it's a fast
growing strain of rice which allows for more calories for more people for more
