Cities
Similar to Europe, Chinese cities were founded as forts or leader's residences and were the centers of trade and crafts. However, they never received political autonomy and in fact sometimes had fewer rights than villages. Likewise, its citizens had no special political rights or privileges; the resident of Chinese cities never constituted a separate status class like the residents of European cities.
The lack of city development is partially due to strengths of kinship ties, which stems from religious beliefs (in ancestral spirits) and maintaining strong ties to the villages in which one's ancestors lived. The guilds likewise competed against each other for the favour of the Emperor, never uniting in order to fight for more rights.
Read more about this topic: The Religion Of China: Confucianism And Taoism
Famous quotes containing the word cities:
“Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)
“1st Murderer. Where’s thy conscience now?...
2nd Murderer. I’ll not meddle with it. It makes a man a coward.... It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself and live without it.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Today as in the time of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth flourishes in Wales, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; while around them cities have changed their masters and their names, collided and smashed, disappeared into nothingness, their peaceful generations have crossed down the ages as fresh and smiling as on the days of battle.”
—Edgar Quinet (1803–1875)