Description
Some 200 years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte once said: “Let China sleep. For when she wakes, she will shake the world!” This narrative is an attempt to decipher what the master-soldier and brilliant statesman meant by the country’s inclination to sleep. It is also an illustration of what happened to the countless thousands of fugitives who fled Mainland to Hong Kong following Mao Zedong’s Revolution, 1949. In order to postulate on Bonaparte’s arbitrary use of the word sleep, it is essential to give a brief history of the country and the origin of its population. It is not clear how civilization developed in China because very little was written in legible form. The first dynasty was possibly a Xia, dating back from 2100 BC to 1600 BC. Aside from this mysterious dynasty, archaeologists found evidence of a second dynasty around 1600 BC to 1046 BC. Shang developed a semi-feudal agrarian society in the northern plain. It had thirteen kings, established nine capitals, and they moved in and out of these capitals at least six times. The final move was in 1350 BC when Shang entered the country’s first golden age.
