At the beginning of the 20th century

The German Empire is 30 years old.

The Austrian Empire is 95 years old.

The Ottoman Empire is 602 years old, having outlived the Roman Empire, if you accept 476 as the Roman Empire's end date.

All of these empires are children compared to China.

The Chinese Empire, as we know it at the beginning of the 20th century, is 2,121 years old,

and civilization in China goes back more than two millennia before that.

Japan has had its ups and downs, but it claims an unbroken line of emperors passing the

Chrysanthemum throne on from father to son for a total of 2,560 years.

Now that's an empire.

But what happens when 2,000 years of tradition collide with the modern world?

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music century. Episode 14, The Righteous and Harmonious Fists.

China has always been a land of mystery and fascination to people from the West.

An important reason why is that China is a civilization that developed and grew independently of Western civilization. All Western nations,

even the Ottoman Empire, grew out of common roots. China and Japan are entirely different. Think of China this way. Imagine a world in

which the Roman Empire never fell. Imagine it has remained intact in the center of known

civilization ever since the first century BC. Now ask yourself what it would look like and how it would think in 1901.

The Romans always regarded themselves as the center of civilization. The name Mediterranean Sea

reflects this attitude. It literally means middle of the world sea.

And so it is with China, which calls itself literally the center nation, or middle kingdom, if you like.

The Romans regarded all the peoples and kingdoms around them as quite obviously barbaric and inferior compared with the empire.

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