Hey everyone, Las La Montgomery here, coming to you as usual from the China History Podcast.com.

We're at the start of a new year and to kick the snake year off, we're going to enter the way back machine and go back

3,000 years to the ancient world. I was coming back from Frankfurt a few weeks ago

and whilst killing time in my economy's seat, I perused the selection

of movies and TV shows and of course I trolled for any history-related documentaries Lufthansa might have in their video entertainment system.

Imagine my good fortune when I found they had a Mandarin program called Hui Wang Gao or looking back on the Gao Wu.

It was a documentary covering the ancient state of Wu.

So that was the sudden bolt of inspiration behind today's episode.

Now I have to admit I got confused for a moment because there's more than one single

Wu period in China.

There was this state of WuU from the spring and autumn period.

That is our primary subject for today. Then there was another WU state, this one called

the kingdom of WU or Sun Sun Wu. This was the eastern Wu state of the three kingdoms period.

And then following the Tang Dynasty, there was another Wu kingdom. This one had its capital near present day,

Yangjo. Today I wanted to focus on the Wu Guo, or state of Wu,

that reached great heights in the 6th century BC and then flamed out rather abruptly in 473 BC and I can't really talk

solely about the Wu state without mentioning some other more important states

at the time who interacted with them.

So anyways, let's swoop in and just circle around this period in Chinese history.

When I did those history overviews way back when I didn't cut too deep so this time

around will examine a few more specific periods in history so let's set the

stage for the Wu state.

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