Eastern Zhou Dynasty Culture
1 min readEastern Zhou（771-256BC）
This dynasty is divided into two periods:Spring&Autumn Period（722一481BC）and Warring States Period（403-221BC）.
After the capital in Haojing，located around today’s Xi’an，was sacked by barbarians from the west，the Zhou，under the ruler of Ping Wang，moved to the east and made Luoyi，a place around today’s Luoyang，Henan province，capital thus neatly dividing the Zhou Dynasty into western and eastern periods.As might be expected，the power of the Zhou declined somewhat.The socalled Spring&Autumn period，named after a book the Spring and Autumn Annals，that provided a history of the period，saw a proliferation of new ideas and philosophies.There were“a hundred schools of thought contesting each other” .
The Warring States period lasted for nearly 200 years and it was the Late Indian Summer Days of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.Many states were established and they all gained sovereignty of their own.They fought each other and had complicated relations among themselves.Today’s friend may be tomorrow’s enemy.Their deals were full of intrigues.After aseries of annexation，seven strong states remained.They were Qi，Chu），Yan，Han，Zhao，Wei and Qin，among which Qin，Chu and Qi all gained hegemony in turn and had the possibility to unite the whole country.
