China

The archaeology of ancient China takes us back four and a half millennia to roughly 2500 B.C. It is customary to refer to events in Chinese history according to the dynasty towhich the period's ancient rulers belonged. This isn't just true of ancient history, since the last dynasty, the Qing, ended in the 20th century. Nor is this true just of China.Ancient Egypt is another long-lived society for which we use dynasties (and kingdoms) to date events.
The first Chinese dynasty is the Xia. This was a Bronze Age dynasty thatis known mostly from legend. The first three dynasties, the Xia, and the next two, the Shang, and Zhou, are sometimes called the "3 holy dynasties".

Like Egyptian chronology,with its "kingdoms" interlaced with intermediate periods, dynastic China faced various challenges that led to chaotic, power-shifting periods referred to by terms like "sixdynasties" or "five dynasties," which may remind you of the Romans' year of the six emperors and year of the five emperors. The Qin Dynasty starts the imperial period, while theSui Dynasty begins the period referred to as Classical Imperial China.
For thousands of years, the ancient Chinese thought they were pretty much alone on the planet Earth. Theyknew there were people to the north, the Felt Tent People - the Mongols - but they did not know that other advanced ancient civilizations existed anywhere else.
Chinese rulers,called emperors, based their government on the Confucian model, which taught that the best ruler was a virtuous man who led by example.
Legalists stressed strength, notgoodness, as a ruler's greatest virtue, while Daoists, who rejected the everyday world, believed that the best government was the one that governed least.
Who ruled in ancient China?