Friday, January 20, 2012

Front Page News Story

MONGOLIA INVADES CHINA!

     1276, Genghis Khan leads Mongolian army into invasion of China. The Mongolian army was split into ninety five units, each with 1,000 men. In that there was a quaran of 100 men. In each quaran there was a squadron of 10 men. With bows and arrows, Mongolia charged pass the Great Wall of China and conquered some of the land. The reason that Mongolia invaded China was to expand land territory. Genghis Khan shares, “our attempt to invade Japan in 1274 failed, so we tried China, and we succeeded!” 
     The Mongolian army killed tribes such as the Tatars and they showed no mercy. Some chiefs were even buried alive! There is a quote from a soldier in the Chinese army, "How could they pass the Great Wall of China? That is what I still cannot believe." During the 7th century, during Emperor Qin's rule, the Great Wall of China was built. This was to prevent invaders from attacking. People thought the Great Wall was an unstoppable barrier, but apparently not! The Mongolian army's new units made it a more simpler way to approach the attack. They were more organized, and driven to defeat and conquer.

Opinion/Editorial

     The Mongolian army was just split into ninety-five units. Each unit consists of 1,000 men. In those units, there is a quaron of 100 men. In each squadron there is a squadron of scarcely ten men. The organization must be improved immediately. The army’s units go down to a microscopic number of ten. Genghis Khan should’ve left it at a quaran of 100 men. The reason that this is bad is because there are too many squadrons to communicate with eachother. There are 9,500 squadrons, which is way too many groups that need to be organized in one army. 
     Different quarons have different thoughts of attack and there are too many to organize all of the thoughts together. The suggestion is to eliminate squadrons and leave the grouping of men at quarons. This way, the army is still organized, but there are fewer units that have to fuss about their ideas of approaching. Squadrons were an attempt to make the army smaller, but instead it created more problems. With squadrons, more communication has to be done, and it’s easier to eliminate squadrons overall. No more squadrons, no time wasted on extra unnecessary units.

Map



     The Yuan dynasty is the orange section displayed above. The black line shows the current political boundaries. Genghis Khan was the Emperor of the Mongolian Empire during the Yuan dynasty. During that time, Genghis lead army to Central Asia, Turkestan, and sections of Russia. The Yangtse River flows through the Yuan dynasty, as well as the Yellow River. Major cities were Karakorum, Shangdu, Hangzhou, and Dadu. The Grand Canal was in the Yuan dynasty. Although not displayed, Japan is to the right. The blue represents the seas and oceans. Modern day Pacific Ocean is to the right of the Yuan dynasty's reign.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Interview

Hello, Genghis Khan. How are you on this fine day?

I am okay.

So you are the Great Khan emperor of Mongolia. How did you rise into such power?


When I was 20, I was captured and became a slave. Some captor felt pity on me and set me free. My brothers and I and some other people formed a fighting unit. Eventually, I built an army of 20,000 men. I know, I'm impressive. After that, my army killed off tribes to Unite Mongolia. We killed many people.


Now, you say that you killed many people. Some people considered you evil, what do you think is the most evil thing you have done?


Well, the army killed of every Tatar male of the Tatar army that was under 3 feet tall. Apparently, it is bad to kill people for their appearance such as being short. Another 'horrific' act that I have done, is boil Taichi'ut chiefs alive. This and murdering the midgets was to eliminate tribes, and this is how I did so. So what if I boiled Taichi'ut chiefs alive? It is not like I used the army's weaponry to stab them.

Speaking of that, what weaponry did you use? How did it influence your army?


The army used screamer arrows, bows, and catapults. My favorite weapon was the screamer arrows. The army benefited from the arrows because it had to purposes. First, it frightened the enemy. Second, it killed the enemy. It was shot from a bow and had a metal ball on the tip. Once when my wife saw a screamer arrow she shrieked!

You say you have a wife, do you have family? 

My first wife was Börte Üjin. I rescued her once, after she was captured. She had a baby, Jochi. I may not be the biological father because she was raped, although I raised Jochi as my own. Since then, I have had many more wives and many more children. Too many to name. But Jochi was my first son and I dearly love him.


That's wonderful. It was nice to find out some information about you. Goodbye Khan!


Goodbye.

Religion/Culture

Buddha
     The religion of the Yuan dynasty was Buddhism. One belief of Buddhism was reincarnation. Reincarnation is the belief that people are reborn until they reach Nirvana. They can only reach Nirvana if they have lived a happy and 'full' life. The belief of reincarnation and Nirvana forced the people of the Yuan dynasty to be happy and peaceful. The people knew that they had to have a splendid life and in order to do so, they needed to be happy!
Nirvana
      Another belief of Buddhism is Karma. Karma can be defined as, what goes around comes around. That basically means that what people do, will happen to them as well. So if someone is mean, something horrible will happen to them. Also, if someone is nice, good things will happen to them. That belief is what restricted people to do harm. Nobody wanted bad things to happen to them, so they all had to be kind people. Since they believed in Karma, they were always nice, because they didn't want bad things to happen to them.
     A religion like Legalism would be bad because there are too many laws and restrictions. In Buddhism, people are in charge of their lives and they live the way they want to. Buddhism couldn't operate with a lot of laws. Buddhists belief in peace, not laws! Buddhism strengthened the Yuan dynasty because the belief of reincarnation and Karma caused people do behave in a more positive, and gracious manner.

Extra Information

  • Yuan Dynasty 1279-1368
  • The Song Dynasty was before the Yuan Dynasty
  • Yuan Shizong was the government ruler
  • Genghis Khan established a messenger system where commanders communicate with each other from hundreds of miles away
  • Genghis Khan was Kublai Khan's grandson
  • Marco Polo traveled through the Silk Road
Overthrow of Yuan dynasty
  • Yellow River flooded
  • -Destroyed the wheat
  • -Killed people
  • In order to repair, people had to pay higher taxes
  • -People rebelled
  • Replaced by Ming dynasty

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