Discussion Is ancient China perilous?

I'm currently reading The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage (it's good btw) and it reminded me of how most historical drama type novels makes it seem that ancient China is dangerous will all the scheming and wars. Furthermore, lots of people are portrayed as ambition, ruthless and cunning, willing to drag the MC to the mud.

Was ancient China really that dangerous???

 

if your the type that walks on side walks and look at your phone. . . .
then I'm sure you'll die or be brought to harm instantly. .

 

I highly doubt its any more perilous than any other ancient civilisations

 

Compare to now, yes.
Compared to other countries nearby at the time, no roughly same danger.

 

Which period of ancient China? There are thousands of years, dozens of kingdoms, numerous dynasties and stuff. With huge differences between them.

 

I'm mostly the type that makes sure that my music is set before I put my phone away and start walking.

 

Not really much familiar about the dynasties. Was actually hoping for nuffians to enlightenment me.

 

Think of dynastys as the current ruling family, other way to describe it would be eras

 

I'm not a history buff, but the general rules of ancient days are:
If you are a commoner/peasent, 6/10 you die due to hunger or sickness, your quality of life is terrible, and you have to constantly work to survive. And you get ordered around by upper ranks and can be killed without consequence. Wars are your funeral.
If you are an upper class person: your quality of life improves a little bit, at least you have food, and you can order servants to do what you want. Problem is that you have a bunch of other upper class people who want what you have, or want you to be gone. There will constantly be schemes and attacks to get your resources (including your own personal abilities if you have some), and to get rid of you so that they have less opposition..

In essence peasent suffer physically, while upper ranks suffer mentally (but most peasent suffer mentally as well and a lot more, and some lucky people live leasurly regardless of wealth)
Living in the past usually ain't fun.

 

At least they would bathe, unlike Europe at the time.

 

Yes. Every chinese civil war has had death tolls in the tens of millions of people.

 

lets not even talk about war since we all know china has been war torn for thousands of years and the death count is probably so high it can make line of bodies around the world. including all the revolts and uprisings and countless invaders that have tried to take a bite of china.

just the famine that china has been hit with several times that made countless people die or kill each other or cannibalism which was a thing and the other countless bandits that steal kill and pillage leaving countless emperor unable to even protect it's citizen.

How about the countless corrupt political figures that would steal money, women, food, and kill anyone they didn't like just for getting mud on his shoe. or the countless villages that these official massacred to hide their wrong doings.

countless amount of ppl murdered because they had profitable business and other jealous officials and or business men coveted their land or business.

 

Well, I think in every history of every country it's bloody hell.

 

I think they had the most deaths in history due to wars, I mean ancient china had warlords plus the number of population was high so bigger armies killing each other means more death not to mention the fact that I have no idea how develop their agriculture was at that time but I'm betting they weren't. So basically not enough food to go around with all the wars, plus no order you'll be lucky to survive till your 40. So nope. if it was the time where china is unified though I might reconsider but still no just imaging how much work I'll put in to be successful is making me give up.

 

If I have got a cheat then ofc YES. Gonna build a harem with those 'jade' beuts

 

Besides in ancient times most people have children way more than they could afford. It's pretty normal for a child to be sold or die.

 

Nah, you only get that impression from all the dramas and webnovels that use that theme, you're more likely to be killed by the roving bands of bandits that were all over the place because China was simply too big to control. Officials still want their "face" so they won't go too overboard. And they tend not to need to do shit to get what they want since the people were so poor that all it took was one famine to get them to sell their children, so why did they need to go full asshole for when everything they want will fall into their laps anyway?

"Fun" fact, even in times like the Communist China or WWII occupied Holland, the biggest killer was not armies or pogroms but starvation. Hunger killed more than 10 times any army ever did.

And in Ancient China, hunger was very, very common.

 

Not surprised, even now food security is still a major issue.

 

Every ancient civilisation would be perilous back then. Though some more than others, living as an Aztec would probably end up you being brutally sacrificed before you even reached 10.

 

Just like the frog in the well,
@Bad Storm is replicating it as the cat in the box~