A Resource Guide for Students and Teachers - Bowers Museum

Daily Life
in Ancient
China
Details of warriors and
horses found in the tomb
In ancient China there were
two classes of people, the upper
class and the lower class, and a
hierarchy existed within each.
The upper class consisted of the
emperor and his family, government
officials, scholars who were not
rich but were respected for their
knowledge, and the land-owning
gentry who had land they could rent
to others. Those in the upper class
lived in wooden houses with a tiled
roof. The emperor was the wealthiest
of the upper class, and the rich
ate well and wore silk. The skill of
making silk was a secret kept by the
Chinese for centuries. Both men and
women wore robes with sashes and
wealthy women wore silk slippers.
The lower class consisted of
soldiers, merchants, and peasants.
Although generals were respected,
soldiers were in the lower class
because they were sent to fight and
die. Merchants were looked down on
because they sold things others had
made. The peasants usually worked
the gentry’s land and remained in
poverty due to high taxes. The lower
class lived in houses made of mud
and straw.
Few of the poor could read or
write. They did not own their own
land, and some families were so poor
they sold their daughters to the rich
as servants. Farmers did not keep the
majority of their crops; the crops were
used to feed others. The men wore
baggy pants and a cotton shirt. All
shoes were made of straw. The poor
people’s diet included wheat noodles,
rice, steamed bread or bean curd.
Meat was rare. Workers performed
most jobs by hand, spending long
hours doing manual labor.
The First Emperor forced his
subjects into occupations which he
chose. He felt the only productive
occupations were agriculture and
the military. A few individuals were
needed as bureaucrats to carry out
the management of these people. He
felt that all other occupations such as
merchants and intellectuals had no
value in society. Qin did not believe
in education for the common man
because it would take time away from
farming. If workers were too slow or
tried to do something different, they
were put to work on the great wall.
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