general the number of politically leading gentry families was around one
hundred (texts often speak of "the hundred families" in this time) and
they were concentrated in the capital; the most important home seats of
these families in Han time were close to the capital and east of it or
in the plains of eastern China, at that time the main centre of grain
production.

We regard roughly the first one thousand years of "Gentry Society" as
the period of the Chinese "Middle Ages", beginning with the Han dynasty;
the preceding time of the Ch'in was considered as a period of
transition, a time in which the feudal period of "Antiquity" came to a
formal end and a new organization of society began to become visible.
Even those authors who do not accept a sociological classification of
periods and many authors who use Marxist categories, believe that with
Ch'in and Han a new era in Chinese history began.


2 _Situation of the Hsiung-nu empire; its relation to the Han empire.
Incorporation of South China_

In the time of the Ch'in dynasty there had already come into unpleasant
prominence north of the Chinese frontier the tribal union, then
relatively small, of the Hsiung-nu. Since then, the Hsiung-nu empire had
destroyed the federation of the Yüeh-chih tribes (some of which seem to
have been of Indo-European language stock) and incorporated their people
into their own federation; they had conquered also the less well
organized eastern pastoral tribes, the Tung-hu and thus had become a
formidable power. Everything goes to show that it had close relations
with the territories of northern China. Many Chinese seem to have
migrated to the Hsiung-nu empire, where they were welcome as artisans