Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What dynasty united the kingdoms of China?
In China, the Jin dynasty, which had united the nation prior in 280, began to quickly face troubles by the start of the century due to political infighting, which led to the opportunistic insurrections of the northern barbarian tribes (starting the Sixteen Kingdoms period), which quickly overwhelmed the empire, forcing the Jin court to retreat and entrench itself in the south past the Yangtze river, starting what is known as the Eastern Jin dynasty around 317. 
Towards the end of the century, Emperor of the Former Qin, Fu Jiān, united the north under his banner, and planned to conquer the Jin dynasty in the south, so as to finally reunite the land, but was decisively defeated at the Battle of Fei River in 383, causing massive unrest and civil war in his empire, thereby leading to the fall of the Former Qin, and the continued existence of the Eastern Jin dynasty.
Qin founded the Qin dynasty in 221 BC, the first unified state in the region. Qin was succeeded by the Han dynasty in 206 BC, which established the province ("zhou") of Jingzhou in what is now Hubei and Hunan. The Qin and Han played an active role in the agricultural colonization of Hubei, maintaining a system of river dikes to protect farmland from summer floods. Towards the end of the Han dynasty in the beginning of the 3rd century, Jingzhou was ruled by regional warlord Liu Biao. After his death, Liu Biao's realm was surrendered by his successors to Cao Cao, a powerful warlord who had conquered nearly all of north China; but in the Battle of Red Cliffs, warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan drove Cao Cao out of Jingzhou. Liu Bei then took control of Jingzhou; he went on to conquer Yizhou (the Sichuan Basin), but lost Jingzhou to Sun Quan; for the next few decades Jingzhou was controlled by the Wu Kingdom, ruled by Sun Quan and his successors.
The incursion of northern nomadic peoples into the region at the beginning of the 4th century began nearly three centuries of division into a nomad-ruled (but increasingly Sinicized) north and a Han Chinese-ruled south. Hubei, to the South, remained under southern rule for this entire period, until the unification of China by the Sui dynasty in 589. In 617 the Tang dynasty replaced Sui, and later on the Tang dynasty placed what is now Hubei under several circuits: Jiangnanxi Circuit in the south; Shannandong Circuit in the west, and Huainan Circuit in the east. After the Tang dynasty disintegrated in the 10th century, Hubei came under the control of several regional regimes: Jingnan in the center, Wu (later Southern Tang) to the east, and the Five Dynasties to the north.
This is a family tree for the Zhou dynasty, descendants of Duke Wu of Zhou who overthrew the last Shang ruler, thereby establishing the dynasty. Ruling from 1046 BC to 256 BC, it is notable as the longest dynasty in Chinese history, although the actual political and military control of China by the dynasty only lasted during the Western Zhou.
The Tang dynasty lasted for three centuries before it eventually succumbed to internal strife. In the Period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907–960) that followed, Kaifeng in eastern Henan became the capital of four dynasties. The Song dynasty that reunified China in 982 also had its capital at Kaifeng. Under Song rule, China entered another era of culture and prosperity, and Kaifeng overtook Luoyang and Chang'an as the largest city in China and in the world. In 1127, however, the Song dynasty succumbed to Jurchen (Jin dynasty) invaders from the north in the Jin–Song war, and in 1142 ceded all of northern China, including Henan. The Song government moved its capital to Hangzhou in Southern China, which, under the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) continued to enjoy relative economic and culture prosperity. A prolonged period of peace and cultural and economic prosperity in the Yangtze River delta "Jiangnan" region (modern southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang, and Shanghai) made this the new center of Chinese culture and economy.
Qin Shi Huang (, ; 18 February 25910 September 210) was the founder of the Qin dynasty and was the first emperor of a unified China. He was born Ying Zheng () or Zhao Zheng (), a prince of the state of Qin. He became Zheng, the King of Qin () when he was thirteen, then China's first emperor when he was 38 after the Qin had conquered all of the other Warring States and unified all of China in 221 BC. Rather than maintain the title of "king" ( "wáng") borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers, he ruled as the First Emperor () of the Qin dynasty from 220 to 210 BC. His self-invented title "emperor" ( ""), as indicated by his use of the word "First", would continue to be borne by Chinese rulers for the next two millennia.
Duke Zhuang succeeded his father Duke Cheng of Qi, who died in 795 BC, as ruler of Qi. He had a long reign during an era of upheaval in China. In 771 BC, the Quanrong tribes from the west attacked Haojing, capital of the Zhou Dynasty, and killed King You of Zhou. Duke Xiang of the state of Qin sent his army to escort King You's son King Ping of Zhou to the new capital Luoyi, marking the beginning of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. As a reward for Qin's protection King Ping formally granted Duke Xiang of Qin a nobility rank and elevated Qin to the status of a vassal state on par with other major states such as Qi and Jin. Although Qi was little affected by the turmoil as it was located east of the Zhou territory, the state of Qin would from then on grow stronger and eventually conquer Qi in 221 BC and unite China under the Qin Dynasty.
In the Early 13th century Genghis Khan united warring Mongolian tribes into the united Mongol Empire in 1206. The Mongols would proceed to conquer the majority of modern East Asia. Meanwhile, the Chinese were divided into five competing states. From 1211, Mongolia's forces invaded North China. In 1227 the Mongolian Empire destroyed Xixia and its Tangut people entirely. In 1234 Mongolian Ogedei Khan extinguished the Jin Chao.
In 1368, a Han Chinese revolt known as the Red Turban Rebellion toppled the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China. Zhu Yuanzhang then established the Ming dynasty, ruling as the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398). It is not clear how much the early Ming court understood the civil war going on in Tibet between rival religious sects, but the first emperor was anxious to avoid the same trouble that Tibet had caused for the Tang dynasty. Instead of recognizing the Phagmodru ruler, the Hongwu Emperor sided with the Karmapa of the nearer Kham region and southeastern Tibet, sending envoys out in the winter of 1372–1373 to ask the Yuan officeholders to renew their titles for the new Ming court.
The kings from other dynasties (, "yìxìng wáng") were mostly remnants of the rebellion against the Qin dynasty. Following the Dazexiang Uprising, many noblemen rose in rebellion. Heirs, pretenders, and warlords called themselves "kings" and claimed sovereignty as continuations of the six states previously suppressed by Qin. Among these, Chu was the most powerful. However, its rightful ruler Huai II was assassinated on the orders of the warlord Xiang Yu and the 18 Kingdoms Xiang had formed rose in rebellion against him. Liu Bang, king of Han, ultimately defeated Chu and established the new Han dynasty. The kings who had sided with him were then permitted to maintain their titles and lands. A few other kingdoms were also formed by Liu Bang for generals and favorites.
Emperor Xian, the last emperor of the Han dynasty, was a descendant of the first emperor Liu Bang. Lasting for over 400 years (the first to last for more than a century), the Han Dynasty is regarded as one of the golden ages of Chinese history. The Han Dynasty was interrupted by the reign of the usurper Wang Mang, who declared the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD); on this basis, the Han Dynasty is generally divided into the Western Han (206 BC – 9 AD and 23–25 AD) and the Eastern Han (25–220 AD). The rulers of the Shu Han, one of the three successor states to the Han Dynasty during the Three Kingdoms period, were descended from the Han imperial family, and considered themselves a continuation of the Han Dynasty; they are included below.
Note: King Zhaoxiang of Qin (秦昭襄王) had already been ruling Qin for 51 years when Qin annihilated the Zhou dynasty; however the other six warring states were still independent regimes. Some Chinese historiographers thus used the next year (the 52nd year of King Zhaoxiang of Qin) as the official succession from the Zhou dynasty.
The Qin dynasty (秦朝) was established in 221 BCE after Qin Shi Huang, King of Qin, conquered his final independent neighbour, the state of Qi. It is now recognised as the first Chinese imperial dynasty in the modern sense of the term; in recognition of this, its rulers were for the first time titled "Emperor" (皇帝), a title of which the components are drawn from legend, higher than the previous title "King" (王). The ancestral name of the family was Ying (嬴), although it is anachronistic to regard this as a family name in the modern sense: it would not have been used together with a given name. The titles of the Qin emperors were literally regnal numbers: "Qin Shi Huang" (秦始皇), in full "Qin Shi Huangdi" (秦始皇帝) means literally "the first Emperor of Qin", "Qin Er Shi" (秦二世), in full "Qin Er Shi Huangdi" (秦二世皇帝) means "the second Emperor of Qin", and so forth.
The Xiongnu were a confederation of nomadic tribes from Central Asia with a ruling class of unknown origin and other subjugated tribes. They lived on the Mongolian Plateau between the 3rd century BC and the 460s AD, their territories including modern day Mongolia, southern Siberia, western Manchuria, and the modern Chinese provinces of Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Xinjiang. The Xiongnu was the first unified empire of nomadic peoples. Relations between early Chinese dynasties and the Xiongnu were complicated and included military conflict, exchanges of tribute and trade, and marriage treaties. When Emperor Qin Shihuang drove them away from the south of the Yellow River, he built the famous Great Wall to prevent the Xiongnu from coming back.
The Mongol conquest of China was a series of major military efforts by the Mongol Empire to invade China proper. It spanned six decades in the 13th century and involved the defeat of the Jin dynasty, Western Xia, the Dali Kingdom and the Southern Song. The Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan started the conquest with small-scale raids into Western Xia in 1205 and 1207. By 1279, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan had established the Yuan dynasty in China and crushed the last Song resistance, which marked the onset of all of China under the Mongol Yuan rule. This was the first time in history that the whole of China was conquered and subsequently ruled by a foreign or non-native ruler.
King Zhaoxiang reigned as the King of Qin for 57 years, and was responsible for the state of Qin achieving strategic dominance over the other six major states. During his reign, Qin captured the Chu capital Ying in 278 BC, conquered the Xirong state of Yiqu in 272 BC, slaughtered a 450,000-strong Zhao army at Changping in 260 BC, and overthrew the Eastern Zhou dynasty in 256 BC. These aggressive territorial expansions and the strategic weakening of other rival states paved the path for Qin's eventual unification of China three decades later by his great-grandson Ying Zheng.
The reign of the first imperial dynasty was to be short-lived. Due to the First Emperor's autocratic rule and his massive labor projects, which fomented rebellion among the populace, the Qin dynasty fell into chaos soon after his death. Under the corrupt rule of his son and successor Huhai, the Qin dynasty collapsed a mere three years later. The Han dynasty (206 BC–220 CE) then emerged from the ensuing civil wars and succeeded in establishing a much longer-lasting dynasty. It continued many of the institutions created by the Qin dynasty, but adopted a more moderate rule. Under the Han dynasty, arts and culture flourished, while the Han Empire expanded militarily in all directions. Many Chinese scholars such as Ho Ping-ti believe that the concept (ethnogenesis) of Han ethnicity, though an ancient one, was formally entrenched in the Han dynasty. The Han dynasty is considered one of the golden ages of Chinese history, and to this day, the modern Han Chinese people have since taken their ethnic name from this dynasty and the Chinese script is referred to as "Han characters".
The fall of the Han dynasty was followed by an age of fragmentation and several centuries of disunity amid warfare among rival kingdoms. During this time, areas of northern China were overrun by various non-Han nomadic peoples, which came to establish kingdoms of their own, the most successful of which was Northern Wei (established by the Xianbei). Starting from this period, the native population of China proper began to be referred to as Hanren, or the "People of Han", to distinguish them from the nomads from the steppe. Warfare and invasion led to one of the first great migrations of Han populations in history, as they fled south to the Yangtze and beyond, shifting the Chinese demographic center and speeding up sinicization of the far south. At the same time most of the nomads in northern China came to be sinicized as they ruled over large Chinese populations and adopted elements of their culture and administration. Of note, the Xianbei rulers of Northern Wei ordered a policy of systematic sinicization, adopting Han surnames, institutions, and culture.
The Eastern Han (), also known as the Later Han (), formally began on 5 August 25, when Liu Xiu became Emperor Guangwu of Han. During the widespread rebellion against Wang Mang, the state of Goguryeo was free to raid Han's Korean commanderies; Han did not reaffirm its control over the region until AD 30. The Trưng Sisters of Vietnam rebelled against Han in AD 40. Their rebellion was crushed by Han general Ma Yuan (d. AD 49) in a campaign from AD 42–43. Wang Mang renewed hostilities against the Xiongnu, who were estranged from Han until their leader Bi (比), a rival claimant to the throne against his cousin Punu (蒲奴), submitted to Han as a tributary vassal in AD 50. This created two rival Xiongnu states: the Southern Xiongnu led by Bi, an ally of Han, and the Northern Xiongnu led by Punu, an enemy of Han.
In 221 BC, Ying Zheng, who was king of Qin at the time, proclaimed himself "Shi Huangdi" (始皇帝), which translates as "first emperor". "Huangdi" is composed of "huang" ("august one", 皇) and "di" ("sage-king", 帝), and referred to legendary/mythological sage-emperors living several millennia earlier, of which three were "huang" and five were "di". Thus Zheng became Qin Shi Huang, abolishing the system where the "huang"/"di" titles were reserved to dead and/or mythological rulers. Since then, the title "king" became a lower ranked title, and later divided into two grades. Although not as popular, the title 王 "wang" (king or prince) was still used by many monarchs and dynasties in China up to the Taipings in the 19th century. 王 is pronounced "vương" in Vietnamese, "ō" in Japanese, and "wang" in Korean.
The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms was a period of warfare and disruption. After 907, the Tang government effectively disintegrated into several small states in the south, while the north saw a series of short-lived dynasties and barbarian invasions. A key event of the era was the conquest of North China by the Shatuo Turks. During their rule, the Shatuo gave the vital Sixteen Prefectures area, containing the natural geographical defences of North China and the eastern section of the Great Wall, to the Khitan, another barbarian people. This effectively left Northern China defenceless against incursions from the north, a major factor in the later fall of the Song dynasty. The Shatuo and Khitan invasions severely disrupted economic activity in the north and displaced economic activity southwards, and native Chinese rule was not restored until the Later Zhou dynasty, the Song's precursor.
In 221 BC, Qin conquered the other six Warring States and founded the Qin dynasty; the He Shi Bi was then taken from the last duke of Zhao by Qin Shi Huangdi, who ordered it made into his imperial seal. The words, "Having received the Mandate from Heaven, may (the emperor) lead a long and prosperous life." (受命於天，既壽永昌) were written by Chancellor Li Si, and carved onto the seal by a man named Sun Shou. When Colonel Liu Bang attacked Xianyang, Ziying handed the jade over as a way of surrendering. The seal was to be passed on even as the dynasties rose and fell, but was lost between the Tang and Ming dynasties.
Yang Pu (楊溥) (900 – January 21, 939), formally Emperor Rui of Wu (吳睿帝), known as Emperor Gaoshang Sixuan Honggu Rang (高尚思玄弘古讓皇(帝)) or, in short, Emperor Rang (讓皇, "the emperor who yielded"), while still living during the initial months of succeeding Southern Tang, was the last ruler of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period state Wu, and the only one that claimed the title of emperor. During his reign, the state was in effective control of the regents Xu Wen and Xu Wen's adoptive son and successor Xu Zhigao. In 938, Xu Zhigao forced Yang Pu to yield the throne to him, who then established Southern Tang.
After the Tang dynasty was ousted by the Later Liang (Five Dynasties) in northern China, China split in different Kingdoms during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Emperors of Later Liang in Northern Central China and the Southern Han in Southern China both claimed to be the sole legitimate Emperors of China. The Jiedushi Khúc Thừa Mỹ (Qu Changmei) chose to recognize the Later Liang in Northern Central China as the legitimate rulers and acknowledged themselves as part of the Later Liang and resisted and fought against the Southern Han. Jiaozhi did not declared independence.
The Qin dynasty unified China in 221 BC. The Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 220) ruled the area under two provinces ("zhou"), You Prefecture in the north and Ji Province in the south. At the end of the Han dynasty, most of Hebei came under the control of warlords Gongsun Zan in the north and Yuan Shao further south; Yuan Shao emerged victorious of the two, but he was soon defeated by rival Cao Cao (based further south, in modern-day Henan) in the Battle of Guandu in 200. Hebei then came under the rule of the Kingdom of Wei (one of the Three Kingdoms), established by the descendants of Cao Cao.
After the invasions of northern nomadic peoples at the end of the Western Jin dynasty, the chaos of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern and Southern dynasties ensued. Hebei, firmly in North China and right at the northern frontier, changed hands many times, being controlled at various points in history by the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, and Later Yan. The Northern Wei reunified northern China in 440, but split in half in 534, with Hebei coming under the eastern half (first the Eastern Wei; then the Northern Qi), which had its capital at Ye (), near modern Linzhang, Hebei. The Sui dynasty again unified China in 589.
Qin Shi Huangdi ruled the unified China directly with absolute power. In contrast to the decentralized and feudal rule of earlier dynasties the Qin set up a number of 'commandries' around the country which answered directly to the emperor. Nationwide the philosophy of legalism was enforced and publications promoting rival ideas such as Confucianism were prohibited. In his reign unified China created the first continuous Great Wall with the use of forced labor. Invasions were launched southward to annex Vietnam. After the emperor's death rebels rose against the Qin's brutal reign in new civil wars. Ultimately the Han Dynasty arose and ruled China for over four centuries in what accounted for a long period in prosperity, with a brief interruption by the Xin Dynasty. The Han Dynasty played a great role in developing the Silk Road which would transfer wealth and ideas for millennia, and also invented paper. Though the Han enjoyed great military and economic success it was strained by the rise of aristocrats who disobeyed the central government. Public frustration provoked the Yellow Turban Rebellion – though a failure it nonetheless accelerated the empire's downfall. After 208 AD the Han Dynasty broke up into rival kingdoms. China would remain divided until 581 under the Sui Dynasty, during the era of division Buddhism would be introduced to China for the first time.
The Sui dynasty reestablished unity in 589, and the Tang dynasty (618-907) presided over the next golden age of China. For the earlier part of this period Shandong was ruled as part of Henan Circuit, one of the circuits (a political division). Later on China splintered into warlord factions, resulting in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Shandong was part of the Five Dynasties, all based in the north.