Editing China (section)

==Military Stuff before the 20th century==
As a general rule China has not been big on the idea on the idea of warriors as a class unto themselves. There were charioteers back during the Warring States Period and Manchu bannermen a long, long time after that, but otherwise there was nothing equivalent to the sort of warrior society that you saw in feudal Europe or pre-modern Japan. To give you an idea of the standing of warriors in Ancient China, let it be said that the world was made up of Four Categories of People (analogous to the Three Orders of feudal Europe): Scholars, Farmers, Artisans, and Merchants; which basically served to protect the scholars from the emergence of a middle class by inverting the relationship between mercantile wealth and social standing.  The Scholars, known as ''shi'', replaced the warrior-charioteers around the time Rome invented the pyrrhic victory, and resembled the Roman prefects in terms of their duties and authority. In later eras, soldiers and warriors were considered beneath these four categories and ranked alongside [[Bard|entertainers]], [[Sharess|prostitutes]], [[Maid RPG|domestic servants]], and [[Commorragh Slaves|slaves]]. Basically, they were fightier eunuchs.
 
Owing to the low status of the profession, if you wanted to raise an army in China you didn't have a hereditary caste of men trained in the arts of war from childhood, like knights or samurai. Trust us, many rulers tried and failed to establish such a caste. Instead, you'd get a whole bunch of peasants together, equip them, and send them out to do your fighting for you under the command of a noble trained and educated to be a general. Armies would thus vary in quality, from solidly professional soldiers  to badly-trained and ill-equipped conscripts, depending on region and era.

In general Chinese armies were more missile oriented than their medieval or classical European contemporaries with a mix of close quarters soldiers and missile troops. Beginning with the Warring States period, crossbows were a big deal because it meant that your conscripted peasants could easily be trained to saturate the enemy with projectiles.

A few words on weaponry...

Ancient China recognized four major melee weapons: staff, spear (although their concept of spear includes a wide variety of polearms - Iconically Chinese polearms include the Ji, Guandao, and podao)), single edged swords (dao), and double edged swords (jian); and of the two swords the jian was held in much higher regard than the dao.  Infantry, cavalry, and pirates use the dao because it's [[choppa|an unsophisticated choppy thing for hacking your enemies to bits]] (and more importantly, as a tool for chopping bamboo).  Anybody who's anybody fights with the jian because it's stabby, and stabby is the gentlemanly way to fight.  If you have a curved sword in a Chinese setting you are a walk-on nobody or a filthy barbarian (either japanese or mongol) and you exist to get slapped around. China is also known for more exotic weapons such as hook swords, butterfly swords, rope darts, wind-and-fire wheels, and other bizarre weaponry that is much more closely associated with specific martial arts than on the battlefield. As with many unarmed martial arts styles, actually fighting utility can be quite varied.

In addition to melee weapons, China invested heavily in projectile weaponry, in particular inventing the repeating crossbow (chu-ko-nu) for maximum dakka on the battlefield. China is also the birthplace of gunpowder, resulting in such weapons as fire arrows, fire lances, hand cannons, rockets, grenades, etc.