Dragons, shoguns, and the Silk Road's echoes

Emperor Yang of Sui completes the Grand Canal, connecting the Yellow River to the Yangtze.

The project conscripts roughly five million workers — and the sheer cost of it helps topple the Sui dynasty within a decade.

The Grand Canal is a system of interconnected canals linking various major rivers and lakes in North and East China, serving as an important waterborne transport infrastructure between the north and the south during Medieval and premodern China. It is the longest artificial waterway in the world and a World Heritage Site.

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Wu Zetian declares herself emperor of China, founding her own dynasty.

She takes the title 'Huangdi' — a word with no female form in Chinese — and simply keeps using the male one.

Wu Zhao, formally known as Zetian Shunsheng Huanghou, and commonly known as Wu Zetian, was the founder and only Huangdi of Wu Zhou from 16 October 690 until her abdication. She had previously held power as the huanghou and tianhou of Li Zhi, Huangdi Gaozong of Tang from 660 to 683 and as huangtaihou during the reigns of her sons, Li Xian, Huangdi Zhongzong of Tang and Li Dan, Huangdi Ruizong of Tang, between 683 and 690.

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Chinese poet Bai Juyi composes 'Song of Everlasting Regret,' a tragic love poem about an emperor and his executed concubine.

The poem is so popular in Japan that Japanese courtiers quote it in their own letters and diaries as if it were common knowledge — even though it is written in a foreign language.

Bai Juyi's poem about Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei becomes one of the most beloved and widely copied works in all of East Asian literature.

Ögödei Khan establishes the Yam, a horse-relay postal system spanning the Mongol Empire.

Riders swap fresh horses every 25 miles, letting a message gallop from China to Persia in roughly two weeks — faster than most news would travel in Europe for another four centuries.

The yam or jam, also called the örtöö, was a Mongol postal system or supply point route messenger system. It was extensively used and expanded by Ögedei Khan and also used by subsequent khans and great khans.

The Yongle Emperor opens the Forbidden City in Beijing after 14 years of construction.

The 980-building compound is assembled by roughly a million conscripted workers — yet no mortar is used between the main timbers, only interlocking wooden joints.

The Forbidden City is the imperial palace complex in the center of the Imperial City in Beijing, China. It was the residence of 24 Ming and Qing dynasty Emperors, and the center of political power in China for over 500 years from 1420 to 1924. The palace is now administered by the Palace Museum and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. The Forbidden City is one of the most famous palaces in all of Chinese history, and is the largest preserved royal palace complex still standing in the world.

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Some 160,000 samurai clash at Sekigahara in a battle that decides who will rule all of Japan.

The fighting lasts only about six hours — the 'decisive battle for Japan' is over before sundown on the same day it begins.

The Battle of Sekigahara was an important battle in Japan which occurred on October 21, 1600 in what is now Gifu Prefecture, Japan, at the end of the Sengoku period.

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Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha leads an Ottoman force of roughly 140,000 men to the walls of Vienna.

Viennese bakers supposedly invent the crescent-shaped kipferl roll to mock the Ottoman crescent — though historians regard the story as almost certainly a later legend, the pastry itself is real and lives on as the croissant.

The Battle of Vienna took place at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna on 12 September 1683 after the city had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. The battle was fought by the Holy Roman Empire, led by the Habsburg monarchy, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, both under the command of Polish King John III Sobieski, against the Ottomans and their vassal and tributary states.

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Hong Xiuquan, who believes he is Jesus Christ's younger brother, launches the Taiping Rebellion against the Qing dynasty.

Hong's conviction springs from a fever dream in which he is handed a sword by an old man and told to slay demons — he later reads a missionary pamphlet and concludes the old man was God.

The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War, Revolution, or Movement, was a civil war in late imperial China between the Qing dynasty and the rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The conflict lasted 14 years, from its outbreak in 1850 until the fall of Taiping-controlled Nanjing — which had been renamed to Tianjing — in 1864. The last rebel forces were defeated in August 1871. Estimates of the conflict's death toll range between 20 to 30 million people, representing 5–10% of China's population at that time, while higher estimates range from 73 to 100 million, roughly up to one quarter of the Chinese population at that time, making it perhaps the deadliest civil war in all of human history. While the Qing ultimately defeated the rebellion, the victory came at a great cost to the state's economic and political viability.

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U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry steams four warships into Edo Bay and demands Japan open its ports.

The Japanese have never seen steam-powered ships belching black smoke; some coastal observers reportedly believe the vessels are floating volcanoes.

Commodore Matthew Perry sails four steam-powered warships into Edo Bay, forcing Japan to open its ports after more than two centuries of self-imposed isolation.

Japan's Admiral Tōgō destroys the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Strait of Tsushima in under 24 hours.

The Russian fleet had sailed 18,000 miles from the Baltic Sea — a seven-month journey — only to be sunk within an afternoon.

The Battle of Tsushima was the final naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War, fought on 27–28 May 1905 in the Tsushima Strait. A devastating defeat for the Imperial Russian Navy, the battle was the only decisive engagement ever fought between modern steel battleship fleets and the first in which wireless telegraphy (radio) played a critically important role. The battle was described by contemporary Sir George Clarke as "by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar". The battle is known in Japan as the Naval Battle of the Sea of Japan.

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