The founder of the Vietnamese nation, according to the earliest traditions, was Hung Vuong, the first ruler of the semilegendary Hung dynasty (2879-258 BCE, mythological dates) of the kingdom of Van Lang.

Hung Vuong, in Vietnamese mythology, was the oldest son of Lac Long Quan (Lac Dragon Lord), who came to the Red River Delta from his home in the sea, and Au Co, a Chinese immortal.

Lac Long Quan, a Vietnamese cultural hero, is credited with teaching the people how to cultivate rice.

The Hung dynasty, which according to tradition ruled Van Lang for eighteen generations, is associated by Vietnamese scholars with Dong Sonian culture.

An important aspect of this culture by the sixth century BCE is the tidal irrigation of rice fields through an elaborate system of canals and dikes.

The fields are called Lac fields, and Lac, mentioned in Chinese annals, is the earliest recorded name for the Vietnamese people.

The body of thought that will have the most enduring effect on subsequent Chinese life is that of the School of Literati (ru), often called the Confucian school in the West.

The written legacy of the School of Literati is embodied in the Confucian Classics, which are to become the basis for the order of traditional society.

Confucius (551-479 BCE), also called Kong Zi, or Master Kong, looks to the early days of Zhou rule for an ideal social and political order.

He believes that the only way such a system can be made to work properly is for each person to act according to prescribed relationships.

"Let the ruler be a ruler and the subject a subject." he says, but he adds that to rule properly a king must be virtuous.

To Confucius, the functions of government and social stratification are facts of life to be sustained by ethical values.

His ideal is the junzi (ruler's son), which comes to mean gentleman in the sense of a cultivated or superior man.

Ironworking technology appears in China by about 600 BCE, at which point formal education becomes more widespread among Chinese officials and members of the wealthier classes.

China’s Iron Age is taken to last until the beginning of Early Imperial China and the rise of the Qin Dynasty in the third century BCE.

The Hundred Schools of Thought are philosophers and schools that flourish from 770 to 221 BCE during the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, an era of great cultural and intellectual expansion in China.

This period, fraught with chaos and bloody battles, is also known as the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy because a broad range of thoughts and ideas are developed, discussed freely, and refined during this period, in a phenomenon that has been called the Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought.

This will profoundly influence lifestyles and social consciousness up to the present day in East Asian countries.

Itinerant scholars, who are often employed by various state rulers as advisers on the methods of government, war, and diplomacy, characterize the intellectual society of this period.

Kung-Fu-tzu, or Confucius, who teaches social ethics in China in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, founds the ethical system that bears his name, basing his doctrine on the recognition of individual fate.

He incorporates elements of traditional Chinese folk religions and emphasizes aristocratic social virtues and behavior in accord with divine principles.

Old Chinese has been reconstructed from a large number of poems and songs, many of which are anthologized in the Shih Jing, an anthology of northern Chinese songs, compiled between about 1000 and about 600 BCE.

The earliest historical reference to prostitution in China dates from the Zhou dynasty, by which time it is already a well-established institution.

Late Zhou bronzes, including the backs of bronze mirrors produced from about 600 BCE, are sometimes inlaid with gold and silver.

The Spring and Autumn period in China enters its final age.

The name of the period, which roughly corresponds to the first half of the Eastern Zhou dynasty (from the second half of the eighth century BCE to the first half of the fifth century BCE), comes from the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle of the state of Lu between 722 BCE and 481 BCE, which tradition associates with Confucius.

China is ruled by a feudal system, under which the Zhou dynasty kings hold nominal power over a small Royal Domain, centered on their capital (modern Luoyang), and grant fiefdoms over the rest of China to several hundreds of hereditary nobles, descendants of members of the Zhou clan, close associates of the founders of the dynasty, or local potentates.

The most important feudal princes (known later as the twelve princes) meet during regular conferences, where important matters, such as military expeditions against foreign groups or offending nobles are decided.

One prince is sometimes declared hegemon during these conferences and assumes leadership over the armies of all feudal states.

The vassal states grow strong and belligerent as the Zhou kings lose control.