Abstract：Evolution of language is closely related to its cultural background. This study explores the relationship between cultural systems of ancient China and historical evolution of the Chinese language. The main findings include: It was the traditional education system and the Civil Examination System (keju) that caused literary reading in Chinese dialects; the continued efforts of unification of Chinese language and characters started by Qin dynasty have been the backbone accounting for the consistent maintenance between the regionalects across the country. Official corpus planning and the policy of appointing an official elsewhere played an important role in the process of forming and developing Mandarin as lingua franca. Geographic distribution of Chinese dialects was closely related with ancient system of regionalized administration in dynastic China. Chinese is a language with a history of 3-4 thousand years, and the modern Chinese language is the outcome of language evolution of ancient Chinese throughout the history. This paper argues that the current state of modern Chinese and geographical distribution of various dialects is related not only with the laws of language development per se, but also with China’s long history and culture. The most parts of Chinese long history discussed in this paper are over two thousand years.
