ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the Eastern Zhou to be an age of transformation; thus it focuses on the causes and consequences of social changes. The chapter intends to distinguish itself from previous studies in new and exciting ways of interpreting Eastern Zhou society by integrating three components of evidence: classic texts, archaeology, and museum artworks. The key historic events documented in the text were reviewed along with recent archaeological discoveries in thematic aspects rather than chronical. With ample evidences, the author argues that, during the process of territorialisation, the authority of Zhou kings was challenged as well as purposefully ignored by territorial lords, who could increase their political influence by engaging in war and implementing persuasive economic reforms. Thus, the Eastern Zhou began to develop into a multi-faceted and multi-layered society with competitive states in play. The author tends to illustrate throughout the paper that talented individuals and intellectuals could seek out new opportunities to serve the lords of these vassal states as a driving force to readjusting the disordered Eastern Zhou society. Social transformation was stimulated primarily because of urbanization and increased population, commercialization and trades, with compromising modes between the state industries and private productions, innovations in technology, and freedom of philosophical thinking and persuasions that changed state rulers' governing doctrines and raised the ambitions of territorial lords. In the age of transformation these efforts moved towards one single goal, that is, to re-establish the order of hierarchic system and to rebuild a unified China that shared common cultural grounds.
