Relatively little is known about early Chinese Mathematics because they wrote on bark and bamboo; materials that were far more perishable than clay tablets or papyrus. 'The burning of all existing books and the burying alive of all protesting scholars, by order of Emperor Shi Huang-ti of the Ch'ih Dynasty in 213 B.C. is another reason why there are so few records of Chinese history' (Schaefer, 1979, p9). As a result what is known is very little. For a place which is so advanced today their mathematical development was considered very slow. Why? It seems they were 'largely isolated from the mainstream of mathematical development' (Eves, 1990) and when there was communication 'the general opinion is that the Chinese were unreceptive to foreign ideas' (Grattan-Guinness, 1994, p94).
Despite all this the Chinese produced some quite remarkable mathematical feats. Contained in this are a few but no where near all the details of the development of ancient Chinese mathematics.
We must apologise for the lack of some details and few references as you can imagine from the above explanation books etcetera were hard to find on the topic.
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