Growing up, I learned Chinese history from my grandma--who was hardly an unbiased source, she thought China was the greatest country ever. Anyway, I learned China was the oldest center of civilization, with towns, pottery, writing, etc. since at least 5,000 BC. Later on in world history courses, I learned China only began developing around 1,500 BC (this was written in the world history textbook).
So how old is China, really? And do Chinese people exaggerate how advanced China was (civilization at 5,000 BC) or does my American textbook understate?
Edit: it may have been "5,000 years of history" instead of "5,000 BC". Still, there's a discrepancy. I'm currently reading up on prehistoric cultures of China on Wikipedia.
China's written history dates back only to around the Qin and Han Dynasty, 230 BC approximately. This is when organized historical archiving became a cultural tradition for a unified China.
prior to that, China was a fragmented nation with hundreds of feudal Kingdoms, which did not consistently maintain records. However, the Chinese had extensive oral historical traditions, where important historical names and accounts would pass down via songs and poems.
Much of what we know about pre-Qin China today were written by Chinese historians after Qin, based upon oral historical accounts from the people.
For example, the name for "Spring Autumn Period" was actually from a historical archive written by a Chinese historian of later period.
About your grandma's claim, you may have heard it wrong. Many Chinese claim that China has "5000 years of history", not that China began in 5000 BC.
When did China actually began "developing"??
Archaeology found oldest Chinese cities to be around the beginning of the Xia dynasty (about 2000 BC). http://english.cntv.cn/program/cultureexpress/20130827/101799.shtml
But that city showed fairly advanced planning.
Thus, Chinese civilization likely preceded that city by at least a few centuries.
First of all, the definitive figure in the field is KC Chang, who's books on early chinese civ set the bar nearly 50 years ago, and still hold up well. What we find therein and in subsequent research is a bit tricky. If you are talking about the history of people in China, and you are looking for the trappings of civilization, i.e. pottery, art, organized civic areas, bronze casting, then China can claim with decent authority to be about 5000 years old. Who these people were cannot really be described as "Chinese", but they were the predecessors of the Chinese. From this earliest period, we can find in the archeological record some pretty cool civilization-y stuff in both the Yellow and Yangze river valleys (or tributaries thereof). Most impressive was the bronze casting, and it seems to have come with larger population centers than those of the archeological sites from 6000-10000 years ago.
There is still heavy debate, and likely always will be, as to whether there was a "Xia" dynasty ci. 2000 BCE. The best candidate for it is the Erlitou site. But again, there is no definitive proof. All of the writing that established the Xia arose in the warring states period, long after the putative Xia existed.
You were right in what you were taught 1500 BCE for writing. The Shang oracle bones date from about then.