During his first years as a emperor over all land between the oceans Shi Huang spent much time on extensive traveling through his empire. Like the contemporary rulers across the globe, the emperor understood that improving the roads and canals would help to hold the vast kingdom together.
In 220 BCE he began the building of a main road, between the Liaodong Bay in the north-east of China to the heart of southern China. A rich branched road network was eventually developed to bind together the different parts of the empire with the capitol Xianyang. He was behind the building of five major roads whose combined length was about 6,850 kilometers, that is about 800 kilometers longer than what the Romans accomplished 350 years later. These roads were still in use for hundreds of years after the death of the Tiger emperor. The roads were built with standard-measures of a width of 15 meters and even the axle length of wagons and chariots were standardized to avoid to much wearing down on the roads. He was also behind the building of canals which together added to a total length of 160 kilometers.
He declared a uniform code of law and standardized currency, weights and measures, and the written language. The written language is still consistent and has probably more than anything else contributed to create the political commonness and cultural continuity of divided China with its diverse regions and climates and its varying dialects.
He also standardized the scale of tones, all bells throughout the kingdom should sound exactly the same as the bells in his palace.
It is told that Shi Huang refused to go to bed before he had let at least 60 kilograms of documents pass through his hands. (The documents consisted of bamboo slips as writing material, the lists were bound together. It follows naturally why the Chinese written language is read top to bottom and right to left when the manuscripts consist of intertwined bamboo slips.)