Making a society based on Feudal China

[Vitruviansquid]

You mean like the Zhou dynasty? The Warring States period? The Qin dynasty (was that feudal?)?

Here are a few possibilities you might go for if you are vaguely aware that you want a primitive China setting:

Spring and Autumn Period - China is split into multiple small kingdoms engaging in constant warfare. Each ruler is desperately searching for the "secret sauce" that will make their kingdom the strongest, and they regularly court and are courted by scholars, philosophers, and magicians who all claim to know how one kingdom can gain an edge on another. This is the time when Confucius lived, Lao Tze reputedly lived, and their philosophies were competing with Mohism, Legalism, and I would imagine a hundred other smaller philosophies.

Qin Dynasty - The leading philsophy of the day is Legalism, which basically means the State will very straightforwardly tell you what the laws are, and since you know the laws and you know you are not supposed to break them, the punishments for breaking the law are extremely severe. In the popular imagination today, this makes the Qin empire a fairly horrifying police state - where peasants will go poor from overtaxation or bad harvests or corrupt officials ruling over them, and then have their hands cut off for stealing food to survive. The army is a pack of wolves and tigers - fanatically loyal to their commanders and emperors, they live under iron discipline and have a twisted meritocracy where promotion was gained based on the number of enemies' heads they took. All power and splendor was concentrated at the top.