496 replies to this topic

[GangOfOne]

I've been hearing a lot of references to a'100 year dream' used in rhetoric for different occasions - the return of Hong Kong, the Beijing olympics, and recently the Shangahi Expo.

Can anyone tell me it's origin and significance?

Cheers

[General_Zhaoyun]

I've been hearing a lot of references to a'100 year dream' used in rhetoric for different occasions - the return of Hong Kong, the Beijing olympics, and recently the Shangahi Expo.

Can anyone tell me it's origin and significance?

Cheers

The "100 year dream" refers to China's dream of coming back to the world stage, and China's wish to restore its former Imperial glory by reviving itself as a world power (and to be 'recognized' as a major power in the world)

For a long period of time from 1842 till 1979, China went into a decline, wrecked by internal rebellion, humiliating defeat of Opium war, external incursion and invasion from Japan, warlord division, Chinese civil war, poverty, chaos and internal political upheaval.

Following a successful economic reform after 1979, China has developed rapidly and is now well on its way to emerge as an economic superpower. The "100 years dream" is a reflection of the nationalistic sentiments of China, in which it has suffered humiliation and 'darkness' for a long period of time. Nationalism still influences the psyche of PRC Chinese

[LuLingQi]

Why did the ancient Chinese evict ghosts and evil spirits from their house using loud sounds? Did they think the spirits are afraid? O_o

[asdad4]

The History of Wedding Dress

When did wedding dress firstly appear? and Who invented it ?? It makes us very curious and very intersted,and there are all kinds of wedding dresses,cocktail dress,flowergirl dress,prom dress,bridemaid dress.Now i will tell you someting about the history of wedding dress.

The first document recorded the wedding dress was in 1499, It was made for Louis XII and Anne of Brittany's wedding, The traditionnal wedding dress is white,it could date back to 1840 the Queen Victoria ' wedding ,Her official photo of this white wedding dress had been published broadly.So after this time ,so many females wanted to dress white wedding dress when they got marrige. The tailing of the wedding dress sometimes were the symbol of rich people,1980 at Prince DIana's wedding ceremony she weared a 480 feet wedding dress ,It's was so splendid and elegant!

Before Victoria's time ,wedding dress could have all kinds of colors except red and black,because black was associated with funeral ,red was assciated with prostitutes .The white wedding dress was stand for pure heart ,If a woman divorces with her husband she cannot wear white wedding dress again ,sometimes she will wear pink one.

I see in movies the ancient Chinese use gold and silver ingots called taels as currency.

How do they manage to lug all those heavy metal around?

[Jaz]

So when we hear of the Qin dynasty uniting China does it actually mean uniting china again. I was reading brief information on the history of china and it talked about the xia,shang and western zhou dynasty and it seemed to me that it was already united. Then after the western zhou dynasty fell and spring and autumn period and the warring states period took place, china got divided into states.


So when the qin dynasty united china was it a bigger than the other dynasty i mentioned before or was it the same area.
Or does it united talking about the uniting of the written system.

[mohistManiac]

Does Lang Lang really have Manchu ancestry? Is he himself counted as an ethnic minority then? Why do people think his playing skills are extremely good so much that he is asked to perform for the Chinese Olympic glory or for a fourth of July celebration? Do you think it might be because him being Asian and having particularly good English skills for a Chinese person might have something to do with it?

[TengAiHui]

One of my coworkers told me that he watched a documentary about Chinese theories on evolution. Evidently, Chinese scientists think (or at least used to think) that the people of Chinese arose from a separate but equivalent evolutionary chain than all other human beings. Can anyone help me find some research regarding this theory?

[Sleepybeggar]

I've seen Chinese opera with the characters either played by all men or by all women is there a "co-ed" style of Chinese opera?

[Yeleixingfeng]

Hehe, this is not a history question, but, oh well...

Can anyone teach me how to use a rhyme book? Any rhyme book? I have see plenty of rhyme books in the Net, but few with explanation as to how to use it... Thanks.

[mohistManiac]

In both a Chinese historical drama about Confucius and a Japanese movie called Katen No Shiro about Nobunaga's Azuchi castle I saw the practice where people left themselves naked on one side of their dress to engage in firing a bow or throwing a spear. In the Confucius drama Confucius was teaching a following how to properly fire an arrow by holding the bow on the naked side and in Katen No Shiro Nobunaga was riding on a horse and tossing a spear on the naked side. I am wondering when was this practice started and why. Thanks.

[mohistManiac]

I just saw a movie called Sacrifice about an orphan of Zhao. It was supposed to be the first play from China exported to Europe during the Qing dynasty but written during the Yuan. Does anyone know about this and would like to share more like was it based off some true story? Anyways in the movie a baby is killed because the general in the movie wanted to kill everyone of the ruling family down to the last member by throwing the baby to the floor instantly killing it and I notice this is the second time I've seen this occur in a Chinese historical drama the first being The Emperor and the Assassin. My question is was smashing babies recorded as a specific executionary method in China or was it purely fiction and used for dramatic effect? How in the world do they come up with this kind of material? It dawned on me that there could have been many other ways which would have been less cruel and ultimately saving the baby's life like using castration or simply exiling the baby and raising it in an environment in which the growing child would have no clue where he came from which was also brought up in the movie.

[JennyT]

Why was the Manchu foreign policy focused on the Inner Asian frontier rather than on the coasts?

How did the Taiping Rebellion work to strengthen and prolong the Manchu rule of China?

Why was Self-Strengthening ultimately viewed as a failure when it ended in 1898?

How did the Warlord Era begin in 1915 and why did it end in the late 1920s?

How did Mao adapt Communism(Marxism) to China's particular situation?

What were Mao's purpose in initiating the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution?

Questions I have while reading Fairbanks a Chinese History Book...any help greatly appreciated

[grassmudhorse]

None of these are silly questions and many of them worthy of a lengthy paper. I'll try my best : P I have not read Fairbanks's book btw, so I am answering from my own resources.

1.Cause that's what they have been focusing on for around 200 years? Until some serious imperialistic firepower arrived on the shoreline. Central Asia was where China contended with Russians mainly, and there was the Muslim and Tibetan issues needing attention.

2.I am confused by the question... I always thought (and taught in mainland China history book as that matters : P), Taiping Rebellion shook the rule of Qing Dynasty to the core. The country was effectively split in two while huge amount of resources and develop time lost. Also the civil war caused the Qing government to rely on Western powers like never before. I see no reason it reinforced the Qing rule in anyway, maybe an increased amount of social control?

3. Long-essay detected... Actually I think 1895 would be a better year for that recognition but 1898 works as well. The self-strengthening movement focused mainly on developing industries, and that is for building modern military including a Navy capable of global navigation. However there was few to no change in political institutions or ideology, which is the root of Qing's weakness. After the 1894 war with Japan the most valuable assets of the movement (the navy) was wiped out and China suffered from a new wave of colonization (Shan Dong to Germany, etc.), so that pretty much says failed national defence, failed economic development, failed diplomacy, failed to get respect. There are some upsides too though, or I don't think it is fair for those great personalities who strived to work on it.

4. Warlords as their name suggest, wage wars. And during wars smaller warlords are taken out by stronger warlords... By late 1920 there was still fair amount of "consolidated" warlords left in China (Zhang Zuoling in Northeast, Yan Xishan in Shan Xi, etc.), though you hesitate to call them merely warlords since they were (almost) proper governments ruling their part of China : (. And also the central government in Nanking by then has wiped out many warlords and took a fairly decent hold on power. The struggle afterwards were mainly between Nationalist and Communist forces.

5. This is definitely long-essay topic. In short, according to Marxist theory the Communist revolution is a revolution of the workers, and can only happen in an industrialized nation. Mao of course stated that an agricultural country could do that too (to fit his operation of course), and launched his peasent version of Communist revolution. Actually he was pretty successful in his "rural areas besieging cities" approach while the cominterns are fixated on taking major cities.

6. Another long-essay topic. My own understanding is that Mao launched this artifically incited state of chaos and anarchism to oust those he conceived to be a threat to his rule. A simple history line would go like this, see if you can be satisfied with this explanation:

A. Great Leap Forward: Mao launched this economic campaign to make China a strong economy while improving people's life. But failed miserably and achieved just the opposite.

B. The 7000-men conference: Due to the dire economic situation Mao launched this conference to get a bunch of technocrats into power, including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, in order to revise Chinese economics development and partly, take responsibility in case they screw-up again.

C. Transition period before cultural revolution: But they did not screw-up! Actually Chinese economy is doing too fine for Mao's comfort.

D. Cultural Revolution: So, let's get these people out of business. Liu becomes a traitor and ousted, Deng becomes ousted, but there were still many technocrats left at local level. What to do? Mao incited young students to "go against authorities" (scary thing is these authorities include military offcials as well), so lots of these bureaucrats got busted in a non-legal, seemingly grass-root political oppression campaign.

Yup, this looks pretty much like the start of cultural revolution to me.

So I have tried my best, hopefully everything makes sense to you. Thx.

Edited by grassmudhorse, 25 February 2011 - 02:09 PM.

[TengAiHui]

Last night (Sunday, March 6th; Feb. 2nd on the lunar calendar), there was an abnormally highly amount of firecrackers and fireworks being set off near my residence. Also, a friend told me there was a festival atmosphere in the streets of Beijing. Was yesterday a holiday in Chinese culture?

[jemun]

I have some silly questions as well:


A. What do the events of the Boxer Rebellion tell us about the character of popular nationalism and the sense of national identity prevalent among ordinary Chinese around the beginning of the 20th Century?

B. What were the basic characteristics of the ‘tributary model’ of international relations as practiced by China’s imperial rulers in late imperial times.

C. In what ways, did the creation of a ‘Manchu Empire’ require a quite different conception of international relations from that of the earlier ‘tributary’ format?

D. What are the different constructions of Chinese ‘identity’ in such peripheral areas as Taiwan and Guangdong in late imperial times?

E. What are the ways in which competing ideas of ‘race’ and ‘nation’ complicated early discussions about the design of a new official state flag in the early Republican period (post-1911).

Edited by jemun, 30 May 2011 - 05:46 AM.