56 replies to this topic

[ren]

...

Look, don't you find this tedious, with you stalking me in every thread to prove that I'm a "biased Chinese". Let's remind people reading this that me being a "biased Chinese" is what your first post to me was about and what it has continually being. All I was looking for was some evidence for Mair's argument that Taoism's core is the result of a foreign, Indo-European influence. None of my points and questionings are unreasonable, nor was I "yelling". And the successive arguments with you have not been about evidence, but about you trying to prove that I'm a biased Chinese.

You are the one with the bias. Your vague comments that there are Western influences and possibilities of influences in the genesis of Chinese civilization contributes nothing to the discussion. If I critique the vagueness of your comments, it doesn't mean I a "yelling, biased Chinese".

Instead of just arguing in circular arguments out of spite (and I'm reminded that you are a mod on here), why not just cite evidence/points in favor of
-Indo-European nobility for Shang era
-Indo-European ethos in the Tao Te Ching
-Central Asian religious influence in the Zhou...

Cite something. That's all you have to do. Otherwise, you are wasting your time and mine.

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Incidentally, I've come across another mainstream scholar that claims Shang and Chu mythology (thus I suppose he agrees with Mair that Taoism is Indo-European) is borrowed from Indo-Europeans. Great Yu taming the flood is borrowed from Western mythology. There are many cultures in the world with flood stories, found in places that would've been impossible to have contact with "Caucasoids". He cites no real prove of his claims, but states it as fact.

This is a profound problem in the mainstream academia. I'd say atleast half of reknowned mainstream scholars attribute various early Chinese civilizational aspects to Western influence, and yet provide no prove.

For example, one scholar claims the jue, Chinese ritual bronze wine vessel, is copied from Bactrian bronze wine vessels, which doesn't resemble the jue though has some similar characteristic. Furthermore, their was a pottery precedent in the Erlitou of the bronze jue, which makes it unlikely that it was a bronze borrowing from "Iranic tribes".

Some similarity always equates to prove of Western origins. This is not me being a "biased Chinese" but bringing up a legitimate complaint. This whole air of Western originality of Chinese civilization, without any real evidence, makes for a suffocating read through academic journals.

Edited by ren, 26 June 2007 - 09:30 AM.

[Peter S]

Strange thread.

Tarim Basin is not historically a black hole.

Original inhabitants were Indo-Europeans who spoke the Tocharian "A" language. Later on this area changed hands, at least a couple of time, between the Xiongnu/Turk and the Yuezhi/Kushan. The Turks (especially the Uighur Turks) won in the end - and they are still there.

Please look at a Turk website. Turks are NOT Mongols. (They are not even Mongoloid.) Turks and Mongols lived together in Mongolia for a period of time - with the Turks forming the upper class. Then the Turks gradually moved back westward - to the Tarim Basin, to Northern Central Asia, to the Caucasus, and to Turkey. Just because two groups of people lived in the same area does not make them the same people - otherwise George Wallace would be a negroid.

[DaMo]

Say, does anyone have a copy of Mallory's and Mair's book "The Tarim Mummies"? Apparently Mair and Mallory cite "many poems" in the book that "lament the green eyes of the Han emperors".

[loveworld]

with the Turks forming the upper class. Then the Turks gradually moved back westward - to the Tarim Basin, to Northern Central Asia, to the Caucasus, and to Turkey.

why do you say Turks were the upperclass...are you insinuating racial superiorty? and why did just pack up their bags and move westward...obviously they were being pushed back by someone

[Peter S]

why do you say Turks were the upperclass...are you insinuating racial superiorty? and why did just pack up their bags and move westward...obviously they were being pushed back by someone

"Dominant class"? The Turks were the dominant class in Mongolia (I think that it ws because they were more technically advanced than the Mongols and had better weapons), then Genghus Khan reversed it and the Mongols then became the Dominant class in Mongolia.

I was talking to a Hazara last week. The Hazaras are the descendents of the Mongols who conquered Afghanistan. He told me that the Indo-Europeans and the Turks in Afghanistan still remember what the Mongols did to them nine hundred years ago, and they treat the Hazaras as lower class in Afghanistan (no schools in Hazara villages, no building of infrastructure and utilities in Hazara villages, etc).

Funny thing, this Hazara looks exactly the same as a Mongol from Outer Mongolia.

It seems that five thousand years ago, Mongolia was wetter and warmer than it is now, and it was attractive to Uralic pastoralists to move there. Now, Outer Mongolia is just desert and rocks - not too many people want to migrate there (at least not until oil is discovered in OM).

I think that the Turks moved back west for 2 reasons:

1. They were pushed out of Mongolia by the Mongols; and

2. Mongolia was turning drier and colder - not so good for grazing anymore.

PS What is the difference between a Provincial Governor and a Commissioner, and when do I get to become an Emperor?

Edited by Peter S, 05 July 2007 - 04:55 PM.

[Zorn]

I've been looking into these claims of "white" influence on early China lately, but I can't really say of what's really going on- maybe someone can help out?

http://www.natall.co...117/aryans.html

Yeah, this is basically the cusp of most of what they say. I guess it's been known for awhile that indo-europeans did introduce horses and chariots to China, but why's there been such furor of the Tocharians?

And it really doesn't end there. You've also got claims of how since genetic testing has proved there were europeans (though technically in Linzi: http://mbe.oxfordjou.../full/17/9/1396

And some people going onto claim that this means, er, Confucius and Sun Tzu were white, or atleast part white, since they lived not too far from Linzi during this time.

What's the deal?

[DaMo]

It's much ado about not much. The Tocharians/YueZhi are made out to be far more influential on Chinese culture than they really were, mostly by conjecture, selective omission, allegations of coverup conspiracy (a perennial favorite) and digging-up of long-outdated theories.

As for the Linzi mtDNA affair, please read this: http://www.chinahist...11#entry4890011
As I would have guessed, certain folks promptly and gleefully went to town with it.

[fcharton]

Whew! I feel better now.... No wonder the Japanese and European have not dared to open up the Dunhuang manuscripts they "took" for study-- they might have made complete laughing stocks of themselves for not being able to understand what they ostensibly "removed" from China to study and protect.

Laughing stock indeed !

Both the Paris and London collections have been studied quite extensively (there are few Dunhuang manuscript in Japan), by western and chinese scholars both. The manuscripts left in China have been comparatively less studied (for various reasons). You can have a look at this article by Victor Mair: http://www.cckf.org/...Victor Mair.doc on the problems of indexation/cataloging of those texts (where Mair deplores the bad quality of the job made in China). And you can probably judge for yourself from any academic bibliography on the number of studies published on Dunhuang Manuscripts since they were found. Unless all those guys make things up (a common problem with those foreigners), they probably have opened, and read, and translated these texts....

But you knew that already, didn't you? The occasion was just too good to pass..

And about Mair, yeah, who's that guy anyway? A PhD from Harvard, teaching in UPenn, translated Laozi and Zhuangzi, and specialising in early chinese vernacular (he published quite a few translations of Dunhuang manuscripts, btw). Probably yet another of those guys who still have not figured out that 青 does not always mean green. And look at the kind of books he publishes :
http://www.columbia..../0231074298.HTM

Now I pity Yun who's going to Berkeley for his PhD, with the likes of David Kneightley, David Johnson or Michael Nylan...

We sometimes wonder why there are so few academics on CHF... because they're not good enough for us, that's why. Victor H. Mair, if you're reading this, please study a bit before you dare show up on CHF ! (and please accept my apologies for getting you involved in this)

François

[DaMo]

Whoa, wang yun, calm down.

Now the explanation: the term is qing-lai "青睐", which is a literary expression for "the dark gaze"-- meaning that someone is looking directly at you and therefore paying heed to you. As opposed to the eye-whites, bai-yan (白眼)-- meaning that someone showing you his eye-white (such as by rolling his eyes) and therefore deliberately ignoring you.

So you mean "青" as in "青丝"? But did the poems say "青睐" or "青眼"? Is there any other ancient text where this phrase is used in this context?

[DaMo]

I'm not sure if he actually translated it that way ... I only heard that he did ... and from someone who already misinterpreted another quote from the book. That's why I am looking for the actual quote in word-for-word original form.

[Yarus]

He's not being a 'dickhead'. Afrocentricism isn't taken seriously by most serious academics, and he's right in saying this particular blend of Eurocentricism does seem to be uncritically accepted by people who otherwise have a confident grasp of Chinese history, such as the man who heads the Warring States project. Afrocentricism is seen by most as a misguided, erroneous political movement, unlike this sort of Eurocentricism, which relies on a sane, rational possibility which happens to not be backed up by evidence. End of.

Every fool who fervently wishes for the Tocharians to be revealed as those who created the earliest civilizations of China usually has no knowledge whatsoever of these civilizations the Tocharians were supposed to have founded, nor any desire to acquire any. If they were to do so, even in a rough, noncommittal way, their views would be shattered fairly quickly. The utterly non-Indo-European customs of the Shang and Zhou people, in addition to the lack of any Caucasoid faces in the Terracotta Army (especially among the generals), are the key facts for the shattering to happen.

I don't understand how someone can lament colours of peoples' eyes, nor why the Han lineage, which arose from humble beginnings in Eastern China, would continuously produce people with green eyes, which is not only a recessive trait but extremely rare, moreso than blue or grey eyes. Mair appears to have got it wrong in this instance, and he does make more than the odd untenable claim about the Yuezhi or other Central Asians, such as the Tocharian homeland being located in Austria(!?!).

[Suren911]

White supremacist propaganda = Pathetic

[Kenneth]

He's not being a 'dickhead'. Afrocentricism isn't taken seriously by most serious academics, and he's right in saying this particular blend of Eurocentricism does seem to be uncritically accepted by people who otherwise have a confident grasp of Chinese history, such as the man who heads the Warring States project. Afrocentricism is seen by most as a misguided, erroneous political movement, unlike this sort of Eurocentricism..............Mair appears to have got it wrong in this instance, and he does make more than the odd untenable claim about the Yuezhi or other Central Asians, such as the Tocharian homeland being located in Austria(!?!).

I have no opinion of Mair and assuming the charges are accurate I have not seen this line of reasoning about an Indo-European Zhou ethnicity (?) in any of my texts on material culture or the ancient dynastic period histories from Western sources. I don't know the 'evidence' but studies of material culture do not prove ethnicity, only a spread of technologies, so untill DNA is taken from a Zhou kings grave and declared 'Indo-European' any such speculative suggestions can be put to one side and not trouble anyone with an interest in fact based history. I have heard enough of Mair to assume me has some odd views, just like an otherwise respected scholar like Homer Dubbs can decide that Romans settled in China based on some flimsy (and since discredited) evidence.
I am not a fan of psuedo-history, as long-term CHF members would be aware.
My comments about Ren were clearly not for just expressing concerns over "Eurocentrism" (which is fine) but specifically that he called me a 'fear monger' because I made comparisons to the intellectual stupidity of both Neo-Nazis & Afrocentrics. (I thought I made my thoughts clear on this as saying one type of bigotry is not worse than another)
Considering I am more interested in discussing the history than the modern politics of a minority of nutcases it was a confrontation that was not nessecary over such a moderate concept.
Whether one choses to consider Eurocentrism racism a very great & pervasive evil and Afrocentrism racism just a bit of a laugh that need not be mentioned it does not make one any better or more acceptable than the other even if that were true. I would entirely disagree about the effect regardless, as the experiences of Prof. Mary Leftowitz illustrate with her Afrocentric students. Even if most academics aren't fooled the public is made of laypeople after all, not academics.

Why does this thread excite such emotion I wonder?
It is only a misleading Youtube title posted by a neo-Nazi, the actual documentary says nothing about who started Chinese culture. The title is controversial, but 4 pages of discussion over a title alone is giving far too much attention to something that never factored into anything I read on ancient China.
What a waste of cyberspace for something so lame.
About Afrocentrism, a new member only recently came onto the CHF thread about a 'Roman style column' in a Han tomb and said how white people stole civilisation from black people etc., and recommended some Afrocentric book on the subject. He didn't last long but he was not the first like this appearing on CHF, and I have seen such people on other forums too.
Despite what some people might hold as opinions about which 'centrism' is worse (a pointless kind of distinction) it seems I have encountered Afrocentric views in common internet discussion more than I have seen 'common' people claiming that whites started civilisations like Chinese......this Youtube links very silly title is a first, bought to my attention by being posted here. I am not niave enough to be surprised but neither would I consider this idea as representative of conventional wisdom.
Need I say again, that to unfairly claim the legacy of any other culture is a very tasteless exercise.
If anything these threads need to move beyond arguing over a ranking for which bigotry is worse.
Would you rather have cancer in the left lung or the right lung?
I certainly did get annoyed over being called a 'fear monger' for making comparisons with Afrocentrism and 'Eurocentrism' (while I denounced both).
I still feel the same about Ren, and I don't care for his pet peeves that would require me to elevate one form of racism above another in 'very bad-bad-badness'.
Luckily he picked too many verbal fights with too many other members on other threads and he left in a sulk not very long after he posted these comments here.
He stayed just long enough to hurl some abuse at the forum itself and the admin and accuse them of various charges in a thread started on just on how annoyed he was with CHF. We did not live up to his community expectations I suppose.
He seemed an excitable sort of chap with a big chip on his shoulder over something.
And, yes.....he was a ****head.