29 replies to this topic

[Mak Jo Si]

Do you think China is dead a long time ago? From the Yuan Dynasty, mongolians took over the place and basically China is getting so crooked back then already. I just don't see why people still think China is China after that. Anything after the Yuan Dynasty is very weird too. What do you guys think?

So many philosophers and wise one in history talk about how to govern with virtues and so on, how many kings followed? Not really much. sigh~

[f0ma]

This argument crops up quite often; was China still Chinese after a foreign takeover? I don't know too much about it, but, from what I gather, most people believe it still was because the invaders eventually became sinicized - adopting Chinese culture and tradition. That's a very watered down version though, I'm sure someone else can go into more depth about it.

Edit: Though I was reading Pan Yihong's article on nomadic policy and she suggests that the Yuan Mongols refused to be 'swallowed up by the native tradition', so perhaps the opposite it true in this instance; because they refused to conform to Chinese culture, they were forced out.

Edited by f0ma, 19 June 2012 - 11:20 AM.

[Mak Jo Si]

Thanks for the reply! Basically we are called 華夏文族 back then and it relates back to the wangdi yellow emperor. So after mongolians took over, our ancestors lineage is broken and so it should literally be dead by then. So that's should be something Chinese aware too.. our ancestor lineage is broken.....................

[Cao Huan]

No China didn't die after the Mongol conquest. Even under Mongol rule Chinese culture was kept alive and perhaps was altered a bit too. But that happens to all civilizations: change. If Japan was still a land with daimyos and samurai, it would not be held in great esteem in the 21st century... probably would be considered a third world country. So the Huaxia identity was still around under Yuan rule and became dominant in China again after the Mongols were driven out.

Look if every civilizations officially dies upon conquest, then England was dead in 1066 after the Battle of Hastings, Portugal was dead after the Spanish takeover during the 16th and 17th centuries, Korea was dead in 1910 after Japanese annexation, Mongolia was dead after Manchu conquest in the 1600's, Greece was dead after Roman conquest... the list goes on and on of zombie nations back from the dead. Today you still have countries that speak English, Portuguese, Korean, Mongolian, and Greek. Today you still have a nation that speaks Chinese. Thede nations are alive and breathing, and they tie themselves to previous incarnations that may have been conquered at one point, but those identities have been restored.

[Cao Huan]

If you think Huaxia civilization should be considered defunct after being conquered after a long string of dynasties that managed to survive before aforementioned conquest, then Huaxia civilization didn't die with the Mongols, it died when Sui conquered Chen in 589 AD. Or when Liang dynasty revivalists were crushed in the 620's during Tang. The logic for this?

So you have Qin unify the Warring States, then it surrenders to forces nominally loyal to the declared Chu emperor, then that emperor was deposed by Xiang Yu, who is in turn defeated by Liu Bang, who founds the Han dynasty. Then the Han dynasty is briefly deposed under Wang Mang, then restored, then is split into Wei, Shu, and Wu, where Han abidicates to Wei. Then Wei conquers Shu, and then Wei abidicates to Jin, which conquers Wu. Then northern China is taken over by the Wu Hu peoples that establish various not Huaxia dynasties, while Jin survives in the south. There Jin is later succeeded by Song, which is succeeded by Qi, which is succeeded by Liang, which is succeeded by Chen. Chen is then conquered by what it perceives as foreign invaders: Sui.

Meanwhile Sui traces its line of succession to Western Zhou, which succeeds Western Wei, which begins as an western division of Northern Wei (a Xianbei, non Huaxia dynasty), which itself split off from Former Qin (an ethnic Di dynasty). Before that, Former Qin previously conquers Dai, a Xianbei state Northern Wei claims lineage from. Meanwhile Former Qin starts out when a general of Later Zhao takes over Later Zhao lands after switching allegience to the JIn dynasty in the south, but then establishes his own dynasty. Later Zhao itself split from Han Zhao, which is the ethnic Xiongnu dynasty that drove the Jin to southern China (Xiongnu still considered foreign to Huaxia). Of course somewhere down the northern line of non Huaxia dynasties the rulers became Sinified and began considering themselves Huaxia, and considered themselves the true standard-bearers of Huaxia civilization as opposed to the dynasties to the south (Jin, Song, Qi, Liang, Chen), considering them southern barbarians, while the dynasties of the south saw themselves as Huaxia too and considered the northern regimes barbarians also.

So the unbroken lineage of Huaxia dynasties without interruption from outside conquest would be: Qin, Chu, Western Han, Xin, Eastern Han, Wei, Western Jin, (upon moving south) Eastern Jin, Song, Qi, Liang, finally Chen. Then Chen is conquered in 589 by Sui, which can be traced to various non Huaxia dynasties in the north, but somewhere down that line they became Huaxia. However by your logic that a civilization dies upon conquest, then Huaxia civilization should have ended in 589 AD.

But you do notice that during this time of division the Huaxia identity manages to survive from Qin to Sui, be it unbroken in the south or initially broken then restored in the north. If people identify themselves with a label, even after conquest, if people still identify themselves with the same label, when the time comes and the people with the label come into power, they can claim lineage to the people with the label before the conquest.

[mohistManiac]

I think China, as land can never cease to exist. It is after all a land of many rivers of many peoples. But China, taken as a universal set of ideas and institutions used to manipulate the landscape can certainly die. The concepts die when nobody recognizes them. Or when certain meanings produced by interlinking items are lost. For example the Taotie beast symbol was plastered everywhere on ancient Chinese vessels but nobody knows why. The loss would be just as plainly felt if the Europeans no longer knew why gargoyles were originally arranged on their buildings but instead just continued putting them on buildings as a part of tradition.

The test for whether an idea still survives largely depends upon those originating the idea and what they had originally intended it to be used for. So for example if the Zhou had originally decided that China ought to be a territory of divided fiefdoms with a shared culture between the vassals then they would knowingly accept the challenges of feudalism. They would do nothing to stop the calamity of the warring states period because that would be entirely fitting within their concept of what China actually is. But if they wrote that their own Zhou culture was dying then death would certainly follow. To this end, confessions of defeat would make it appear as though the Zhou regarded themselves as classically Chinese because they are elevated to a point where any change in configuration mortally wounds their enterprise. A type of nihilism. Such was the irony of the enterprise of Zhou. Even though they had been seen to be a different people they profited the most from forcefully taking power away from the Shang only to disrespect the power they had won by dispensing it amongst vassals of royalty. What did it mean to be Chinese in the pre Qin dynastic period? As unification had not yet occurred did it mean to be one with the Zhou or one with the Shang? Or one of the seven warring states? But what was the original idea of China anyways and whose was it? Was it the basics that Confucius tried to remind his followers of? filial piety and harmonious living? or was Confucius himself in a state of revolution and changed China's original ideas by saying the raw man can become the cooked man?

A more indirect approach to understand what I mean is if you take a look at brands today. Apple computer is no longer without Steve Jobs, someone who obviously contributed to a lot of the company's culture and products. However Steve Jobs was for a period not with Apple prior to his fated death. Did that mean Apple lost its "ancestral lineage"? How about now? Does a company without its original head cease living? I would say no.and that Apple computer continues to exist because it continues to know what its product line is about and why certain things are designed to be a certain way.

Edited by mohistManiac, 17 June 2012 - 07:41 PM.

[Hooly]

No, China is eternal. The culture and the people and the Race.

The Chinese have maintained their language, their One Hundred Surnames and their racial integrity. The Mongols ruled China as a Chinese dynasty, the Yuan, and their rule wasn't all that long frankly, less than a century before being overthrown by the Ming.

And if you want to get the Huaxia (華夏) thing, a case can be made for the Mongols being of the Huaxia lineage as well, because it's not just the Han Chinese who are descendants of the Yellow Emperor (just as not just Jews are descendants of Abraham). He had many sons who didn't all settle down into 'civilization', some maintained their nomadic existence.

In some ways, it was actually a good thing China was invaded and conquered by the Mongols and Manchus ... people who are of East Asian stock like the Han Chinese, and who had a lower level of civilization than the Central Plains. The Mongols and Manchus and earlier Khitan and Jurchen never sought to impose their language, religion and cultures on China, rather it was the other way around, they adopted Chinese norms in ruling and in the case of the Manchus, the Chinese language wholesale. Better it was Mongols and Manchus than say, ... Arab Muslims, who Islamisized what was once the Roman Christian Middle East, or Spanish Conquistidores who Catholisized what is now Latin America. The Mongols and Manchus to China are what the Normans are to England, or the British to India.

Edited by Hooly, 18 June 2012 - 12:52 PM.

[Hooly]

But then it begs the question, ... if 'China is dead' ... who are we now? what do we call the 1.3 billion people in that sub-continental area in East Asia? I for one choose to call them Han Chinese, the people with the One Hundred Surnames, Homo sapiens sinica and their civilization the Huaxia Civilization, or I just call them My People.

We could go the route of the neo-Jurchen and invent a brand new ethnicity called the 'Manchus'. Or we could do what the Nazis did and redefine an old term 'Aryan' and appropriate for ourselves. Or we could do what the Jews do by claiming a Biblical identity called 'Israel' (even going so far as reviving the ancient language Hebrew) and even conquer the modern territory and renaming it, even though the ancient Israelites and Hebrews bore no resemblance to the majority pale skinned and fair haired Eastern Europeans of modern Israel.

Edited by Hooly, 18 June 2012 - 01:18 PM.

[mohistManiac]

But then it begs the question, ... if 'China is dead' ... who are we now? what do we call the 1.3 billion people in that sub-continental area in East Asia? I for one choose to call them Han Chinese, the people with the One Hundred Surnames, Homo sapiens sinica and their civilization the Huaxia Civilization, or I just call them My People.

We could go the route of the neo-Jurchen and invent a brand new ethnicity called the 'Manchus'. Or we could do what the Nazis did and redefine an old term 'Aryan' and appropriate for ourselves. Or we could do what the Jews do by claiming a Biblical identity called 'Israel' (even going so far as reviving the ancient language Hebrew) and even conquer the modern territory and renaming it, even though the ancient Israelites and Hebrews bore no resemblance to the majority pale skinned and fair haired Eastern Europeans of modern Israel.

China is not dead because there are notions of how China can be defined which are enduring even to us now but perpetual preservation is impossible. Homo sapiens as are among the most quickly evolved species on the planet inhabiting but a microsecond upon the span of a day in the sequence of organic life events. If you used the Shang "way" you have to force sacrifices on people. If you used the Zhou "way" then there are numerous differences between the peoples in China. Qin "way" warfare meritocracy. Han "way" Confucian ethnics against barbarian ethnics. Tang "way" cosmopolitan atmosphere. Song "way" economics. Yuan "way" Pax Mongolica. Ming "way" pride. Qing "way" humiliation realization outside is really better, things ingenious and mechanical. If you use the PRC modern period "way" it is a combination of probably the last four "ways".

Edited by mohistManiac, 18 June 2012 - 06:35 PM.

[Hooly]

China is not dead because there are notions of how China can be defined which are enduring even to us now but perpetual preservation is impossible. Homo sapiens as are among the most quickly evolved species on the planet inhabiting but a microsecond upon the span of a day in the sequence of organic life events. If you used the Shang "way" you have to force sacrifices on people. If you used the Zhou "way" then there are numerous differences between the peoples in China. Qin "way" warfare meritocracy. Han "way" Confucian ethnics against barbarian ethnics. Tang "way" cosmopolitan atmosphere. Song "way" economics. Yuan "way" Pax Mongolica. Ming "way" pride. Qing "way" humiliation realization outside is really better, things ingenious and mechanical. If you use the PRC modern period "way" it is a combination of probably the last four "ways".

The operative word in my post is 'if' ... it's generally accepted that China is the longest continuous civilization on the planet, different fundamentally in some way to the the modern Greeks, Jews, Egyptians and even Indians. The Chinese have kept their genetic, cultural, linguistic and maybe even political 'ways' since the beginning of their civilization.

And the modern nation state of China and the modern Han Chinese are essentially 'the same' as those earlier dynasties, and in fact, different from various other non-Han dynasties such as the Liao, Jin, Yuan and Qing.

Our surnames come from the pre-dynastic period, to the Yellow Emperor and his sons, our folk ways come from the Xia, our writing system from the Shang, our religion and philosophical systems from the Zhou, our racial identity and sense of unity from the Qin /Han, our culture from the Tang / Song and our penchant for authoritarian politics from the Ming. All the others non-Han dynasties were merely occupations and usurpers, all destined to be overthrown.

By the way, I put the current Communist Dynasty in the category of foreign dynasty, they adhere to Marxist Leninism, a foreign ideology. They too will be swept aside and a more authentically Han dynasty put in its place.

[mohistManiac]

The operative word in my post is 'if' ... it's generally accepted that China is the longest continuous civilization on the planet, different fundamentally in some way to the the modern Greeks, Jews, Egyptians and even Indians. The Chinese have kept their genetic, cultural, linguistic and maybe even political 'ways' since the beginning of their civilization.

My answer related to your question. If China is dead what are the conditions that it met for it to die. I said the conditions by which the masters of China dictated that it would die. If you had a bunch of land owning elites in ancient China pleading their masters of ducal rank to save China lest it dies under a united meritocratic bureaucratic frenzy of scholar officials then you will certainly know how it died. The Zhou died. Do not expect to get it back. Their shunning of everything that was barbaric or basically everything outside the inner core of middle kingdom was what made them terribly vulnerable and yet terribly Chinese. Why? Because they were the epitome of what it meant for something to die and yet become more precious in the process, as the inventors of heaven's mandate. So Confucius ends up touting Zhou ways even though he claims that it all probably came from Xia. But look here, we have no idea if Xia even exists. They were basically looking to be the new masters of a China that had already once died and set the new rules for how it would live. By the end of the warring states period the Zhou death would have been nearly complete. By the Han period they weren't even using bronze all that much anymore and have no real idea what all those weird symbolism were doing on their vessels. The secret of China's eternal existence is largely due to the ability of its predecessors to declare a timely death and to allow for the youth to dictate their own rules for being inhabiting the same chunks of land.

Thus every place which manufactures the same genetics it had thousands of years ago have a society culture or civilization which has survived in the sense that there were predecessors which looked similar to them and had control of the territory. But the ancient China that is given importance like a jewel since its inception was one bound to die like the Roman empire unless we are talking about how it mutated into something else to live on as a different form. Something that just doesn't die has the characteristics of something which had never really lived to begin with, much like a cockroach.

And the modern nation state of China and the modern Han Chinese are essentially 'the same' as those earlier dynasties, and in fact, different from various other non-Han dynasties such as the Liao, Jin, Yuan and Qing.

That's what you prefer listening to yourself saying. Many a "Han" would prefer taking hints from those dynasties which you say are different from Han dynasties.

Our surnames come from the pre-dynastic period, to the Yellow Emperor and his sons, our folk ways come from the Xia, our writing system from the Shang, our religion and philosophical systems from the Zhou, our racial identity and sense of unity from the Qin /Han, our culture from the Tang / Song and our penchant for authoritarian politics from the Ming. All the others non-Han dynasties were merely occupations and usurpers, all destined to be overthrown.

By the way, I put the current Communist Dynasty in the category of foreign dynasty, they adhere to Marxist Leninism, a foreign ideology. They too will be swept aside and a more authentically Han dynasty put in its place.

You notice that what is really sought after is the pre dynastic period since that is when the legendary figures are said to have existed. But all the while the end result is that people become less and less legendary and more and more sophisticated and realistic. Doesn't matter if it's Han or not native or foreign ideology.

Edited by mohistManiac, 19 June 2012 - 04:32 PM.

[stardave]

Not for China I don't think, but for many other civilization yes, for example the acient Egyptians, they died out after Rome colonize them, I say this because they no longer speak or read the same language, no longer believe in the same religion, no longer shares the old culture, in fact they been Christanized by Rome, and then been Islamsize by the Arabs again after that. Have you heard of this thing called Rosetta Stone? The significance of that is rediscover the language for the ancient Egyptians. Because their language has lost for almost 2000 years, no one in Egypt even understand what those drawing on the temples were all about, until the French discovered Rosetta Stone, which have the same inscription of Greek and ancient Egyptians together.

Same thing goes for the Romans, they lost their language (Latin), lost their regions ( various Pagans gods) etc...

As for China, the modern day language can be directly connected to ancient times, society still heavily influenced by Confucius, Dadaism, Buddhism etc.. and among other beliefs that existed since ancient times. So no, China is not dead,

You can argue that Chinese culture is different from the Qin or Song dynasty, but unless that China still exist, the norm is with the China that is keep evolving with the time, and you need to keep evolving your society and adopting to new changes in the world to survive, and that is precisely what's happening.

[mohistManiac]

There are plenty of things in China which have changed to the point where nobody recognizes the importance of them anymore. For example people have unearthed Tang dynasty artifacts which nobody know the meaning of except through intellectual analysis and guesswork. The language has also transformed since the Shang times since most oracle script go unrecognized. You mean to say one is a reflection of evolution while someone's language like the Egyptian use alphabetic type script to the loss of its civilization? Talking about gods the Chinese change gods all the time. That is why the north in China came under the influence of powers from the steppe because they were heavily steeped in Buddhism. But different things have different levels of appeal at certain times and not others. The north was also predominantly Confucianist too especially when against a south China that was engaged in insurgency through Christian teachings. Otherwise the south was usually the more Confucianist and the north more Buddhist as seen clearly during Liao and Song. So if that is considered evolution then when Egyptians followed in Christianity's path that should also be evolution. It is said that the monotheistic traditions of the west are in fact derived from the Egyptian tradition of temporarily having banished all gods from the pantheon except for the sun god.

[stardave]

There are plenty of things in China which have changed to the point where nobody recognizes the importance of them anymore. For example people have unearthed Tang dynasty artifacts which nobody know the meaning of except through intellectual analysis and guesswork. The language has also transformed since the Shang times since most oracle script go unrecognized. You mean to say one is a reflection of evolution while someone's language like the Egyptian use alphabetic type script to the loss of its civilization? Talking about gods the Chinese change gods all the time. That is why the north in China came under the influence of powers from the steppe because they were heavily steeped in Buddhism. But different things have different levels of appeal at certain times and not others. The north was also predominantly Confucianist too especially when against a south China that was engaged in insurgency through Christian teachings. Otherwise the south was usually the more Confucianist and the north more Buddhist as seen clearly during Liao and Song. So if that is considered evolution then when Egyptians followed in Christianity's path that should also be evolution. It is said that the monotheistic traditions of the west are in fact derived from the Egyptian tradition of temporarily having banished all gods from the pantheon except for the sun god.

Again, the Chinese language can be directly linked from the very early Shang time or earlier, it is a direct evolved from one generation to the next, and it can be traced to the beginning, almost uninterpreted.

http://www.bowdoin.e...r_evolution.gif

The Egypt Hieroglyphics completely DIED out after Roman conquest, it was lost for about 2000 years before they even rediscover the very basic alphabet. That itself is totally different than Chinese language.

The Tang example, well of course, it is no surprise for a culture to lost some of it is knowledge isn't it? And at the same time, gain many other new ideas, if your meaning for a culture to not change at all, for it to be identical all times, then it is not possible, all culture lost and gain knowledge and values in the process, the difference is how big of a break in the process. The Egyptian at some stage totally lost 100% of what they valued, their language, their religion, their value etc... The Chinese, they gain and lost as time goes on, there is no 100% break from one generation to the next, sometimes they earn a lot of new traditions from outside such as Buddhism, but at the same time, they still maintain their old tradition such as Confucius and Taoism, there are also times during barbarians invasions that they lost many things, but it was again. not a 100% break, because the barbarians eventually took up Chinese culture themselves, the same cannot be said for the conquering Romans to Ancient Egypt, or later the Christian Egypt to the Arab Muslim. Each invasion breaks up the previous generation of value systems.

As for the Egyptian's sun god claim, I am well aware what you are talking about, and here is the background, the run god "Aten" was only worship by one Pharaoh Akhenten, and it shares some similarity to the monotheistic god that was later popularized in the Western world few thoulandd years later, but after Akhenten died, the whole nation went back to worship it is traditonal gods for another few thousand years, and this claim of linking that Sun god to Chirsanty is hardly continuous, it was only a theory and somewhat popularized in the 19th centery, before that no one even really care for that whatsoever, you really can't base a fringe claim like that to support your argument that somehow Egypran culture is still the same just like China.

[mohistManiac]

Again, the Chinese language can be directly linked from the very early Shang time or earlier, it is a direct evolved from one generation to the next, and it can be traced to the beginning, almost uninterpreted.

http://www.bowdoin.e...r_evolution.gif

The Egypt Hieroglyphics completely DIED out after Roman conquest, it was lost for about 2000 years before they even rediscover the very basic alphabet. That itself is totally different than Chinese language.

So we can focus on what has been lost to sequence what has died out. The Egyptians lose the skill to decipher their own writings even when their writings were presented to them in broad daylight for all to see. The Chinese language as once presented through the Shang oracle script wasn't even known about until they had been accidentally used as dragon bones for Chinese medications. In the Egyptian case we still know what is truly Egyptian and what had been lacking all this time was whether the Egyptian had themselves cared. However, in China you can't even make this distinction. If you lose your idea of where it all came from that can be interpreted as a kind of loss which is how western civilization would interpret as death because there would no longer be the markers of civilization. One cannot simply carry a civilization in his frame of reference as an homage to its past unless there are those things which still exist to pay homage to. That is how I perceive evolution differently. Since evolving into something else is a form of transitioning into something different from the past it involves knowing exactly what that past is. That is why I am of the mind to say the present Chinese civilization of now stretches back to only as far as one can remember the cultural inheritances which have not been forgotten. That is where Chinese civilization actually evolved from. I don't think Shang oracle bones and bronzes are part of it because one has to unearth them and argue for their confusing existence. There is great antique quality to the artifacts unearthed but they are far detached from the ideas of Chinese civilization as we know it today.

The Tang example, well of course, it is no surprise for a culture to lost some of it is knowledge isn't it? And at the same time, gain many other new ideas, if your meaning for a culture to not change at all, for it to be identical all times, then it is not possible, all culture lost and gain knowledge and values in the process, the difference is how big of a break in the process. The Egyptian at some stage totally lost 100% of what they valued, their language, their religion, their value etc... The Chinese, they gain and lost as time goes on, there is no 100% break from one generation to the next, sometimes they earn a lot of new traditions from outside such as Buddhism, but at the same time, they still maintain their old tradition such as Confucius and Taoism, there are also times during barbarians invasions that they lost many things, but it was again. not a 100% break, because the barbarians eventually took up Chinese culture themselves, the same cannot be said for the conquering Romans to Ancient Egypt, or later the Christian Egypt to the Arab Muslim. Each invasion breaks up the previous generation of value systems.

Not just some knowledge it would be the equivalent of the ancient Egyptians losing the knowledge of their burial and deliverance rituals. This isn't the same as getting new technology through trade from elsewhere and for new industries to arise which have never existed before. I am saying that on the basis of loss the Chinese have experienced this on both general and specific levels far more than it chooses to admit. The losses don't seem recoverable through replacement with something else which is why it is important to say the invaders learned the ways of the former masters and the original establishment still exists in some way. I have the feeling this is what Confucius institutes are for. The aggressive permeation of culture from the east into the west gives weight to the strong endurance of the Chinese in the face of an increasingly globalized world and marks China to be favored for preservation. But something missed out is whether the original masters of culture even choose to care about their own preservation. They could simply choose to move on. It could be like the case of the Qin state versus the more central Huaxia states. The Qin state decided more or less to take on the culture of the east and preserve its time honored forms while the easterners called the Qins barbarians and decided to further develop the ancient forms. You can keep on doing this until you are no longer Tang in culture for example but have moved onto Yuan culture. The only concrete link provided which say both are Chinese is they both occurred within the same territories.

As for the Egyptian's sun god claim, I am well aware what you are talking about, and here is the background, the run god "Aten" was only worship by one Pharaoh Akhenten, and it shares some similarity to the monotheistic god that was later popularized in the Western world few thoulandd years later, but after Akhenten died, the whole nation went back to worship it is traditonal gods for another few thousand years, and this claim of linking that Sun god to Chirsanty is hardly continuous, it was only a theory and somewhat popularized in the 19th centery, before that no one even really care for that whatsoever, you really can't base a fringe claim like that to support your argument that somehow Egypran culture is still the same just like China.

But it shows that religion in Egypt had been arranged in a way which would divide those interested in a polytheistic tradition against a fiercely monotheistic tradition. The Egyptians had both and this would suggest to me that being swayed by the Christians of Rome doesn't quite nearly induce a death to Egyptian ways as one might like to think.