QUOTE(intem @ May 15 2007, 06:15 PM) [snapback]4889088[/snapback]
Yeh, lol. Apparently some western scholarly view of ancient chinese armies uses human wave tactics most of the time because they use to have concept or view of able to summon a large or hordes of armies at one time.
I don't think you will find a single Western scholar saying this about ancient Chinese armies. If you can provide an example then give it or else don't make irresponsible statements and generalisations.
Many of the participants on CHF are Westerners and I grow tired of being told how terrible we are to Chinese all the time.
Dear CHF,
What I find more annoying than anything is seeing this being another chance to moan about 'us' & 'them'
.......If this is about what a kid said in the school yard or is there really a problem with Western academic portrayl of ancient China?
Of course academic is proffesional and in all my readings I have found nothing like the stereotypes being bewailed here.
This is a matter or public esteem and not about what is in a textbook. The tactics and composition of ancient Chinese armies are to be found in Western sources if people actually read it. What a person on the street thinks (in truth they probably don't really care or think about China apart from its food and Kung Fu) is down to interest and education.
I would think there is plenty of ignorance on both sides. CHF is no exception.
Before people again go down the path of self-percieved victimisation by history again lets actual ponder where the public perception might come from.
The decline in standing of the Chinese military or celebration of the soldierly class should not just be blamed on foreign misperceptions alone, or recent humiliating events only in the 19th-20th century etc.
The lower standing of the soldierly proffesion in the late Chinese dynasties contrasts with the promotion of grass-roots warriors, and virtue of might, that saw humble but capable warriors rise in the late East Zhou and ancient Chinese period. The veneration of generals and conquerers is opposed to the scholars -exclusive- exam system for government posts and the prevailing Confuscian Chinese court philosophy of later times. The cultural heroes of later times are painters, poets & privileged family members instead of a something like a swine-herd bought to power solely on personal cunning or a remarkable amounts of heads taken in battle.
In later times scholars regarded their military colleagues with disdain and suspicion, and not unjustly too.
The unpleasant opinions of some comparitively recent outside observers (Imperialists during the Boxer rebellion for example) of the 'Chinese fighting spirit' and the quality of Ching soldiers needs to be tempered with the fact there are elements of truth to this slow decline and relative lack of prestige for soldiers even within Chinese culture. Having soldiers as second class citizens does not inspire them with great morale or 'to the death' elan.
This attitude also goes a way to explaining just how terse Chinese histories (written by scholars) can be on smaller details of battles and the soldiers themselves. This is quite different to the perceptions of soldiers importance and the comparitively detailed recording of famous battles in Western histories.
Before blaming only other people for thinking poorly of Chinese military history (when after all even knowledge amongst ordinary Chinese in my experience is equally poor on details) consider the low standing Chinese themselves regarded military individuals with in the later periods.
This is taken from Jiemings DSL website/yahoo group.
===================================================================
QUOTE
Extract from "Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion
1250-1276" by Jacques Gernet (translated from French by H. M. Wright),
pp 70-73
The prestige of military official was almost entirely eclipsed by that
of government officials. The low place held by the army in Chinese
society of the 13th century is no doubt to be explained both by a
climate of opinion which dates back to a remote past, and to
historical circumstances which accentuated in the Song period, the
anti-militarism that was traditional among the scholars.
It is clear that the origin of the contempt and suspicion whith which the arts of
war were regarded lies in one of those choices by which every
civilization is characterized, and that this attitude was in sympathy
with a concept of human behaviour that put the emphasis on ritual and
on the moral code rather than on any form of direct action.
As for the
historical circumstances, these were of comparatively recent date:
from the middle of the 8th century, political exigencies and the
weakening of the central power thad led the Tang dynasty to concede
ever-extending power to the military governors of the provinces.
This derogation of civil power was to bring in its train a long series
of disorders and of wars which continued until the setting up of the
Song dynasty at the end of the 10th century. Warned by these
disastrous events, the Song emperors and those representing the
scholar class remained firmly hostile to any policy tending to
encourage the powers of the military. Even in besieged towns, the
generals were made subordinate to the local government officials or to
imperial commissioners specially delegated by the court. Another
factor which must have reinforced the contempt felt by the civil
administrators for a social group in which literary culture had been
sacrificed to the development of physical prowess, was that most of
the military officials came from less illustrious families than was
the case with the civil officials. Some of them were even men of the
people, of peasant origin. Civil and military officials had little in
common.
Finally, even among the people, who often produced men of
warlike vocation and who furnished the army with its troops, there was
an intense hatred for the military.
A decent man, it was siad, does
not become a soldier, and it was indeed the case that the army had
been chiefly recruited from the dregs of the population from the time
when, at the end of the 8th century, it was no longer composed of
conscripts, but of mercenaries.
There was a complete lack of
discipline, and the soldiers, aware of the contempt and hostility that
surrounded them, made abuse of their strength and of their powers.
When there was fighting in the vicinity and scarcity of supplies, the
countryside was pillaged. For this reason, troops composed of
fellow-countrymen were as much to be feared as enemy troops. In the
eyes of the villagers, bandits and soldiers were indistinguishable.
"They hate to see soldiers," says Marco Polo, "and not least those of
the Great Kaan's garrisons, regarding them as the cause of their
having lost their native kings and their lords."
However, in spite of widely-spread anti-militarism, the importance of
the army in China had steadily increased during the Song period, and
its equipment was continually being improved. It had a complement of
378,000 men in 960, which increased to 900,000 towards the year 1000,
and reached 1,259,000 after 1041. The dynasty of Southern Song
(1127-1279) established alongside their land forces, a naval force for
the coastal defences and the defence of the Yangtze towns. It amounted
to 11 squadrons and 3,000 men in 1130, 15 squadrons and 21,000 men in
1174, and 22 squadrons and 52,000 men in 1237. The land forces
consisted of infantry and of cavalry proteted by armour made of
leather and metal, trained n archery, the use of the crossbow,
sowrdsmanship, wrestling and boxing. Catapults of all sizes and of
sixteen different varieties, handled by sevel tens or severl hundres
of men, were used for hurling stones, mnolten metal, poisoned bullets
and bombs. Although cannon had not yet mae its appearance, artillery
was used more and more during the period. Thus, from 1130, war-junks
were armed with catapults that hurled explosive bombs.
If the military
history of China remains unexplored, it is because the texts are
laconic where they are not silent, and because all the information
which we possess comes from civilian official sources.
The scant attention paid by the scholar-historians to military affairs
can be misleading. Contrary to an opinion which is all too widely
held, the military history of China is one of the most eventful and
bloodstained chapters in the history of Man. But the historian is
often content to summarize a whole series of the most appalling events
in one word, as instance by the use of the sigle comment: "floods",
which may refer to a cataclysm in which tens of thousands of people
perished and which was followed by a terrible famine; or a banal
formula such as "a town was captured", which may imply horrors beyond
count and innumerable acts of heroism. ......
........In spite of the frequent wars that occurred during the Song dynasty,
and in spite of the occupation of Szechuan by the Mongols in the
middle of the 13th century and the incursions of these barbarians as
far as the towns of the middle Yangtze, military affairs always
remained peripheral to the main preoccupations of the
scholar-officials. In an empire of such wide extent, invading forces
only created a limited amount of destruction, and as often as not the
horrors of war only affected the common people, both in the country
and in the towns.
Until the final debacle of the years 1275-1279, the
military officials, always regarded as of inferior status, were kept
strictly subordinated to the civil powers. Even if they did form a
partof the imperial administration, they nevertheless remained, as a
group, on the fringe of the upper classes.
This seems to be the view of non-scholars, trolls, and pseudo-intellectuals rather than real respectable academics.
China had martial art before Buddhism even came into China. There are such thing as wobbly swords, but NOT to such extent and NOT every Chinese swords are wobbly!!! 
Regarding the human wave wars... Well, Chinese wrote Art of War and invented many other battle/war strategies when many other nations were using the human waves methods in wars!!! 
Btw, my niece's highest education was about 9th grade and she is efinitely a very common Chinese and NOT a scholar in any way!!!