A wealth of information on china past and present - with links to other sources - is available on the Facts and Details website maintained byAmerican teacher and researcher Jeff Ha.
`As History is my Witness'
In October 2012 Carrie Gracie, former BBC correspondent in Beijing delivered 10 radio talks on figures from Chinese history who remain particularly relevant for understanding China today:
1. Sima Quian: China's `Grand Historian' Scholar courtier who accepted castration rather than death in 99 B.C. so that he could complete his projected history of China.
床前明月光 Moonlight in front of my bed 疑是地上霜 I took it for frost on the ground 舉頭望明月 I lift my head, gaze at the bright moon 低頭思故鄉 Lower it, and think of home.
For a descripion of the remins of Li Bai's birthplace in what is now Kyrgyztan, see `Discovering the ruins of Suyab.' an extract from William Han's book on retracing the footsteps of Gan Ying, the Chinese envoy who almost reached the Roman Empire in the 1st sentury A.D. Gan Ying's journey is among the topics covered in sina_latina.ppt, which can be downloaded from the SINA LATINA page on the Linguae site.
5. The sisters who changed Chinese history The story of the three Soong sisters, whose marriages to prominent political figures gave them great influence for many years.
7. Liu Bei: China's warlord who teaches god management On The Romance of The Three Kingdoms, the immensely popular historical novel which Mao Tse Tung read surreptitiously at school when he was supposed to be studying the Confucian classics. The book's introduction famously sums up the enduring pattern of China's past: 天下大勢, 分久必合, 合久必分"It is a general truism of this world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide."
8. Wang Anshi: The reformer beaten by the Mandarins In some ways anticipating Kang Yuwei, the intellectual who persuaded the second-to-last Qing emperor, Guangxu, to launch the abortive `100 days' reform movement in 1898, Wang sought in the 11th century to introduce a new emphasis on practical skills in the selection of the civil service and to have government actively promote economic development
9. Hong Xuquian: The rebel who thought he was Jesus's brother The story of the leader of the Taiping rebellion of 1850-64, which resulted in the deaths of 10-20 million Chinese and was put down at great cost by the Qing dynasty with Western assistance, yet paradoxically partly caused by the exposure of China to western influence.
10. The people: Old 100 Names The ordinary people of China are traditionally referred to as 老百姓 (`Old Hundred Surnames' or `Joe Public') and often treated by both mandarins and cadres as mere pawns in the game.
Michael Wood's BBC History of China
Episode 3 tells the story of the Sung Dynasty, widely regarded as the country's golden age:
The Chinese through Abbasid Eyes Jan Keulen
A recent translation of a 1100-year-old report by an Arab adventurer allows us to see Tang Dynasty China through 9th century Arab eyes (Middle East Eye, accessed 19/8/16)
Merchants and adventurers from Iraq and the Gulf explored Asia and reported on foreign customs and societies. Above, the massacre of Guangzhou in 878 when rebels attacked Arab and Persian merchants in China. (histoireislamique.wordpress.com)
They were keen and curious observers. More than a millennium ago merchant-informants and officials at the service of the Abbasid caliph, from Baghdad or Basra, put to paper eyewitness accounts of North Europeans (Vikings), Indians, Chinese and people from today’s Cambodia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The Abbasid Caliphate ruled all of West Asia and North Africa from 750 AD until about 1000, when it began to weaken. “Baghdad was one of the biggest cities in the world,” says Dr Maaike van Berkel, associate professor in Medieval History at Amsterdam University. Van Berkel, a specialist in the Abbasids’ empire, recalls that the City of Peace, as it was called, had probably around half a million inhabitants. “But that’s still gigantic and beyond compare to the towns and cities at the time in Europe. Baghdad was an important economic and trade centre. There were commercial contacts with Charlemagne’s empire in Europe but even more with China, India and Central Asia.”
“From all over the Middle East people came to Baghdad; it was the most important religious, intellectual and scientific centre of that part of the world,” Van Berkel says. “Geographers knew in detail about the Dar al Islam (home or abode of Islam), a vast area that extended from what is now Spain to Pakistan and Afghanistan. They mapped the roads and rivers, the cities, the natural environment, the administration, the people…. They were also pretty knowledgeable about India but much less so about Europe.”
The recently translated Accounts of China and India by Abu Zayd al-Sirafi and other chroniclers gives a fascinating insight into the interconnectedness and mobility of the Abbasid era. For today’s readers, removed in time and place, some of the writers’ observations may seem bizarre and implausible. But in most of their akhbār - credible reports of what they saw and heard - one can easily recognise modern Indians and Chinese.
Journalism of its day Tim Mackintosh-Smith, who translated Accounts of China and India into English and who himself is an accomplished travel book writer, compares akhbārwith today’s journalism and its style reminds him of an “online, interactive travel website”. Abu Zayd wants to drive home that the Accounts do not describe a fantasy world, but are merely a portrayal of the truth as they percieved it. He claims to have “avoided relating any of the sort of accounts in which sailors exercise their powers of invention but whose credibility would not stand up to scrutiny in other men’s minds”. His motto is "the shorter the better", reminding us of today’s journalism’s slogan KISS: "keep it short and simple".
Abu Zayd’s travel accounts reflect the Arab-Islamic drive under the early Abbasid dynasty to explore eastward and especially to connect to China. In the Accounts’ introduction, the second Abbasid caliph and builder of Baghdad, Al-Mansour, standing at the bank of the river, is quoted as saying: “Here is the Tigris, and nothing bars the way between it and China!” Arab ships would sail eastward one season, when the winds blew that way, and back west when the mawsim – the Arabic word that in English became “monsoon” - caused winds to take the Arab vessels back home.
The main Abbasid terminal of the monsoon trade was Siraf in the Gulf, birthplace of Abu Zayd al-Sirafi, in what is now Iran. From Siraf ships crossed the Gulf to call at the Omani ports of Suhar or Muscat and continue to India, China, the Malay Peninsula, Java or even further. The main Chinese port was Khanfu, nowadays the megapolis of Guangzhou. While the Abbasid explorers discovered China, the Chinese were discovering the “West”, and their chroniclers described the maritime route to Iraq and to Bangda, as they called Baghdad.
Tang Dynasty 'socialism' The apogee of the Abbasid caliphate coincides with the heydays of the Tang Dynasty in China (619-907). In the Accounts imperial China is painted as a highly organised and regulated society. The government cares for the wellbeing of its citizens. If a sick person is poor, “he is given the cost of his medicine from the public treasury”.
The citizens pay a fair poll tax when they reach the age of 18. Old people do not have to pay taxes but receive a pension. Every city has a school and a teacher and the children of the poor are fed from the public treasury. “The Chinese, whether poor or rich, young or old, all learn to form letters and to write.” It sounds like socialism avant la lettre.
Abu Zayd lauds the “admirable governance” of the Chinese. They have rule of law. Right is done “wherever it is due” and no blind eye is turned to “the misdeeds of those of high status”. A eunuch chief of finance controls the state finances. The state’s income consists of the poll tax and the exclusive rights of the ruler to sell salt and tea. The Arabs didn’t know tea before travelling to China. In the Accounts Abu Zayd describes tea as “a plant that they drink with hot water and that is sold in every city for large sums of money. To prepare it, water is boiled, then the leaves are sprinkled on it, and it serves them as an antidote to all ailments.”
The Arab travellers were amazed by how industrious the Chinese were. “Of all God’s creation, the Chinese are among the most dexterous at engraving and manufacturing and at every kind of craft. Indeed, no one from any nation has the edge on them in this respect.”
Clash of hygiene habits But not everything was admirable in Arab eyes. They were horrified by the lack of hygiene of the Chinese. The Chinese use “only paper, not water, to clean their backsides after defecating” and do not clean their teeth and hands before eating. The Arab chroniclers were disgusted by some of the sexual practices of the non-Muslims. They couldn’t approve of the Chinese habit to have sexual intercourse with their women even when they were menstruating and of their highly organised prostitution. “The Chinese sodomise boys who are provided for that purpose and are of the same order as temple prostitutes.”
In some ways the Arab explorers lived in a better world than ours. While nowadays the rhinoceros is considered in India as a vulnerable species due to excessive hunting; the Arab chronicler reports that they are found “in large numbers in all Indian kingdoms”. He reports having eaten the flesh of the rhinoceros because “it is permissible for Muslims.” He is impressed by the strength of the rhinoceros. “No other animal equals it in strength. An elephant will run away in fear from a rhinoceros.” Like in our times, political stability and trade never last forever. In the last quarter of the 9thcentury a rebellion weakened the Tang dynasty. Thousands of the foreign merchants in Khanfu/Guangzhou were massacred and direct Arab-Chinese trade came to a halt. However, indirect trade continued with Arab merchants buying, for example, Chinese porcelain in India.
A few decades after the Chinese rebellion and the massacre of Khanfu, the grip of the Abbasid caliph on the empire loosened. Van Berkel explains that the outer regions recognised the caliph only formally. It was exactly in this period of decline that a fellow traveller from Iraq, Abu Fadlan, undertook his voyage to the land of the Volga-Bulghars. He wrote about his encounters with new cultures, among them the Vikings, in his Mission to the Volga.
People like us The akhbar arouse our fantasies and dreams about people in a bygone era who show an uncanny resemblance with humans in the 21st century. Ibn Fadlan’s Mission to the Volgainspired Michael Crichton’s novel Eaters of the Dead and the film The Thirteenth Warrior.
Viking-expert Nelleke Ijssennagger finds it ironic that some in Europe compare the Vikings to the fighters of the Islamic State or vice versa: the cruelty, the medieval savagery… “I think this is because they have no real idea about the Vikings, or about the Islamic State. Originally the Vikings had a very bad press. They raided some regions in Northern Europe, destroyed everything, and burned villages. Their bad reputation hides the fact that they were a well-organised people, in many ways very sophisticated.”
“Trade contacts in the early Middle Ages are still very much underestimated,” says historian Dr Karl Heidecker of Groningen University. “Numerous objects from the Middle East, Africa and even Afghanistan were encountered in Viking sites. Things circulated.” Heidecker stresses that this does not mean that North Europeans were in direct contact with the Afghans or the Chinese. Often things ended up in a certain place after a long journey, having passed through many hands One of the biggest surprises of the Arab travel accounts is the sophistication of Vikings, Turks, Chinese, Indians and the Abbasids, more than a millennium ago. The Accounts paint an interconnected world, but also the transience of political might and relativity of human progress.
[1] Abu Zayd al-Sirafi, Accounts of China and India and Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, Mission to the Volga, in Two Arabic Travel Books (New York/London: New York University Press), 2014
Is the Tai-Kadai substrate in Southern Chinese languages evidence that the Southern Han are Sinicized Baiyue? Hong Yeu Quora (accessed 5/6/18)
There is indeed an important Tai-Kadai substrate in many of the modern Southern Chinese languages, for example in Wu and Cantonese. One study* shows that 20% of the core vocabulary of Cantonese is of Tai-Kai origin. From genetic evidence** it seems that there is a notable divergence between the paternal and maternal lineages of Southern Han Chinese. It appears that Southern Han are in many cases descendants of Northern Han males and Southern non-Sinitic females. In general, genetic markers of Y-DNA show strong similarities between Northern and Southern Han, while those of mt-DNA exhibit great differences between the two.
But even among the male linages there is considerable contribution from O1-M119 (10%~20% for Wu-, Hakka-, Min-speaking groups), which is often associated with Tai-Kadai and Austronesian peoples***.
The urheimats (homeland) of Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien language families are in today’s South China. It is therefore highly likely that both of them had occupied much larger territories before major waves of Han migration. Recent genetic studies showed that the people of ancient Liangzhu culture (3400–2250 BC) was mostly of O1-M119 Y-DNA haplogroup, further corroborating the hypothesis that the common ancestors of Tai-Kadai and Austronesian peoples used to settle in the area.
In summary, there is strong linguistic and genetic evidence showing that there is significant contribution of prehistoric Tai-Kadai tribes (and most possibly other peoples) to the makeup of today’s Southern Han population. The migration of Northern Han had probably been mainly driven by a majority male population. For further information, please refer to my answers to some related questions:
REFERENCES * 李敬忠:〈粵語中的百越語成分問題〉,《學術論壇(雙月刊)》,1991年5期,第65-72頁。ISSN:1004-4434.0.1991-05-012 (Article can be downloaded from the link below) **Wen, Bo, et al. "Genetic evidence supports demic diffusion of Han culture." Nature 431.7006 (2004): 302-305. ***人類學雜記--26. 漢族按方言區的Y染色體分佈