The Sicilian Guide to Chinese History

I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to understand Chinese history. Confucius himself once said: “To know that you know what you know and that you don’t know what you don’t know, that is true knowledge.”

Later scholars in China’s history wrote insightful commentaries on this passage to assist future lao wai historians. All of which could basically be summed up as: “We have 5000 years of history. Call us when you realize you’re completely screwed.”

And it’s true. My colleagues who study American history have no idea how lucky they are to know exactly what is meant when a source refers to an honest “Abe,” a scheming “Judas,” a traitorous “Benedict Arnold” or an unfortunate soul pulling a “Nathan Hale.” They don’t have to check every obscure reference through 12 different dictionaries and encyclopedias each with arcane indexing systems, a preposterous chapter/page organization, and two different Chinese scripts.

And that’s nothing compared to the joy of asking my Chinese colleagues for help and watching them roll their eyes and say things like, “For the last time and the love of Buddha… Xuanzong was a Tang emperor, Xuanzang hung out with a monkey. How hard is that to remember?”

Sometimes

May 24th, 2007

Now that’s a real Lao Wai

While genetic evidence has shown that populations of Western Eurasians existed in Xinjiang, where their DNA persists in some areas to this day, National Geographic reports that a man exhumed from a 1,500 year old tomb in Taiyuan is evidence that such populations may have pushed even further east than previously believed

The man, named Yu Hong, died in 618 A.D. and his tomb indicates that he was a chieftain of a group of people who settled in Central China from Xinjiang around the time of the Sui Dynasty. Carvings in the tomb show the migration as well as scenes of daily life but what had puzzled researchers until recently was the distinctly ‘caucasian’ features of some of the figures. Studies at the tomb, discovered in 1999, were hampered by a lack of complete skulls. So researchers turned to mitochondrial DNA instead. The analysis was carried out by Zhou Hui, head of the DNA laboratory of the College of Life Science at Jilin University in Changchun.

According to Hui: “The existence of European lineages in China was already known to us, but these lineages are mainly concentrated in Xinjiang province. In the central part of China, west-Eurasian lineages are seldom

May 24th, 2007

Historic preservation, compensation, and the wrecker’s ball, er…hammer

Two recent articles on historical preservation in China. The first is by Lindsey Hilsum of the New Statesman. Hilsum writes about Shanchang, a village near Macao and Zhuhai, where over 21 homes and buildings dating from the Ming and Qing dynasty have been torn down to make way for developers. The homes had originally been slated for preservation by local authorities. In fact, the only building still standing in Shanchang is a temple to the Daoist god Beidi. Now, it seems that even Beidi might be given his papers, too.

Some local residents are taking action.

“It’s unusual to have a thousand-year-old temple,” said an old lady in a sparkly pink T-shirt. “Does the country really need to tear it down? This is our gift from history.”

The scandal of Shanchang has been exposed by a local man, Wu Liufang, who asked the elders of the village about its past when redevelopment was first mooted last year. Although he had no background in history – he runs a computer support company – he was inspired to turn to the archives, where he learned that Shanchang was the earliest village in the region, a unique monument. Wu

May 24th, 2007

Korea Times: "US Textbook Wrongly Identifies Korea’s First Kingdom"

Via The Korea Times: You know this is the sort of thing that is going to get some attention over here. A history textbook used for SAT prep in the United States misidentifies the Silla Kingdom (57 B.C.E.-935 C.E.) as Korea’s first kingdom while ignoring the Goguryeo Kingdom (37 B.C.E.-668 C.E.).

A South Korean civic group considers the slight more than a mere error in fact-checking. “This is in line with China’s attempt to remove Gojoseon and Goguryeo from the history of Korea. It confirms China’s global strategy for making it happen,” said Park Ki-tae of something called the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea.

Some scholars in China claim that the Goguryeo (located in what is today North Korea and Northeastern China) was founded by a “Chinese” ethnic minority group–meaning the minority group originated in what is today China–and thus the Gogureyeo is really a “Chinese” kingdom. You can imagine how this goes over in Seoul and Korean high school textbooks have been one of many fronts in this war. (As well as figure skaters and telenovelas–go figure.) You can read more about this here and here.

Mr. Park here seems to be jumping at some pretty faint shadows, but

May 24th, 2007

Night sweats and the job market

This is not the kind of story that makes tenured faculty wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat clutching an empty box of ramen noodles…but for Ph.D. students, it’s a fairly commonplace tale of woe that offers all the encouragement of an iron bar to the back of the head.

Back to work.

May 24th, 2007

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