Mark Rosenfelder - China Construction Kit

If aliens have been watching us for the last few thousand years, what would they consider the key human civilization?

Its a no-brainer: China. For three thousand years its been the most populated region of the planet, and usually the richest and most technologically advanced as well. For the last few centuries the West gave it a run for its money, but on historical scales thats looking more and more like a temporary blip.

And yet in the West, most of us learn little about China. This book aims to supply the missing information.

Whos the book for?

• Anyone who wants to know the basics about our planets leading civilization.
• Conworlders whod like to create a China-like con-culture, or set an RPG campaign in a historical or legendary China.
• Conlangers whod like to create an isolating language or a non-alphabetic writing system.
• Writers whod like to try a non-Western setting.

I assume that many of my readers are interested in languages, so this is one of the few introductions to Chinese civilization that doesnt hide the Chinese language. Names and terms are given with tones, and key words in Chinese characters. Theres also an extensive index of characters so you can use all these terms to help with learning (or learning about) the language.

There may be no book quite like this one, covering both history and language. I think there are several advantages to this approach:

• If youre learning Mandarin or ever plan to, the history section will teach a lot of useful words and characters, and allow correct pronunciation.
• Philosophy depends on language examining particular words sheds light on philosophies from Confucianism to Maoism.
• A linguistic point of view reduces the exoticism. Its also useful to see that what are very florid names in translation are quite compact in Chinese e.g. righteous harmony regiment = Yhtun .
• Both the writing system, and the non-inflecting language, are important parts of Chinese culture, of great interest to outsiders.

All too much fantasy is set, by default, in a Standard Medieval Kingdom some linear combination of Tolkien, D&D, The Elder Scrolls, King Arthur, Malory, Disney, Conan, and Game of Thrones .

China offers a different model, a civilization largely without all of these familiar things:

• a feudal nobility that lives in rural castles
• an ancient empire thats now gone
• a universal Church, or indeed any universal religion
• an expectation that there will be multiple independent Great Powers
• an alphabetic writing system

This book tells you what you need to know to create an East Asian-style civilization, or simply a non-European one.

If you want to actually use historical China as a setting, one book isnt enough but Ill suggest some of the books you should read next.

Heres whats ahead:

• An overview, where well go over the basics of East Asian geography, and how to pronounce the names.
• Chinese history, from ancient times to the future. Well cover philosophy and religion as it comes up.
• Aspects of culture that didnt fit into the history section: medicine, marriage, cooking, architecture, clothing, technology, literature.
• A chapter particularly for conworlders and writers: major themes in Chinese history; avoiding Orientalism; China in the future.
• A sketch of Chinese linguistics: the modern dialects, Old Chinese, the writing system.

Theres always more to learn, but Ive tried to avoid the pitfall of chronicling the affairs of one emperor after another. Even in the historical section Ive left the palace to visit sages and tell a few stories that illustrate everyday life, or are important in Chinese culture.

Covering China requires fairly detailed coverage of Chinas perennial preoccupation, the nomads of the steppe. Properly covering all of East Asia, however, would greatly increase the size of the book (not to mention the research load), so Ill only incidentally deal with Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

The last pages of any history, once it starts to overlap with the daily news, are tinny at best, and soon hopelessly out of date. Histories of China have generally needed to end with a certain amount of handwringing. Fortunately we now have a satisfying stopping point: the death of Dng Xiopng. For anything later, check your favorite pundit.

With regret, Ive omitted any description of Chinese painting. It would require copious illustrations, and those would look terrible in halftone black & white.

One thing Ive noticed doing the research for this book: early on most of the names were new and I felt little connection with any of them. Then I started to recognize names, perhaps in an unexpected context e.g. a book on clothing mentions the strategist Zhg Ling. If you read about the Whampoa military academy, a key element in the story of Chiang Kai-shek, theres Zhu nli as the head of the schools Political Department.

Culture is a mansion with many doors. You may encounter the Monkey King (p. 88) from Buddhist history, from the Mng novel, from animation, from opera, from video games. Everything illuminates everything else, and theres no shame in using some of the more colorful and entertaining approaches.

If youre new to Chinese culture, I can reassure you that the sense of disconnection is real, but it will fade as you keep reading.

Of course, its also a pitfall for an author of an introductory text. Things have to be covered in a paragraph that could fill an entire book its a challenge to be reasonably complete without simply reciting names and events. Anyway, I hope that where Ive quickly mentioned something, its intriguing rather than off-putting and youre inspired to go find out more.

Positive years are A.D. or CE; negative are B.C. or BCE.

Rather than the 12 th century A.D I write 12C, meaning the 1100s. Naturally -12C would be the 1100s B.C.

Chinese historians traditionally used dynasty and era names. Its only in modern times that a reckoning by numbers has been (informally) used. Most reckonings begin with the reign of the legendary Yellow Emperor, but this has been variously dated to -2698, -2711, or -2491.

Ive included an annotated bibliography with my sources, which are all good things to read for more information.

I also encourage you to read primary sources the short and delightful Do D Jng, the hugely influential Analects, the fascinating Journey to the West, the epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and so on. People are sometimes a little scared to read primary sources. But dont be! Great writers are usually far more readable than academics.