Roel Sterckx - Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Cook Ding (Pelican Books)

What do we mean by China? Who are the Chinese? At first sight, you may think these are somewhat superfluous questions (like asking Socrates if Athens is located in Greece). But the issue merits some consideration. The history of China, like that of Europe, is not a linear story of one static, everlasting and stubbornly uniform continent. An oft-repeated line in history books, travel and museum guides and in television documentaries runs: What sets China apart from the rest of the world is the fact that it boasts a continuous civilization running through at least two and a half millennia (and preferably longer). It is no surprise to see such cultural pride invoked on occasions by Chinese politicians, diplomats and other public figures. And, yes, many things have an admirably long history in China. But, as the social historian Wolfram Eberhard once pointed out, the greatness of a civilization is established by its achievements, not by claims to the longest history. To be sure, China has achieved a great deal. But claims to being the oldest living civilization on the basis of a longest continuous history can also offer a licence for veiled or misplaced cultural exceptionalism.

We could, and probably should, be open to alternative views. One would be to point out that the history of China consists of moments of political and geographical union interspersed by centuries of division. In the period from the early third to the mid tenth century CE alone, more than forty-five dynasties ruled over parts or all of its territory. Further back in time, more than ten centuries had already elapsed before China would emerge for the first time as an empire in 221 BCE . Chinas historical continuity, therefore, is marked by a striking measure of discontinuity. For large swathes of time, China has been ruled by regimes whose leading elites and officials were not ethnically Chinese. On that account, the Mongols and Manchus alone already take up nearly four centuries on Chinas historical chronology (the Yuan and Qing dynasties).

To counter this image of China as a uniform giant either sleeping, restless or rising it is more useful to think of its history as a history of regions, to imagine its people as regionally and often ethnically diverse, and to look at those in power as agents charged with the challenging task of keeping the regions in line with the demands of the political centre. The last has been the single most pressing mission of any ruling house that has governed China, be it the imperial courts of the past or the Communist Party and those at the helm today. Throughout Chinas long history, a pronounced regional consciousness has never really disappeared. The division between north and south is one of its constants. The gradual southward expansion of the Han Chinese from their place of origin in the Yellow River basin was of key importance. In the north, political, social and economic developments were shaped against the threat of invasions by non-Chinese nomads. The much more scarcely populated western regions were a corridor to Central Asia. At certain stages, these outlying edges of the Chinese empire ranked among the most multi-ethnic and multilingual areas anywhere in the pre-modern world. In todays China, regionalism continues to be high on the political agenda, reflected, for instance, in renewed interest in local heritage and state-sponsored approaches to the study of local cultures. In short, when we speak of China, or of people and things as Chinese, these are to some extent terms of convenience we use to refer to the peoples and geography within the evolving political borders of what has come to correspond roughly to the Peoples Republic of China today.

The origins of the term China itself remain disputed. One widely held view has been that it is related to Qin, the name of the state that founded the first unified empire. But a Sanskrit term, Cna, already appears in Indian sources that may go back two centuries earlier. Before the unification of the Chinese empire in 221 BCE and the first long-lasting Han dynasty, few would have identified themselves as Chinese. If you hailed from the region corresponding to present-day Shandong, for instance, you would have introduced yourself as a person from Qi, or, in the case of Confucius, a person from Lu. As a southerner you would be known as coming from Chu, Ba or Yue. If you were born in the region around todays Beijing, you came from Yan (the name still figures in the brand name of a popular Beijing beer). As in China today, there is plenty of evidence in ancient texts that people were aware of linguistic diversity. Sources mention the peculiar nature of different dialects and the use of translators. Anecdotes survive that turn multilingualism and speech confusion into a source of entertainment or moral counsel. One story tells of a man from Zhou who tried to sell some freshly dressed rats to a merchant from Zheng. The latter politely declined the offer once he realized that he had mistaken the Zhou word for rats for the similar-sounding Zheng word for unpolished jade ( , Qin 100). What you hear is not always what you get. You cannot eat jade (unless you are an immortal), and a rat would make an odd addition to the jewellery box.