Can we get a /chin/ese history thread going...

The Commentary of Zuo (Zuozhuan) is interesting.

What makes it interesting?

Mongols+Tibetans+Jurchens+Khitans+Japanese+Manchus > Chinks/Gooks

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Chang_(Jixing)

Oh indeed, I can't believe I overlooked this.

>I know modern China is a shithole
>shit
I'm keking so hard

Tang Dynasty best dynasty

Gas yourself you shitsniffing hipster faggot. First China is Best China, #FreeTheShang

> tfw it could have been a good thread but fell prey to shitposting
> tfw no one wants to learn something new and interesting, and only want to voice their uneducated opinion on race and Jews as loudly as possible
> tfw you realise that world peace will never be possible because no one bothers to understand the other side's story

What are some good English language material on Chinese history?

Cambridge History of China: Ming Dynasty

It's two books, one covers the political history and one covers economic/social history.

They're more detailed than most English books on Chinese history.

Song Dynasty was better in every way

Teach us then user I want to learn more about the Tang dynasty and how come China never went through an industrial revolution

>Wade-Giles

I honestly tried to get into chinese history but historiography doesn't seem to have come as far as in western histories.

Every dynasty is painted as the natural next step in the continuing struggle between legalism and confucianism. In addition, the only re-interpretation of chinese history seem to be Marxist which leaves a lot to be desired.

Because China is a unified state and didn't have to vye for dominance against any other neighboring states like european ones did.

if you want to be a half starved over worked serf

Bollocks. Learn2history m8. With that kind of shitty reasoning, then the ottomans should have industrialized first.

It's mostly conjecture at this point, counterfactual history is by its nature subjective opinion. Anyway, the popular view is that a combination of high wages in Britain, along with abundant easy-to-mine coal, and steam engine technology developed to support such industries, were all important factors to the revolution in Britain.

As for the Tang dynasty, specifically what about them? It was a very interesting period.

Actually, Chinese historiography is most developed within Mandarin texts bu domestic academics. But like other anons such as offered, there are also some good english texts for Chinese history.

Also, i don't quite understand the legalism-confucianism interpretation you were referring to. Care to elaborate?

Why are they considered one of the best dynasty in Chinese history? What kind of technology did they posses? What kind of siege weapons did they use? How did they dress and what was the urban social life like? What was their affect on their neighbors and did they ever make an effort to explore beyond their shores either through trade or for conquest? What were their enemies like and how did they eventually succumb to ruination? Why didn't their use of gunpowder or movable type usher in a period of industrialization and why did they never see the need to expand to south east Asia, Korea, Japan, or India? Wy didn't they conquer the islands around indonesia and why we're they (the chinese in general) the first to discover Australia, Hawaii, or North America? What was their interaction with Indians, Africans, and Oceanic peoples like? Who was the best emperor and why is he considered the best? Was the Tang a period of great works of writing and painting if so what are some examples and how where they received by the populace and people outside of china? What was the examination process like? Why didn't a huge and stable society focused on education not produce geniuses that ushered in new eras of scientific discovery like in the West? Why did China stagnate? I have a ton more question but I think this is already a bit much.

Can anyone recommend a good entry level history of china or ancient Asia?

I get that you guys are pros who go right into 1000 page academic texts but I kinda gotta get roped in a little, build some more interest before I'll do that.

>tfw it could have been a good thread but fell prey to shitposting
It's OP's fault. Open threads like this never go well, you need to ask something specific for discussion to develop. Otherwise you're just asking for shitposting.

Reminder that Ancient China had a shitload of tropical animals lurking around before they wiped them out. Tigers, lions, panthers, cheetahs, elephants, rhinos, gibbons, possibly crocodiles.

>possibly crocodiles
Note that China has the alligator already, but I'm talking about the saltwater crocodile (and maybe the Mindoro crocodile or a closely related species)
It's quite possible that the larger species of crocodiles were systematically exterminated while the smaller alligator managed to survive: Chinese texts reference mythical rulers who "drove out the dragons from the rivers" and such. This is generally interpreted as stopping floods, but it was in the context of exterminating destructive animals like tigers and elephants, so it's quite intriguing.

There are still Tigers in China, but never lions.

They fucking learned lions from Indians and Indo-Iranians and built those Rawring lion statues based off interpretations of them.

The T'ang is acknowledged as the beginning of centralized Chinese state (really, Qin-Han were semi-feudal) and was able to direct vast resources to building projects such as the Grand Canal and building cities out of scratch for their colonists in Southern China.

Wow what horrible taste

...

(You)

>Greece, Turkey and Albania in the same shade
It's confirmed, them.

I think what you need is an angle you actually care about. Nobody would devour 1000 pages text of african metallurgy if they didn't already have a driving purpose.

Try reading or watching rhe romance of the three kingdoms. It's a romantic version of actual history, but one that gives you an idea of the ideals of ancient China- honor, brotherhood, loyalty, ingenuity over strength, all that jazz.

That's a lot of questions. I'll actually try to answer those i have an idea about off the top of my head.

>what were their interactions with neighbouring peoples
This one is really interesting because the Tang dynasty was actually quite cosmopolitan. The capital, Chang'An, saw an influx of many muslim foreigners who were held in high regard (since they were often rich traders). Some intermarried with local Chinese women, and some even took up political office. Then you start having problems because of xenophobia and the usual Trump stuff, like durrr muslims aren't real Han Chinese, they take up Chinese government jobs, they should fuck off back to Samarkand.

Because of these interactions two things were developed. First, the concept of hua-yi, meaning the distinction between Chinese and outsider. Who really is considered Chinese? The line moves through the ages. For more info, check out: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua–Yi_distinction

Secondly, intermarriage and conversion of locals to islam created one of China's minority tribes, the Hui. Continual endogamy since then (since muslims marry muslims) has kept the population separate, giving some of the Hui a distinctively non-chinese look. You can actually see these people in the Tang capital of xi'an today, and their accompanying syncretic Chinese muslim food, philosophy, and architecture. There are sophisicated apologetics to marry both islam and confucianism together and make them compatible.

>why didn't focus on education create scientific revolution
Because said education and imperial exams tested people on their knowledge of Chinese classical literature and ability to write poetry, not technical ability. Ancient China was ruled by bureaucrats who were all educated in the ancient equivalent of liberal arts degrees. No doubt some of the population (not bureaucrats) were smart, but neither did they have that empirical tradition either. There were strains of empiricism developing under Mohism, but they never flourished and developed to the level of Western sophisication. Rather, China turned inwards to develop the self and personal morality. The idea is that if people were good, the emperor was good, then the universe would naturally conform and disasters won't happen. Bad things happened to bad people (for example, see mandate of heaven concept), and they tried their best to avoid being bad through cultivation of virtue.

Yes, poetry and literature flourished under the Tang dynasty because it was a period of relative peace and prosperity. The two most famous poets were Li Bai and Du Fu. Both were often drunk as fuck, but gifted as fuck too. See the BBC article for more info:
bbc.com/news/magazine-19884020

Poetry and literature spread to Japan and Korea, whose literary traditions were similarly influenced and changed by such Chinese literature. Kind of like the ubiquity of rap music today.

Even though you didn't ask, if you want to get a feel of how it would have been to step into ancient China, try reading about Choe Bu, a korean who was shipwrecked in Ming dynasty China (1600s), and gets to see all the cool shit as he is escorted to the emperor. It's a fascinating read.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choe_Bu

What kind of changes came about from that centralization? What kind of technological development did that spur? Why didn't a nation with the most people in the world at the time that valued education and produced hundreds of thousand of literate scholars and mathematicians and scientists every generation take off technologically? What feature of the Tang system prevented this?

Did this spread of literary traditions effect SEA, Indian or Oceanic kingdoms?

Thank you I'm going to enjoy reading this

>ywn get to see Classical China or Japan

Some of the world's greatest civilizations gone forever. Don't give me that shit about how the people still exist, it's just not the same. Westernization may have brought prosperity, but I feel like it destroyed Asia's soul. I know that fucking fedora that sounds, go ahead and make fun of me.

See

Thank you for you answer.

What was life like for ethnic minorities under the Tang dynasty? What kind of barriers to entry, if any, did they face when they tried to become scholars or bureaucrats? Did the Tang adopt any aspects of minority's culture?

I completely agree. I wish that Mao never came to power and he never smothered China's culture.

Did no organizations exist for people who preferred to study math? Where did siege engineers learn? Why wasn't the study of math ever important?

I'm having a hard time finding material on china in the indian imagination. Certainly there were many cultural exchanges between the two regions, but there is a lack of resources for the impact chinese literature had on india.

As for the oceanic and southeast asian kingdoms, they were more influenced by indian aesthetics and literature than the Chinese. Part of the reason is language- because Asean kingdoms, at least, have languages much closer to sanskrit than mandarin. But also, the Chinese in that period were quite insular when there was significant asean kingdoms such as the majapahit. There are records of Chinese trading activity -pottery and such- but hardly any of Chinese literature.

Then what made Korea, which spoke a langauge not related to any other languages, a place where the Chinese spread their culture and not a SEA kingdom close to China?

You will find part of the answer here:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism

But it will not satisfy your cravings, once you realize that the Mohists were more or less irrelevant at the end of the Han Dynasty.

Firstly, you have to realize at the delineation between arts and sciences as independent subjects of study is a western phenomenon. In fact, china never acknowledged such clear distinctions until the boxer rebellion, when part of the surrender terms was to educate chinese students in this new way:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Indemnity_Scholarship_Program

So you can't really develop subjects when their boundaries aren't clearly defined.

Another reason is because some expertise is international. If i recall, persians were instrumental siege engineers employed by the Chinese at some points of their history. So there wasn't a great deal of knowledge transfer.

But none of these answers are entirely persuasive, because you have massive engineering feats which require a good understanding of physics that were built in ancient times- such as the dujiangyan irrigation system or the usual 8-storey pagodas.

In the absence of better evidence, i can only say that such education in math and science was probably adhoc, teacher to apprentice based, and there was no clearly defined syllabus. If you wanted to be a siege engineer, you apprenticed under siege engineers to learn math and physics that were relevant for your field.

I guess no one bothered to connect all those disparate and independent strains of science and math to become a cohesive field.

The close proximity, the economic and military hegemony of the Chinese are important factors influencing korea's obsession with China.

On the contrary if you consider Vietnam ti be southeast asian, then China did transfer a lot of its culture and literature (i forgot to mention them, sorry!). The running joke on /int/ is that vietnamese were little chinese until they abandoned the logographic script in favour of an anglicized one. But beyond vietnam into thailand or laos, there wasn't much. I'm at a loss here, but i can speculate that thailand/burma/laos are historical enemies with the viets - inhibiting cultural transfer - but also that these countries had already absorbed indian elements, which would make such cultural conversion much more difficult. That's my somewhat educated guess.

Pic related: chu nom, logographic script imported from China

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chữ_nôm

I don't really have material on how life were for these minorities. As for whether the Tang absorbed their culture:

silk-road.com/artl/tang.shtml

Polo was popular in China.

An interesting thought: chilies were from the New World, yet today's sichuan peoples consider their traditional cuisine to be very fiery and chilli dominated. Just a show of how adaptable the Chinese peoples were. Or perhaps their short memories, i don't know.

Your answer was great thank you

No problem, glad to provide information in an actual discussion!

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Shitloads of Sassanid Aristocrats fled to T'ang China during the Muslim Conquest.

The Last Sassanid King of Kings was promoted to a General in the Chinese court and his son, Prince Narsieh, was an Imperial Guardsman.

These people were gradually absorbe dinto Chinese aristocracy/imperial clans via marriage.

Any recommended Chinese history movies?

I just watched The Emperor and the Assassin (fucking lit senpai) and need some more

Realistic history, romanticized history, or balls to the wall historicized fantasy?

Hero is pretty cool.

imdb.com/title/tt0299977/

Romanticized history.

IMO the ff. are worth viewing:

The Last Supper.
City of Life and Death
Coming Home
To Live
Fall of Ming
The Last Emperor
1911

Hero was pretty fun to watch, except for the excessive color grading

>Any recommended Chinese history movies?

Fall Of Ming is a must.

How come no one has mentioned Red Cliff?

Romanticized as fuck, liu bei is a fucking wizard in the movie

>inb4 Cao Cao did nothing wrong

It is romanticized but in terms of costumes and equipment, one of the more accurate portrayals of Han Dynasty's material culture.

Of course you can forgive the main characters since their depictions are literal memes in China. Like the Average Chinese could not for the life of him imagine Guan Yu/Zhang Fei/Liu Bei without their respective (anachronistic) weapons.

Why the fuck this is the case when Han Dynasty armor is ridiculously easy to make a copy of, I dont know.

I always wondered why the 3 kingdoms period needed embellishment. Isn't history interesting enough without all the dressing? It's like audiences want to remember their own histories as a series of memes

Just the way Chinese Language Cinema works - Exoticism and spectacle.

Though some directors like Zhang Yimou and the younger ones like Lu Chuan are beginning to change that.

The Last Emperor is shit senpai, if it had been in Chinese it would've been like 10x better

Funny thing is, as much as I love Zhang Yimou he's the one that made The Great Wall. Like, the same guy who made Raise the Red Lantern, To Live, and Curse of the Golden Flower made THAT shit.

I've always found the fast adoption of new world foods by ancient cultures to be fascinating. Like how completely incorporated peanuts are in Thai cuisine. I wonder if these foods got to Asia first through the silk road or from Portuguese traders circumnavigating Africa.

Are there any ethnic minorities in China today that reflect that absorption? What kind of land did these aristocrats own and though the king and prince got cushy aristocratic jobs did the other aristocrats maintain their status? What kind of battles did the former king fight and was he an effective general?

Realistic History. The Kingdom of Heaven directors cut of Chinese historical movies

By the T'ang Dynasty, the feudal aristocracy was no more, replaced by the unofficial aristocracy of the scholar-official class.

They rarely owned land. If they ever did, it was most likely a clan village or some estate like a landed colonial period gentleman in Europe. Most of their cash was from Government Service, alongside freebies.

And no. We're talking of a minority of people (Persian nobles and hangers on) marrying into the Chinese blob. They're bred out by now though some of the Chinese may carry their genes or something, given that Persian concubines was a trend from the 500s-900s.

Yeah let's face it, that shit wasn't actually making new things. They have more prosperity now for distancing themselves.

But that was literally the only good thing about it

>Fall Of Ming
Historically accurate armaments(except for lamellar and officers) unlike the forthcoming Great Wall movie.

the last thing you said actually hit me hard

I think they used Handgonne a lot in it, I'm pretty sure they were phased out by arquebuses by then.

>I'm pretty sure they were phased out by arquebuses by then.
Handguns were never phased out by the Ming.

Kek did this guy have a foot fetish?