The Rise and Fall of Chinese Culture
This is a heavy subject. China has a long history of more than four thousand years. It survives till today, not like other ancient civilizations that have been extinct, such as the ancient Egypt and the ancient Babylon. But this does not mean it has never faced setbacks. In fact, Chinese culture has suffered severe crisis, and in my opinion, it is not over yet.
China reached a level of civilization in the Yellow Emperor Period. It developed for thousands of years and in the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) achieved a high level of prosperity. The country and its people were consolidated and from then the Chinese began to be known as the Han.
For the millennium following, despite of dynasty changes, the Han was the absolute majority of China. Actually Han and China were synonyms in many cases. However there were other ethnical groups on the border of China, posing threat.
The tragedy finally happened in the thirteenth century. The Mongols rose into a shockingly high status. They conquered and destroyed many countries and civilizations across the Eurasia continent, China sadly included. Nomadic as the Mongols were, they ruled the conquered areas by imitating their original local regimes. Thus, they built a Yuan Dynasty in China, but they never felt they were part of the Chinese. For fear of people’s resistance, they commanded that people were prohibited to have weapons. Ten household could only share a small knife to prepare food. They had the will to kill all Han people, but there were too many, and they needed people to work for them, so they planned to slaughter the Han from the five biggest family names. Their ruling was so ghastly that they were overthrown within decades.
The Han rose up and drove the Mongols back to the northern border, founding the Ming Dynasty. It was a period of prosperity and liveliness. Yet in the seventeenth century, tragedy happened again.
Because severe natural calamities lasted in northern China for tens of years, the Ming government ran out of funds to help the victims, who then fled around forming roving bandits, which finally led to the collapse of the government. The Manchu in the northeast China caught this chance and drove into Peking, building the Qing Dynasty.
The Manchu forced the Han people to change their traditional clothing and hairstyle into that of the Manchu style. Those that dared to disobey were beheaded. However, the Manchu learned a lesson from the Mongols, since they pretended to be disciples of Chinese culture. Only the “Chinese culture” was defined by them. Chinese people were only allowed to study the “Chinese culture” as the Manchu defined it. Anyone that dared to think about the true Chinese culture would have themselves and their family members killed and their writings eradicated.
This distortion of Chinese culture was even more detrimental than prohibition. If people were disallowed to study Chinese culture, they would resist hard and preserve the true Chinese culture. But since the Manchu “let” people study Chinese culture, there seemed to be no reason to resist. Then people were taught what the Manchu rulers wanted them to know, and they still took it as “Chinese culture”. Only the name remained while the real thing was changed. The harm was done, but Chinese people did not know it.
In the twentieth century, as the whole world was changing, Chinese people overthrew the Manchu ruling and began the process of modernization. They hated the Qing Dynasty that led China into darkness and backwardness. So did they hate the “Chinese culture” used by the Manchu rulers. Only they did not know it was not the true Chinese culture.
That was probably the darkest page in the history of Chinese civilization, when its own people hated its own culture.
In today’s China, people have begun to rethink about the Chinese culture, but there are still lots of misunderstandings and contradictions. The true Chinese Han culture is considered obsolete while the Manchurized culture is taken as conventional.
Will China have its Renaissance?
Hi,
I’m an Irish guy living in China. You commented on my blog recently but I couldn’t reply because of the Great Firewall.
You can drop me an e-mail at mcgeary@gmail.com
Kevin McGeary