AboutJennifer Expertise I can answer most questions on the history of Singapore, Indus civilizations, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang dynasty of China. Also, I can answer some questions on Mauryan, Gupta dynasty of ancient India. Other areas, I may have some problems.
Experience I did case study for them and helped in a local museum.
I know that your post is quite old but I just couldnt help myself, hehe. I find your questions very interesting because I've thought about some of them myself. its nice to see people asking questions instead of just blindly accepting what everyone else says. I'm a chinese who was born in south africa and so in order to try and keep to my roots I read up on chinese history and culture. I also think that the response given to you was inappropriate and even a little rude.
The chinese themselves are also a product of influence of indian civilization and culture (although I dont think they would admit it). India brought buddhism, pagodas and elements of algebraic theory to china. But china also managed to create original ideas of their own. So actually other asian nations are an offshoot of both india and china.
1. you are quite right when you say that there is a debate with regards to the age of chinese civilization. strictly speaking the definition of history is the origin of writing. In other words, the moment a civilization creates a witing system and uses it to document events, its termed as history. This would then make china 3600 years old because the oldest writing dates from this time period. However, I find this definition of what is history is, to be somewhat very narrow. for instance, if you take the south american civilizations like the incas. They never invented any writing system, so that means that strictly speaking they dont have a history. This is obviously not the case at all because they do have a history despite the lack of written manuscripts. Perhaps this means that the definition of history should be revised. Another reason why the chinese say that their history is 5000 years old is because the writing system used during the shang dynasty (1700bc) was already relatively highly developed, according to archaeologists. This seems to indicate that the origins of the chinese writing system must have developed some time before the advent of the shang dynasty. Obviously it is impossible for any nation to develop a sophisticated writing instantly, there has to be a gradual development. I would take an educated guess and say that chinese writing was invented during the dynasty known as the Xia (before the shang). Many scholars say that it never existed but there was a group of sino-american archaeologists that have been working for the past ten years. And they have gathered enough evidence to prove that ancient chinese tribes were already banding together to form a state as far back as 4500 years ago to create the xia dynasty. evidences include palace complexes surrounded by cities. Anyways, getting back to the subject of chinese writing. Before 1928, many western scholars did not believe that the shang dynasty existed because of the lack of written manuscripts. But in that same year archaeologists found animal bones with chinese writng inscribed on it. This writing documented all the important kings and events that took place during the shang dynasty, and it was exactly the same as the oral legends passed down over 3600 years. If they could find written evidence of the shang then perhaps they could find written evidence of the Xia. The main reason why many historians say that china is the longest existent civilization with the longest uninterrupted history is simply because the fundemental cultural aspects, patterns of thinking and beliefs are still existent today after 5000 years. Historians claim that there are 4 cradles of civilization (china, india, egypt and mesopotamia)and all were invaded by foreign people. However, when the other 3 civilizations were invaded, the conquerors changed those cultures completely, so that remnants of the original culture ceased to exist. For instance, the original indian civilization was the harrapans. It is known that the harrapans never had a problem eating cows. But when they were invaded from the west, all of a sudden it became a rule not to eat cows. The cultural aspects of the original people were no longer existent. Egypt is the same. Nowadays egypt is arab, that splendid civilization that once was is no longer here. And in fact ancient egypt was conquered many times by many people (assyrians, greeks, romans). Its the same with mesopotamia. the original civilization was sumeria. But then the babylonians conquered them, then the assyrians, etc. So much conquering happened that the original civilization is no longer present. With china it is different. The main enemy of the chinese were the barbarians in the north (mongolian especially). During the chin dynasty (220 bc) the chinese finished off the great wall and it kept china safe for 1600 years. But during the last millenium china was invaded by three barbarian groups. first the khitan people, then the mongols and then the manchus. But then a strange thing happened. Every single time a group attacked china, they were always assimilated and the conquerors became conquered through chinese culture and thought. The epitome of this is the first manchurian emperor Kong Shi. He decided to immerse himself in ancient chinese history and thought and he eventually stopped caring about his roots. So even though the chinese population was infused with new DNA from these tribes, the original idea of chinese culture is still basically the same today.
2. With regards to your second question, i think that blaming foreign nations for domestic problems is pretty much international, everyone does it. And I find it quite sad because it means that problems will never get solved because people dont want to face up to them. For instance I was shocked to find that 48 million people in america are poverty stricken!!!! South africa's population is already 40 million, so there are enough poor americans to fill my country. And so it is quite easy for many americans to blame china for its economic troubles (ie: loss of jobs), but one of the main reasons why there are so many struggling americans is because of the US government. Apparently, the government is using a very old statistical system to calculate the the amount of money needed to support people on welfare. But because the system is old their budgets are always way below what is needed. So of course, people who need to money get way less.
3. The same answer I had for question 2 is the same for no. 3. It is arrogance and feeling threatened that drives people to be stubborn, and once again, everyone does it. For example, airport traffic controllers at french airports refuse to speak english to foreign pilots (even though they can) and as a result they have caused many serious accidents.
For many many years, the chinese in both south africa and america have been oppressed and we were forced to conform to the western way of thinking. Weterners, were not interested in learning about or even more importantly, respecting chinese culture. Just as the chinese are disrespectful of the english language. Even in south africa today people are disrespectful of chinese. Both blacks and whites slur all sorts of made-up nonsense chinese words in my direction, and I just ignore them.
