Beyond The GREAT Wall
Imagine a land so large as to rival the U.S. and Canada in its breadth and boldness. Superimpose upon this area, multiple mountain ranges, ravines, and treacherously long impasses. Suspend it in aridity, with just 15% arable land and snow reminiscent of polar caps. Chisel its crust with five rivers - carving their way through the midst of the land; sustaining a most idiosyncratic animal and plant life. Finally, stir in it the souls of near 1.5 billion.
Though deserved, somewhat misguided is the West’s fascination with the East – a fascination with a plethora of colour, vigour and splendour. Yet therein lay a stillness to imbibe the soul. A stillness only found between the cultural and historical eddies of the collision of diverse peoples over two thousand of years. Nevertheless, perhaps misconstrued is her wisdom and guile – her ‘art of war’. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is after all only 59 years young.
Land
Apart from Mongolia, above China’s huge land mass is the equally large U.S.S.R. Below, from west to east, are the Asian minnows Bangladesh, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, respectively. China’s western border abuts Afghanistan and the sub-continent of Pakistan and India, while her autonomous region Tibet makes up the southwest corner. From here, Himalayan Mountains, high plateaus then deserts gradually ease to plains, deltas and hills in the east, finally meeting the vast South Pacific Ocean. Looking out into the Yellow Sea, we find the paradoxical North and South Korea; further south the technologically advanced but rather small nation of Japan in the East China Sea; and further south again the unruly Taiwan in the South China Sea.
Poems and paintings betray the ancient Chinese reverence of mountains; they have a religious significance, being the closest link of man on earth to heaven. A two-thousand year old Buddhist temple still sits atop Mt. Irma today.
Geography makes the people. A subarctic climate in the north is belligerent, the tropical south beguiling as well as beautiful. Chinese, like Koreans, Japanese, Eskimos and some Native Americans, are of the Mongolian race – somewhat yellow-skinned relatively flat-faced with high cheekbones and almond-shaped dark eyes, and black hair. Apart from the Himalayan (Tibetan) southwest corner, bordering China are the Tren Shan and Kunlun chach ranges. Either side of the almost east-west Qinling range, the country and its people diverge.
To the north is the formidable Gobi Desert. Here, Chinese farmers are taller with a ruddier complexion; the dry, cold, desert winds of winter allow mostly millet or wheat produce. South, the moist climate of monsoon hills and valleys support fishing. Here, rice, tea, mulberry (silkworm feed) and bamboo are grown.3 Wide variations in dialect also emphasise regional differences. Many southern Chinese anglers and traders have emigrated to the West and we are familiar with their oral tones - not so their northern comrades.
The Yellow, Pearl and Yangtze rivers carve and caress the earth’s crust. The latter, at 6,300 km, is the third longest river in the world. Further west is the rugged home to Fairyland Paradise, the international world heritage site at the foot of the limestone-rich Ching Min Mountains. It deserves its title. Owing to its high lime concentration, the luminescence of the water here is breathtaking.
Place & People
Despite Mao’s Great Leap Forward, society remains predominantly rural; perhaps 75% of Chinese still live in the countryside. The spread of modern education in both the PRC and Taiwan led to almost universal use of the national language, Mandarin, among a large majority of people in both sections of China.
Han, Chinese are the predominant ethnic group, making up over 90% of the population. With a life expectancy of 73 years, over 12 million people live in Shanghai, and now some eleven million are in Beijing – the city completely transformed in the last 20 years. Man, Manchus; Meng, Mongolians; Hui, Muslims; and Zang, Tibetans, are the principal minorities.3 Religious Chinese are Taoist or Buddhist, but China is officially atheist. Christians account for 3-4% and there are fewer Muslims still. The 86% literacy rate is high for such a large emerging economy.
Animal and Plant Life Sustained
Prehistoric China
Some 500,000 years ago walked ‘Beijing Man’ along the banks of the Yellow river. With a brain capacity two-thirds of that today, walking upright and waving a flaming torch and primitive stone tools, hunting buffalo, deer, sheep, wild boar and rhinoceros.
Three-hundred thousand years later, Homo sapiens walk this land and it is not until 10,000 BC that a Sino-Siberian culture emerges, preceding Neolithic man. With tools of polished stone, farming and pottery, Neolithic man is the first to settle. He builds houses of clay, fully furnished with cupboards, benches and ovens of clay. While continuing to hunt and fish he refines his agricultural techniques and advances his stone tool making to include axes, chisels, arrowheads, harpoons, and even needles of bone. He stores Millet in underground pits and finally has the time and ability to create initially natural cord-like markings, then quite sophisticated black designs, on reddish pottery.
Farther east, 5,000 years later, Longshan man creates thinner, harder, black and burnished pots with non-angular profiles - on a potter’s wheel. Meanwhile, megalithic cultures are flourishing in Europe and archaeological evidence shows movements of these Europeans through the region, long before the ‘Silk Road’.
Ultimately, the specific annals of Chinese scholars officially record the origin of this people to the year 2852 BC, when perhaps mythical kings – the Three Sovereigns; and the Five Rulers -- first ruled China. Chinese regard these demigods as the inventors and masters of fire, building, farming, medicine, the calendar, and Chinese scripts; and the Yellow Emperor’s wife with the introduction of Silk culture. The departure of the penultimate and final of the Five Rulers, revered as ‘model’ emperors, ushers in the period of Chinese Dynastic history.
Dynastic China
1. Xiao
20th Century Chinese Political History
The ebb and flow of domestic and international conflict is the rule of Chinese dynastic and modern history. In 1949, the culmination of this long cultural history saw the birth of a nation, its capital re-established in Beijing.
Like much of its two thousand-year gestation, China was born into war. Perceiving a U.S threat in Nth Korea, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (The Red Guard) invaded the Korean Peninsula in October 1950. After initial success and the taking of Tibet, a two-year stalemate ended with armistice on 27 July 1953. Internal political rhetoric spoke of “enemies of the state”, “class struggles”, and “transition to socialism”.
As ‘in-utero’ so too post-natal- periods of consolidation and economic development, thwarted by anti-intellectual (Hundred Flowers Campaign, 1957), economic (the Great Leap Forward, 1958-59), and political (Cultural Revolution, 1966-67) ‘trial-and-error’, consistent with the country’s immaturity.
Mao Tse Tung’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution broke from the then Marxist-Lenninist Soviet ideal.
The start of the end of the Qing Dynasty after the revolution which began on October 10, 1911, the Qing Dynasty was formally replaced the following year, by the government of the Republic of China.
Economy
President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, lead a ten trillion dollar economy that claims political influence over Kashmir (disputed with India and Pakistan); Brunei; the Sprathy and Paracel Islands of the South Pacific; Malaysia; Phillipines; and Vietnam. Taiwan and Tibet are Chinese autonomous regions.
Conclusion
Imagine if you will… China.
Though deserved, somewhat misguided is the West’s fascination with the East – a fascination with a plethora of colour, vigour and splendour. Yet therein lay a stillness to imbibe the soul. A stillness only found between the cultural and historical eddies of the collision of diverse peoples over two thousand of years. Nevertheless, perhaps misconstrued is her wisdom and guile – her ‘art of war’. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is after all only 59 years young.
Land
Apart from Mongolia, above China’s huge land mass is the equally large U.S.S.R. Below, from west to east, are the Asian minnows Bangladesh, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, respectively. China’s western border abuts Afghanistan and the sub-continent of Pakistan and India, while her autonomous region Tibet makes up the southwest corner. From here, Himalayan Mountains, high plateaus then deserts gradually ease to plains, deltas and hills in the east, finally meeting the vast South Pacific Ocean. Looking out into the Yellow Sea, we find the paradoxical North and South Korea; further south the technologically advanced but rather small nation of Japan in the East China Sea; and further south again the unruly Taiwan in the South China Sea.
Poems and paintings betray the ancient Chinese reverence of mountains; they have a religious significance, being the closest link of man on earth to heaven. A two-thousand year old Buddhist temple still sits atop Mt. Irma today.
Geography makes the people. A subarctic climate in the north is belligerent, the tropical south beguiling as well as beautiful. Chinese, like Koreans, Japanese, Eskimos and some Native Americans, are of the Mongolian race – somewhat yellow-skinned relatively flat-faced with high cheekbones and almond-shaped dark eyes, and black hair. Apart from the Himalayan (Tibetan) southwest corner, bordering China are the Tren Shan and Kunlun chach ranges. Either side of the almost east-west Qinling range, the country and its people diverge.
To the north is the formidable Gobi Desert. Here, Chinese farmers are taller with a ruddier complexion; the dry, cold, desert winds of winter allow mostly millet or wheat produce. South, the moist climate of monsoon hills and valleys support fishing. Here, rice, tea, mulberry (silkworm feed) and bamboo are grown.3 Wide variations in dialect also emphasise regional differences. Many southern Chinese anglers and traders have emigrated to the West and we are familiar with their oral tones - not so their northern comrades.
The Yellow, Pearl and Yangtze rivers carve and caress the earth’s crust. The latter, at 6,300 km, is the third longest river in the world. Further west is the rugged home to Fairyland Paradise, the international world heritage site at the foot of the limestone-rich Ching Min Mountains. It deserves its title. Owing to its high lime concentration, the luminescence of the water here is breathtaking.
Place & People
Despite Mao’s Great Leap Forward, society remains predominantly rural; perhaps 75% of Chinese still live in the countryside. The spread of modern education in both the PRC and Taiwan led to almost universal use of the national language, Mandarin, among a large majority of people in both sections of China.
Han, Chinese are the predominant ethnic group, making up over 90% of the population. With a life expectancy of 73 years, over 12 million people live in Shanghai, and now some eleven million are in Beijing – the city completely transformed in the last 20 years. Man, Manchus; Meng, Mongolians; Hui, Muslims; and Zang, Tibetans, are the principal minorities.3 Religious Chinese are Taoist or Buddhist, but China is officially atheist. Christians account for 3-4% and there are fewer Muslims still. The 86% literacy rate is high for such a large emerging economy.
Animal and Plant Life Sustained
Prehistoric China
Some 500,000 years ago walked ‘Beijing Man’ along the banks of the Yellow river. With a brain capacity two-thirds of that today, walking upright and waving a flaming torch and primitive stone tools, hunting buffalo, deer, sheep, wild boar and rhinoceros.
Three-hundred thousand years later, Homo sapiens walk this land and it is not until 10,000 BC that a Sino-Siberian culture emerges, preceding Neolithic man. With tools of polished stone, farming and pottery, Neolithic man is the first to settle. He builds houses of clay, fully furnished with cupboards, benches and ovens of clay. While continuing to hunt and fish he refines his agricultural techniques and advances his stone tool making to include axes, chisels, arrowheads, harpoons, and even needles of bone. He stores Millet in underground pits and finally has the time and ability to create initially natural cord-like markings, then quite sophisticated black designs, on reddish pottery.
Farther east, 5,000 years later, Longshan man creates thinner, harder, black and burnished pots with non-angular profiles - on a potter’s wheel. Meanwhile, megalithic cultures are flourishing in Europe and archaeological evidence shows movements of these Europeans through the region, long before the ‘Silk Road’.
Ultimately, the specific annals of Chinese scholars officially record the origin of this people to the year 2852 BC, when perhaps mythical kings – the Three Sovereigns; and the Five Rulers -- first ruled China. Chinese regard these demigods as the inventors and masters of fire, building, farming, medicine, the calendar, and Chinese scripts; and the Yellow Emperor’s wife with the introduction of Silk culture. The departure of the penultimate and final of the Five Rulers, revered as ‘model’ emperors, ushers in the period of Chinese Dynastic history.
Dynastic China
1. Xiao
20th Century Chinese Political History
The ebb and flow of domestic and international conflict is the rule of Chinese dynastic and modern history. In 1949, the culmination of this long cultural history saw the birth of a nation, its capital re-established in Beijing.
Like much of its two thousand-year gestation, China was born into war. Perceiving a U.S threat in Nth Korea, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (The Red Guard) invaded the Korean Peninsula in October 1950. After initial success and the taking of Tibet, a two-year stalemate ended with armistice on 27 July 1953. Internal political rhetoric spoke of “enemies of the state”, “class struggles”, and “transition to socialism”.
As ‘in-utero’ so too post-natal- periods of consolidation and economic development, thwarted by anti-intellectual (Hundred Flowers Campaign, 1957), economic (the Great Leap Forward, 1958-59), and political (Cultural Revolution, 1966-67) ‘trial-and-error’, consistent with the country’s immaturity.
Mao Tse Tung’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution broke from the then Marxist-Lenninist Soviet ideal.
The start of the end of the Qing Dynasty after the revolution which began on October 10, 1911, the Qing Dynasty was formally replaced the following year, by the government of the Republic of China.
Economy
President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, lead a ten trillion dollar economy that claims political influence over Kashmir (disputed with India and Pakistan); Brunei; the Sprathy and Paracel Islands of the South Pacific; Malaysia; Phillipines; and Vietnam. Taiwan and Tibet are Chinese autonomous regions.
Conclusion
Imagine if you will… China.
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