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> First, the history is different. Chinese civilization has an unbroken history of five thousand years. Despite that this is a inspired article, this sentence

> First, the history is different. Chinese civilization has an unbroken history of five thousand years. Despite that this is a inspired article, this sentence still interrupt my immersive reading. Such claim has always been ridiculous to me, but it is still too often spoken to be ignore. Chinese has unique own point of view to their history, which includes legends and myths. Check this ( http://camphorpress.com/5000-years-of-history/ http://camphorpress.com/5000-years-of-history/ ) if you have interests.

runeblaze 8y ago
Even in Chinese schools we are told in history classes that we really don't have five thousands years of real history. It is just an often used, maybe canonized, phrase to emphasize our long history. I really would not get distracted over it.
- bordercases 8y ago
  It's rhetoric, then.
- starbeast 8y ago
  On the other hand, the Kurds who run the phone shop up the road from where I used to live, can lay claim to about 7000 years of continuous recorded history, as they are Erbil locals.
  - adrianratnapala 8y ago
    Yes it's astonishing how Alexander and people had dealings with Kurds who seemed to interact politically with the rest of Mesopotamia much as they do today.
- qlk1123 8y ago
  I totally understand that situation because I have been through similar education in Taiwan about twenty years ago as well. Thankfully the history education here is saner now. Back to the 5K-year claim. It seems just rhetoric, but it actually enlarges unnecessary national pride, and then rhetoric becomes an unchallengeable truth. The "truth" then sounds so true that foreigners starts to believe it without hesitation. Once I had a chat with an American friend, about Chinese character system and its ability to maintain information through the past five thousand years. I was astonished that nowadays some foreigners might still view East Asia as the mysterious Far East.
  - est 8y ago
    The truth is China has at least 4000 years of history https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/08/04/legends-say-china-began-in-a-great-flood-scientists-just-found-evidence-that-the-flood-was-real/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2... > In a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science, Wu and his colleagues describe geological evidence for a catastrophic flood on the Yellow River in about 1900 B.C. — right around the time the “Great Flood” was said to have taken place.
    - jcranmer 8y ago
      Archaeology is easy to do badly. It is usually the case that the same evidence fits multiple interpretations. The proper way to do it is to treat archaeology as a process of winnowing out theories as they are found to be inconsistent with evidence. The wrong way to do it is to pick a theory you want to be true and to show how to fit the evidence into that theory (especially because the temptation is strong to discard evidence that is inconvenient for the theory, hoping no one will notice).
      - est 8y ago
        https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5805/ https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5805/ There are tons of cases of non-myth non-bullshit sites in China, and yes, unrecorded in traditional history.
    - wavefunction 8y ago
      I imagine the Yellow River has suffered numerous catastrophic floods in its history, and some must certainly 'line up' with various other historical and ahistorical events.
dTal 8y ago
I mean, strictly speaking everywhere has exactly as much history as everywhere else. As for China, there was a concerted and largely successful effort to destroy its cultural heritage during the "Cultural Revolution", by the party that remains in power today. Hardly unbroken.
- headsupftw 8y ago
  Are you saying the Cultural Revolution has largely destroyed China's cultural heritage? If so I'll have to disagree with you.
  - qlk1123 8y ago
    China did lose many. Let's take religion as an example. In Malaysia, Taiwan, and Singapore, traditional temples are still "alive" with popular and active ceremonies, while most temples in China I went are just dead buildings: people lived there and do things have nothing to do with divine, CCP-permitted official events, foreign tourists, modern decorations that have no integrity, etc. It's just sad to see those religious sites dying. The spiritual essence died, during exactly the Cultural Revolution.
    - est 8y ago
      > traditional temples If you mean buddhist temples, that's at max 2000 years of history.
      - alasdair_ 8y ago
        I am happy to call something that has been going on for 2000 years “traditional”
      - superflyguy 8y ago
        Why, was Buddha around after Jesus then?
    - kennxfl 8y ago
      Isn't religion looked at as a possible source of dissent against the government in China?
jcranmer 8y ago
Personally, the facet of Chinese history that grates me the most is the pretense that China has a ~2200 year history of successive unitary states (I'm not going to take pre-Qin unification as credible). When you compare Chinese history to European history, there's a lot more parallelisms than you might expect from the popular conception. The Qin unification in 221BC is fairly contemporaneous with the rise of Rome in the west (who dispatched the Carthaginians in 201BC and the remnants of the Macedonians by 146BC). The Han dynasty collapsed around AD184 (with the Yellow Turban Rebellion), which stabilized into a three-way (later two-way) partition by AD220 that lasted until Sui reunification in 589; this unification persisted until the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907. Similarly, in the West, the Roman Empire collapses in the Crisis of the Third Century (235-284), and reemerges in a mostly permanent state of division between Western and Eastern Empires. The Eastern Empire persisted until its defeat in 1204, whereas the Western Empire disintegrated over the 4th and 5th centuries but recoalescing into a Merovingian dynasty (Clovis I reunited most of modern France and Germany by his death in 511, although it was promptly divided on his death) and later a unified Carolingian kingdom that became the Holy Roman Empire when crowned by the pope in 800. Although the empire again divided on Charlemagne's death, it did stabilize as a Kingdom of France in the west and a HRE in the east, with a contested bit in the middle.
- hatergonnahate 8y ago
  Hmm but most "native Chinese" (Han) dynasties were fully conquered by invaders from the north/northwest multiple times (I think they almost rotated in power). The long unification is caused by its unique culture, whoever conquered the Han race become Han eventually which inevitably will be overthrown by Han. So I don't think it hash that much parallelisms to European history history
  - parrellel 8y ago
    How much of that narrative is due to pruning though. China has a long history of extreme censorship after all. One of the first emperor's most notable acts was, after all, the destruction of much of the hundred schools of thought. There is also the issue of splinter states later being declared rebels and killed off despite hundreds of years of autonomy, and the current push to wipe out non-Han cultures within the borders of China (RE: the opening of the Chinese Olympic games, and the anti-muslim concentration camps going on now). Point being: how much of that trend is real, and how much of it is useful propaganda spread down through the ages.
jayalpha 8y ago
They do have 5000 years of history. But then you compare guys who carve precursors of Chinese characters in bones with guys who build pyramids in Egypt at that time.

runeblaze 8y ago

Even in Chinese schools we are told in history classes that we really don't have five thousands years of real history. It is just an often used, maybe canonized, phrase to emphasize our long history. I really would not get distracted over it.

bordercases 8y ago
It's rhetoric, then.
starbeast 8y ago
On the other hand, the Kurds who run the phone shop up the road from where I used to live, can lay claim to about 7000 years of continuous recorded history, as they are Erbil locals.
- adrianratnapala 8y ago
  Yes it's astonishing how Alexander and people had dealings with Kurds who seemed to interact politically with the rest of Mesopotamia much as they do today.
qlk1123 8y ago
I totally understand that situation because I have been through similar education in Taiwan about twenty years ago as well. Thankfully the history education here is saner now. Back to the 5K-year claim. It seems just rhetoric, but it actually enlarges unnecessary national pride, and then rhetoric becomes an unchallengeable truth. The "truth" then sounds so true that foreigners starts to believe it without hesitation. Once I had a chat with an American friend, about Chinese character system and its ability to maintain information through the past five thousand years. I was astonished that nowadays some foreigners might still view East Asia as the mysterious Far East.
- est 8y ago
  The truth is China has at least 4000 years of history https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/08/04/legends-say-china-began-in-a-great-flood-scientists-just-found-evidence-that-the-flood-was-real/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2... > In a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science, Wu and his colleagues describe geological evidence for a catastrophic flood on the Yellow River in about 1900 B.C. — right around the time the “Great Flood” was said to have taken place.
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    Archaeology is easy to do badly. It is usually the case that the same evidence fits multiple interpretations. The proper way to do it is to treat archaeology as a process of winnowing out theories as they are found to be inconsistent with evidence. The wrong way to do it is to pick a theory you want to be true and to show how to fit the evidence into that theory (especially because the temptation is strong to discard evidence that is inconvenient for the theory, hoping no one will notice).
    - est 8y ago
      https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5805/ https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5805/ There are tons of cases of non-myth non-bullshit sites in China, and yes, unrecorded in traditional history.
  - wavefunction 8y ago
    I imagine the Yellow River has suffered numerous catastrophic floods in its history, and some must certainly 'line up' with various other historical and ahistorical events.

dTal 8y ago

I mean, strictly speaking everywhere has exactly as much history as everywhere else. As for China, there was a concerted and largely successful effort to destroy its cultural heritage during the "Cultural Revolution", by the party that remains in power today. Hardly unbroken.

headsupftw 8y ago
Are you saying the Cultural Revolution has largely destroyed China's cultural heritage? If so I'll have to disagree with you.
- qlk1123 8y ago
  China did lose many. Let's take religion as an example. In Malaysia, Taiwan, and Singapore, traditional temples are still "alive" with popular and active ceremonies, while most temples in China I went are just dead buildings: people lived there and do things have nothing to do with divine, CCP-permitted official events, foreign tourists, modern decorations that have no integrity, etc. It's just sad to see those religious sites dying. The spiritual essence died, during exactly the Cultural Revolution.
  - est 8y ago
    > traditional temples If you mean buddhist temples, that's at max 2000 years of history.
    - alasdair_ 8y ago
      I am happy to call something that has been going on for 2000 years “traditional”
    - superflyguy 8y ago
      Why, was Buddha around after Jesus then?
  - kennxfl 8y ago
    Isn't religion looked at as a possible source of dissent against the government in China?

jcranmer 8y ago

Personally, the facet of Chinese history that grates me the most is the pretense that China has a ~2200 year history of successive unitary states (I'm not going to take pre-Qin unification as credible). When you compare Chinese history to European history, there's a lot more parallelisms than you might expect from the popular conception. The Qin unification in 221BC is fairly contemporaneous with the rise of Rome in the west (who dispatched the Carthaginians in 201BC and the remnants of the Macedonians by 146BC). The Han dynasty collapsed around AD184 (with the Yellow Turban Rebellion), which stabilized into a three-way (later two-way) partition by AD220 that lasted until Sui reunification in 589; this unification persisted until the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907. Similarly, in the West, the Roman Empire collapses in the Crisis of the Third Century (235-284), and reemerges in a mostly permanent state of division between Western and Eastern Empires. The Eastern Empire persisted until its defeat in 1204, whereas the Western Empire disintegrated over the 4th and 5th centuries but recoalescing into a Merovingian dynasty (Clovis I reunited most of modern France and Germany by his death in 511, although it was promptly divided on his death) and later a unified Carolingian kingdom that became the Holy Roman Empire when crowned by the pope in 800. Although the empire again divided on Charlemagne's death, it did stabilize as a Kingdom of France in the west and a HRE in the east, with a contested bit in the middle.

hatergonnahate 8y ago
Hmm but most "native Chinese" (Han) dynasties were fully conquered by invaders from the north/northwest multiple times (I think they almost rotated in power). The long unification is caused by its unique culture, whoever conquered the Han race become Han eventually which inevitably will be overthrown by Han. So I don't think it hash that much parallelisms to European history history
- parrellel 8y ago
  How much of that narrative is due to pruning though. China has a long history of extreme censorship after all. One of the first emperor's most notable acts was, after all, the destruction of much of the hundred schools of thought. There is also the issue of splinter states later being declared rebels and killed off despite hundreds of years of autonomy, and the current push to wipe out non-Han cultures within the borders of China (RE: the opening of the Chinese Olympic games, and the anti-muslim concentration camps going on now). Point being: how much of that trend is real, and how much of it is useful propaganda spread down through the ages.

jayalpha 8y ago

They do have 5000 years of history. But then you compare guys who carve precursors of Chinese characters in bones with guys who build pyramids in Egypt at that time.