China Postcard 0: Problogue

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One of the things that I've learned in my past travels is the importance of having some basic knowledge of the history and politics of a country before even setting foot there. Without this context, it is too easy to be overwhelmed by cultural differences as they wash over you without at all soaking in. The trick it seems, is to do one's homework. This problogue may serve as a useful primer for readers of my China Postcards.

A Short History and some Tall Tales of China

Civilisation is nothing new in China. Up to 7000 years ago, when european civilisation was still in diapers, forerunners of the Chinese were busy making silk garments, carving intricate figurines from super hard jade and firing high quality ceramic pottery. Artifacts show sophisticated government by about 2000 BC but the earliest written poems and stories come from the Zhou dynasty (long before Homer) who also invented the handy doctrine that the emperor was son of Heaven.

China was far fom unified, with long bloody periods of warfare between small states. This confusion spawned Confucius (551 BC) and later a young state king named Qin (pronounced "chin") Shihuang who killed enough of his neighbours in the name of peace to become the first emperor of a unified China (named after guess-who) in 221 BC. Qin ruled with paranoid ruthlessness, burning books and buring questioning scholars alive. Perhaps he buried too many of them because when he commanded his surviving alchemists to invent a potion for immortality, the best they came up with was a daily dose of mercury. Luckily, he had a plan B: an enormous tomb complex thanks to 700,000 labourers and guarded forever by thousands of life-sized terracotta warriors in army-sized underground vaults. Despite, or perhaps because of his tyrany, Qin was able to standardise a common written language, units of measurement and public administration to last 2000 years. Oh yes, it was also Qin who ordered the construction of a big big wall around his empire. Not a bad legacy for 14 years work, eh?

After Qin came the Han, who would rule for more than 400 years and establish China as a trading power, thanks to the silk road to Europe, an abundance of tea, ceramics and their latest invention: paper.

Things fell apart for a few centuries until reunification under the Sui (AD 581) and Tang (AD 618-907) Dynasties when China became a superpower with economic, military, artistic and intellectual influence throughout Asia from the capital Chang'an (now called Xi'an), then the world's largest city. Then things fell apart, again.

Re-reunification occurred under the Song in AD 960 until the arrival of the Khan man from Mongolia, Kublai and his Yuan Dynasty starting in 1279. Things were good in China under the mongols, for everyone except the Chinese.

In 1386, a rebel leader managed to oust the mongols and got the job of emperor for his efforts, starting the 276-year long Ming Dynasty with their capital now in Beijing. China ruled the merchant seas until, in a case of epic bungling, a Ming minister decided that international trade brought nothing really useful, forbade sea voyages and tore down the shipyards. Within a few years, knowledge and skills developped over centuries were irretrievably lost and this arbitrary decision started a gradual but centuries-long period of isolationism and decline relative to Europe where the renaissance and enlightenment were about to take hold. What would the world be like today if the minister's decision had been reversed in time? The Chinese might well have colonised America.

Things fell apart for the Ming too. In 1644, a disgruntled postal worker led a successful rebellion and the Ming fell in on their swords. But there would be no mail monarch because Manchuria came to the belated rescue of the Ming and decided to stay, founding the Qing Dynasty, which would last until 1911 when things would once again fall apart.

But before their final undoing by rebelious republicans, the Qing had plenty of problems with the British Empire and Her Magesty's Royal Drug Pushers' insistence that China remove restrictions and legalise opium so that the could ply their trade. It took 2 Opium Wars (1840 and 1856) but in the end Britain, France, USA and Russia all won land and legalisation of the lucrative drug from a humiliated China. Japan too put a nail in the Qing coffin in 1895 by ceizing Taiwan in the Sino-Japanese War.

It must be time for more falling apart. Indeed rebellions led 6-year old Emperor Pu Yi to abdigate in 1912 but no one was able maintain unified control and civil war eventually ensued between nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong's communists. Smelling blood, Japan invaded Eastern China with a brutality that continues to strain relations between the counties today.

With Japan's surrender at the end of WW2, civil war re-ignited over the spoils of Japanese retreat with Mao eventually re-re-re-reuniting mainland China and declaring the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 while Chiang Kai-shek declared Republic of China based in Taiwan.

Now for a few very bad ideas. Idea 1: round up intellectuals and dissidents for some thought reform in labour camps. Idea 2: A Great Leap Forward by forcing farmers off their land into labour camps or huge, inefficient communes. The resulting famine killed more than 30 million people. Oops. Idea 3: a Cultural Revolution (1958-1960) to destroy those pesky old books, ancient temples and relics that remind people of pre-communist customs, religious beliefs and other ideas. Send millions of urban youths to remote rural areas for re-education, killing hundreds of thousands more. Idea 4: invade Tibet and apply above ideas with special vigour there.

Deng Xiaoping brought more moderation and pragmatism to the job when he assumed control after Mao's death in 1976 but he still brutally repressed pro democracy movements during the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin before him seem to be following in Deng's cautious path to economic, if not democratic reform.
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Now the preliminaries done, stay tuned for China Postcard 1: Beijing, Xi'an and Chendu, and I promise plenty of photos!

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