Chinas best dynastic military?

jason_she said:

As far as I know, nearly all the chinese people believe the statement that I had said. Yet, I am for the first time to know another statement that you mentioned. But in fact, it was other minority nationalities like Jin,Hun that first called the chinese people Han people. Chinese themselves hardly used the call until the modern times. So there is another statement. Some people considered it was the father of china----Sun Yat-sen who used the call to arouse the chinese people's anger towards the Qin goverment.
Further more, as the result of the victory in the war against Hun, Han was famous in the Central Asia. So the people lived there called the relevant things in Han dynasty Han. And they spreaded it to the west. So maybe it is another likely origin of the answer.

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Hi,

I might not be very well verse in Chinese History, afterall I am borned and lived in Singapore all my life, but I remember some of the History lessons that I have when I was much younger. The Han is a race, in chinese we call 汉族, which is translated as Han Race. As for the golden age of China, it was not during Han dynasty, because that dynasty was always at war (which is also why it had the best military in China history.)

As for the golden era of China it was the Tang Dynasty, thus in foreign nations there are what we call 唐人街 which was translated as Tang People's Street (word by word translation) or what is known as Little China.

Thus I believe that Han Chinese are actually a race whose population is the largest in China and not because the Han had brought glory or whatsoever to the people there. Of course I agreed with your point that at that period of time, many people would want to call themselves the Han because the glory of the Han. However that would be another story.

And now, I believe that in countries other than China, people would called themselves Chinese and not Han Chinese.

Just a thought, sorry if I offend anyone here.

rhino123 said:

Hi,

I might not be very well verse in Chinese History, afterall I am borned and lived in Singapore all my life, but I remember some of the History lessons that I have when I was much younger. The Han is a race, in chinese we call 汉族, which is translated as Han Race. As for the golden age of China, it was not during Han dynasty, because that dynasty was always at war (which is also why it had the best military in China history.)

As for the golden era of China it was the Tang Dynasty, thus in foreign nations there are what we call 唐人街 which was translated as Tang People's Street (word by word translation) or what is known as Little China.

Thus I believe that Han Chinese are actually a race whose population is the largest in China and not because the Han had brought glory or whatsoever to the people there. Of course I agreed with your point that at that period of time, many people would want to call themselves the Han because the glory of the Han. However that would be another story.

And now, I believe that in countries other than China, people would called themselves Chinese and not Han Chinese.

Just a thought, sorry if I offend anyone here.

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As I know, the 70% of the Singapore's population is formed by Chinese. I am so interested in how this part of Singpores think of China. Are they have a special feeling about China? Or they regard China as a ordinary foreign country?

jason_she said:

As I know, the 70% of the Singapore's population is formed by Chinese. I am so interested in how this part of Singpores think of China. Are they have a special feeling about China? Or they regard China as a ordinary foreign country?

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Most of Singapore Chinese think of China as any foreign nation and had no special attachment to her. However more and more of us come to know of the importance of China because of the vast market she represented in today's business world.

I am among the few (I believe) that have deep interest in what is happening in China, mainly because my family is very traditional.

rhino123 said:

Most of Singapore Chinese think of China as any foreign nation and had no special attachment to her. However more and more of us come to know of the importance of China because of the vast market she represented in today's business world.

I am among the few (I believe) that have deep interest in what is happening in China, mainly because my family is very traditional.

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And yet when I was in Singapore and browsing through the bookstore, I noticed why there are so many books trying to teach and promote Chinese culture, even down to comics. I noticed that in Singapore, there seems to be some sort of obsession or focus on the "Han" identity. The word "Han" pops up in so many books, even though in the mainland, no one bothers to think or promote the concept of "Han" race. In the mainland, the government wants to appear that the PRC is a happy umbrella of rainbow ethnicities gathered to form under one nation, and even promotes these ethnic displays as part of its cultural propaganda. In Singapore, I find it to be subtly racist, like trying to promote immigration of mainland and overseas Chinese to maintain a quota of numerical ethnic dominance over Malaysian and Indian populations.

By the way, the Han really isn't a race. It is only named so because the first Emperor of the Han Dynasty, was a general who was awarded a title that made him in effect, the Duke of a certain valley in China called Han. None of the Warring States have the Han name with the character associated with the dynasty, and thereof of this "race".

Interestingly, among the Hokkien speaking peoples, which account for the biggest share of the Chinese in Taiwan, Singapore and in Asia like the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, there is a phrase called "Tong Soa" which refers to home place, home province, or homeland. Literally translated it means Tang Mountain. This is in fact, a reference to the Tang Dynasty and the highlands and plateau where its capital and homeland is, which is in Shaaxi province centered in Xian, which used to be the imperial capital under the name Chang'an.

crobato said:

And yet when I was in Singapore and browsing through the bookstore, I noticed why there are so many books trying to teach and promote Chinese culture, even down to comics. I noticed that in Singapore, there seems to be some sort of obsession or focus on the "Han" identity. The word "Han" pops up in so many books, even though in the mainland, no one bothers to think or promote the concept of "Han" race. In the mainland, the government wants to appear that the PRC is a happy umbrella of rainbow ethnicities gathered to form under one nation, and even promotes these ethnic displays as part of its cultural propaganda. In Singapore, I find it to be subtly racist, like trying to promote immigration of mainland and overseas Chinese to maintain a quota of numerical ethnic dominance over Malaysian and Indian populations.

By the way, the Han really isn't a race. It is only named so because the first Emperor of the Han Dynasty, was a general who was awarded a title that made him in effect, the Duke of a certain valley in China called Han. None of the Warring States have the Han name with the character associated with the dynasty, and thereof of this "race".

Interestingly, among the Hokkien speaking peoples, which account for the biggest share of the Chinese in Taiwan, Singapore and in Asia like the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, there is a phrase called "Tong Soa" which refers to home place, home province, or homeland. Literally translated it means Tang Mountain. This is in fact, a reference to the Tang Dynasty and the highlands and plateau where its capital and homeland is, which is in Shaaxi province centered in Xian, which used to be the imperial capital under the name Chang'an.

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What you say is so true. However the main reason for Singapore to promote so much about China is because we saw China as a great opportunity - business wise and not because of any attachment. Youngster in Singapore nowaday is too influenced by the West and shamefully speaking, some young Chinese in Singapore even have limited grasp on Chinese language.

I know this because I have spent half a year teaching in schools once and the main language passing around school is English.

As to Han being a race or not, I will look more into it, I do not know now. But I think what you say is correct, because the common ancestor for chinese is Huang Di (Yellow Emperor) and I don't think at that time there is any Han or whatsoever.

Genetically, there is no "common" Chinese. The DNA of Chinese differ from region to region and in fact, tends to be more related to the non Han or aborigine groups in that area. Thus, a Chinese in Shenyang has more relationship to Koreans than a Chinese in Yunnan, who has more relationship with Thai.

If you really want what is original original "Chinese", on what basis are you going to use for that? Based on the ethnicity of the near mythical Xia dynasty? The Shang is the closest to that, and that would mean the Central Plains region around the Yellow River. By definition, that would only mean a fraction of the people you call Chinese now.

crobato said:

Genetically, there is no "common" Chinese. The DNA of Chinese differ from region to region and in fact, tends to be more related to the non Han or aborigine groups in that area. Thus, a Chinese in Shenyang has more relationship to Koreans than a Chinese in Yunnan, who has more relationship with Thai.

If you really want what is original original "Chinese", on what basis are you going to use for that? Based on the ethnicity of the near mythical Xia dynasty? The Shang is the closest to that, and that would mean the Central Plains region around the Yellow River. By definition, that would only mean a fraction of the people you call Chinese now.

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There is a intesting news from Korea. Some researchers in Korea think that the Chi You, who was defeated in the war agains the Yellow Emperor,is the ancestor of the Koreans. I don't know how they discover this, it sounds incredible. But in the history, there is a statement that the Koreans are developed from a tribe moved from the north east china. If I don't mistake, it was during the Shang dynasty. And in Qin dynasty, the Qin's emperor Ying Cheng sent Xu Fu to the East Sea to seek medicine for him with 3000 children. But they never came back. Some chinese and many Japanese hold the view that Xu Fu arrived at Japan and their descendent form the Japanese.
So in brief view, the fact that the DNA of the three countries are similar is not very unexpected. But it is only a legend.
Suffered from the ethnetic nationnalities' invade so many times, the pure Central Plain people may be seperated or killed or mixed with other nationnalities. So now the Han people are mixed the different blood. I think it is not a bad thing.
And according to a former research, the original Central Plain people are still live as a group. But now we call them Hakka,which is a ethnetic nationnality now.

I don't buy mythic origins of ethnic peoples beliefs as they are inherently unscientific, i.e. descended from Yellow Emperor or Amaterasu, or that sort of BS. Origins of people tend to be a lot more mundane than they wish it to be, after all, we are sort of descended from primates.

There is another way to approach how "Chinese" originated is to trace how the language itself originated, although that does not really tell you about racial origins. But at least, it can trace back who the original Chinese speakers were or their linguistic ancestors.

In Asia, there are several linguistic families. One prominent one is the Altaic-Tungusic family of languages which Mongolian, Turkish, Japanese, Korean and even Manchurian belong to, suggesting a common ancestor north of China, which some believe to be in the Altai mountain ranges, which borders Xinjiang and Siberia. In the south there are the Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian languages, the Austroasiatic (Vietnamese), the Austro-tai (Thai) languages, all of whose origins maybe from aboringines living south of the Yangtze.

But Chinese belongs to a language family now called Sino-Tibetan. It is quite distinct from the other language families, without which our present Chinese today maybe speaking an Altaic language that somehow resembles Mongolian, Manchurian, Korean or Japanese. Unlike other language families where they have several members like Anglo-Germanic, there are only two known members of Sino-Tibetan family, not counting major dialects. These are Chinese and Tibetan. Linguists were thrilled to discover that the Xi-Xia dynasty, which was located in Shaaxi province and was wiped out by the Mongols, spoke what is apparently a third member of this family and apparently was related to a language spoken by some aboringines in Sichuan.

The homeground for the Sino-Tibetan language is said to be somewhere in the west of China, believed to be in Qinghai province, which is north of Tibet and west of Shaaxi.

I thnk is Tang's army,because it was a very strong army at that time.If I have a second choice,I will choose Song Dynasty.A lot of Chinese think that Song Dynasty was a weak dynasty,but I don't think so.Song Dynasty had very strong economy,so the Dynasty can afford a large number of soldiers.Song Dynasty also developped gunpowder,advanced crossbows and even flamethrowers.

I just watched Ancient Discoveries on History Channel about China. They skipped some of the obvious Chinese discoveries---paper, printing, silk, gunpowder, rocketry, and went to really mind blowing stuff that you would think that ancient people would not have invented at all.

For example, in the Han Dynasty, they showed that someone actually invented the Seismograph. Yes, something that could detect earthquakes from a distance and even point to the direction of its origin. Interestingly it uses the same principles modern seismographs did.

Another is the invention of the Odometer. Though the Chinese actually called it the Range finding Chariot. You have a cart that is basically designed with a reverse transmission set of reduction gears connected to the axle, and the reduction gears are connected to a pair of moving mannequins by cranks. At every 500 meters, the mechanical mannequins would ring a bell. The rangefinding chariot is used with army marches to accurately tell the distance of the marches.

Some of these ancient inventions are not found buried in the ground but are still working in the rural countryside in China.

Among them is an early design of an oil rig which allows ancient (and rural) Chinese to bore through the ground to get to oil deposits. The rigs uses a set of interchangeable drill heads, each optimized to drill against a certain rock layer type.

They showed a working automated pounding hammer machine. Ancient but still working in the countryside. The water wheel turns a center rod. The rod acts like a cam which has lugs of various deliberate lengths. The lugs in turn act upon a series of hammers, which is used to pound various grains automatically.

They also showed another ancient rural machine still working that is used grind grain. A water wheel powers a set of gears that turns various millets.

They showed an ancient piece of jade whose complex spiral pattern could only have been done by a precision compound machine.

From texts they showed various designs of water wheel powered automatic bellows machines that blow air into blast furnaces into an industrial scale.

The Terra Cotta army all shows signs of industrialized mass production. One of the treasures found is the Emperor's Chariot, which is made of 3600 pieces that are casted individually. To be to pierce together something made from thousands of pieces that are casted confidentially and independently from different sources means an understanding of the mass production process that includes strict defining of specifications. Furthermore, each piece is then welded together to form the chariot.

To produce the army, each soldier weighing at least 300lbs, very well crafted and armed with metal weaponry, requires a civilization that has a true industrial base. Meaning vast kilns that churn out the statues like factories, and vast factory like blast furnaces that churn out the weapons and armor.

Many of the weapons like swords, still retain their original lustre and hardness, which means they can still kill today. Later they found out that many of the weapons have a thin trace layers of chromium oxide. Yet Chromium isn't used in steel to increase hardness and resist corrosion until the 20th Century. Long time ago, these people knew not only how to make and forge steel but understood well enough of the use of chromium to improve it.

Sometime in the Sung Dynasty, someone invented what is mankind's most complex device yet until the Industrial Age. It was called the Cosmic Engine. The machine itself was used through out the time span of the Sung Dynasty until it was destroyed when the Dynasty itself was destroyed. But even destroyed, the inventor left complete documentation of its creation, mechanical principle, and blueprint, and a working replica was made from the blueprints.

Basically the machine itself is like 5 story mechanical clock, complete with gears, chain drive and an escapement mechanism, that rationalizes the use of mechanical energy in very precise amounts. The machine was meant not just to keep time, but keep tabs of months, seasons and even years, and inside it has an armillary sphere and a mechanical celestial globe that is used to track the movements of heavenly bodies precisely.