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0:12
This isn't really the official start of class, but I just thought I wanted to start with this new like big game that just dropped and it's like making waves, I guess in video game communities across the world. In this game, for the if you haven't heard of it, that's totally fine. The main character is Sun Wukong and the the game is based loosely on this great Chinese novel of the 16th century, Journey to the West, COG, yeah. And the thing is so have you heard of the Monkey King or
0:42
Sun Wukong? Some of you have heard of him, some of you may have not have heard of him, that's okay. He's like a real iconic figure in Chinese culture, you could say literature. He's not a historical character, although the Journey to the West is a historical journey taken during the Han Dynasty to India to retrieve Buddhist scriptures and all of that. But starting in like the Southern Song Dynasty, don't worry, you'll know all of these dynasties pretty soon. We cover
1:11
all of them this semester. Starting in about like I'd say the 11th century, this figure of a monkey as kind of the the the sort of accompany it the the company of this main you know monk character came to the foreground and his character evolved over the centuries and I think one of the reasons why he's so beloved in China is he's like this fearless person, right? He's he laughs in the face of danger cuz he's like a monkey, right? So it makes him very beloved, it makes him
1:40
like sort of very interesting. He's also kind of a force of chaos in a sense. Is that he literally makes a mess of heaven even. He gets in trouble with the Jade Emperor, all of these really great stories. But in that sort of his sort of causing chaos where he goes, he forces truth to come to the surface. He's got the power to see evil where evil is sort of latently present. Uh so, you can see here. I just thought I'd say some a few words about him. There's a There's a big
2:09
debate in Chinese history about where Monkey comes from Sun Wukong comes from. Hu Shih, the great early 20th century intellectual, you don't have to know him exactly, but he's a big name. He actually envisioned that Monkey may have come from the Ramayana, from the character of Hanuman, the sort of protector of King Rama. Uh and there are There is a serious theory that that is actually the origin of his character. Lu Xun disagreed with that theory actually. The other big 20th
2:41
century great writer of Chinese history had another theory. You can see over the centuries, this is from a very early edition of the novel. This is from the uh Summer Palace in Beijing, right? So, the literally depictions from the novel like suffused, you know, uh big, you know, artistic uh scenes in late imperial China. Uh This is from a temple in Vietnam. And you can see here, this is the Monkey in shrines, right? So, he enters religion, popular religion. And of course, big opera, right? Opera
3:10
performances of Journey to the West, the character of Monkey and all of that. So, I thought that I would just say just really if you've been thinking about this video game or you want to go check out this video game. At the beginning here, he's been beloved across generations. Every era sort of reinvisions him. You know, this is Princess Iron Fan. This is a story from Journey to the West. Incredible. This is China's first animated film, 1941, made in Shanghai during World War II. And
3:37
it's kind of like Monkey at that time, you think about the war of resistance against Japan, right? All of the symbolism with that. Somebody mentioned that they saw the 1986 Oh, where's my 1986? There's my 1986. Journey to the West, this is a big TV series. You you get it all on YouTube for free. Really fun. This actor who plays Monkey is really incredible. Like, he's comes from like an operatic tradition. He really carries that forth. Late editions of Monkey, recent editions of Monkey, have
4:03
kind of shown him to be like hyper-masculine and muscular and everything like that. It's actually not necessarily how he's been portrayed historically. But again, it tells us something about how his character evolves over time. All right. That is the sort of prelude. Now, let's actually get into dynastic China. This is probably how you thought I would begin the class, which makes total sense, right? Forbidden City, some of you went to Beijing this summer, some of you have
4:27
been to Beijing, I'm sure. This is like you know, the tragedy with the Forbidden City is once you see this palace, you can't go visit any other palace. They all just look so silly in comparison to this. Versailles, I mean, forget about it. It looks like a house. [music] I mean, seriously, this is I mean, it's the largest palace structure in the world. It's I've been I visited probably five times over my lifetime. And every time it's different. When you go in the summer,
4:55
there's not a lot of shade. You get killed by the sun and the crowds. I went on an academic sort of with an academic delegation this summer, so we went to all these like secret places, and that was really, really fun. This is a place you absolutely have to visit. There's so much of Chinese history in [music] this palace in the center of Beijing. And I'll just say actually one funny thing about it is this palace was so nice that when the Manchus invaded [music] China in the
5:19
17th century, they said, "We'll keep the palace." They moved right in. How often does that happen when somebody invades? They say, "We'll keep the White House." No, no, I we can do better than the White House. They kept this one, okay? Cuz so this is actually a Ming Dynasty palace that was used right up until the early 20th century. [music] Today, a museum, okay? All right. I thought I was thinking about like, how do you even introduce this subject, right? This is like it's I love this
5:44
subject. I'm sure you got that from my email, okay? Uh I I I'm so excited to share about this subject with you and I realize there's never a good way to get into this subject cuz it's so big and it's so much to cover. Well, just say let's look at a map right here. Okay, this is as you can imagine Beijing, right? This is the Forbidden City. This is the palace. I think this map is from about the 1950s or something like that. And there's these three, quote unquote,
6:11
high to the to the left, right? To the to the western side of the Forbidden City, right? Anybody know what those three high are? What those three lakes? Anybody Have you Have you visited Have you been to Beihai Park? It's okay. It's okay. Let me just tell you. There are three lakes there, okay? The top lake is the northern lake, okay? That was an imperial garden and that is today a public park. You can access that one. The second one and the last one are the middle lake and the southern lake.
6:45
That's Zhongnanhai. Have you Have you ever heard of Zhongnanhai? That's where the head of the Communist Party is. That's basically where the nominally the Xi Jinping lives and everything like that. It's kind of like the White House and the Kremlin together, okay? Very, very big place. Those two lakes are not open to the public. That area is like the compound of the I think, you know, the center of the party's power structure, basically. So, there's so much, right? Just in this
7:12
little How many kilometers of space? Okay, China history from that hundreds of years ago all the way up to history going on today, right? So, the thing I love about this term is that the word high means sea, ocean, or lake. In Mongol, actually this distinction, you can imagine why, is not really made between ocean and a big body of water. And sort of some Chinese dialects over of adopted that or also had that. So, you can kind of see here I I think and I know this might be sort of a little
7:48
corny to say, but I want to just say it here at the very beginning and I'll just say it once. It's like Chinese history is like a sea or an ocean. Okay, that's it's big, it's how do I say it? It's vast, it's beautiful, and it's difficult. It can be dangerous, right? Of course, I'll talk about how history can be dangerous in just a second, but it's not like perhaps other kinds of history you've studied thus far. Um I'll just say that you know I started studying it however many like
8:15
almost 20 years ago. I will be a student of it for the rest of my life. I'll never be able to master this, right? It's not something you master. It's just too much stuff, okay? But, that's the thing. This class, what I can do is I'll take you to the ocean. And I'll say in that first time you see the ocean, right? Think about that Think about where you were, especially if you didn't grow up near the sea, right? The first time you saw the ocean you said, "Wow, that's a beautiful sight." Or wow,
8:40
that's so interesting. Look at the waves whatever whatever whatever. That's what this class can do. It's like we're I'm going to show you across time, okay? From the Zhou dynasty, from the origins of writing in China, which is Shang dynasty, but whatever, Han dynasty, the medieval period all the way up to the early modern era. I'll show you something about every era that I think is interesting, okay? That I think you'll appreciate. And then it's up to you to go from there, okay? So, I
9:06
So, I'll take you to the sea. You can swim however you want to However you want However far you want to swim. I'm still swimming, okay? So, that's what we're going to do. This is okay, dynastic China 2024. Okay. So, let me say something at the outset here. What I'll do today is I'll introduce Chinese history in the broadest possible terms. How do we think about it? Some key terms. We'll go over the syllabus, the requirements for the class, and then I'll talk I'll give you a geographical
9:32
tour of China, which is really fun, actually. It's really fun just to go talk about food and here's this province and here's this province. The rest of the class won't be like that, but you do need to know the geography of China. There will be a quiz in a couple of weeks, okay? This is the Forbidden City that we were just talking about. And you can see here, this is Well, this is I think the largest single hall within the palace complex, this Taihe Dian, the
9:54
Hall of Supreme Harmony. Okay, this is a Ming Dynasty structure. That's Don't get overwhelmed. Uh that's like let's say a 15th century structure, okay? Uh and this is basically where the uh emperor had major audiences, weddings were held here, enthronements were held here. And you can see it's right here. It's It's kind of like in the almost looks like the center. It's like right in that central axis, okay? That's where it is. There's another place, and it's not like
10:19
a famous place, the Place of Everlasting Spring, this Changchun Gong, okay? It's in the back. It's right over there. I highlighted it right there. I bring out these two sort of parts of the palace to you because in a way they kind of represent two tides of Chinese history or two ways of thinking about Chinese history, okay? There's Zhengshi, right? Official history. What is official history? Now, when you think about history in China, don't just think, "Oh, I'm sitting down. I'm
10:49
thinking about history. Oh, that's so fun." No. Shi refers to a ki- a kind of writing. It's a genre of writing. There are officially 24 official histories that were written across China Chinese history. The dynasty that follows a the previous dynasty writes the official history of its predecessor, okay? Ironically, we do not yet have an official history of the Qing Dynasty, the last dynasty. That's an ongoing big football project of a game of you know, of a tension within China today, okay?
11:23
How to write that history of the last dynasty. But uh quote unquote, we have 24. Um that's this official history. You know emperors dynasties battles natural disasters recorded by state authorities, okay? But then there's something else, okay? That's not all we look at. That's not all we talk about. There's also this kind of idea in Chinese of yeshi, wild history. History that's outside, things that happened in the past that are not in those official histories, but are still worthy of
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talking about that is still worthy of remembering, okay? And that's like folklore, families, women, popular tales not recorded by state authorities. And you know, so you one way you can think about Chinese history is that it's the tension between these two things, okay? It's like also going back to the sea metaphor, high tide and low tide, whatever you want to say. Okay, there's the stuff that's officially recorded. On this day the emperor said this, but then
12:19
there's all this unofficial stuff that we piece together and say what was really going on. Okay? This what is so great about Chinese history is that you actually don't need a textbook. There are so many sources. There's art, there's so much writing, there's private writing, there's writing by scholars, there's debates, there's so much you can look into. But take a look at again that sort of palace. What I said is that looking at itself, at the palace, it kind of tells
12:46
you a story about Chinese history. This is that sort of like zhongshi type of place. The things that happened in the Hall of Supreme Harmony are recorded in official type of histories. But the stuff that happens in the rear of the palace, this is the hougong, that's where the imperial family lived, okay? That's actually where they lived. They didn't live in the front of the palace. This is that's an expression in Chinese hougong, the back of the palace, that's the imperial family, that's where
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they actually lived, and that's where all the by the way, if you watch Chinese dramas, family dramas, they're all about that, okay? Nobody really cares about this, but they're all about that, right? What's going on? What's the What's the the romance, right? All this stuff, you know, yeshi, wild history has a lot more to it than just that, okay? I'm not endorsing any drama, by the way. Uh but but but it's a way to think about it. This is an incredible hall. We will return to it in
13:35
the last class of the semester because in this Palace of Everlasting Spring and the rear of the palace on its walls are depicted murals of the probably the greatest novel of Chinese history, Hong Lou Meng, A Dream of the Red Chamber. Images from that novel uh were painted on the walls of this kind of residential complex for the imperial family, uh you know, one of the consorts in the 19th century. That sort of uh pal That that's Those scenes of that novel is all about
14:05
a family in decline, right? So, it's actually I've always thought it's extremely moving and thought-provoking to think that the emperor that the imperial family has these images on that wall, okay? All right. So, let's talk about why would you even take this class, okay? Why talk about dynastic history? Why get into it? Well, the the answer could be because like China's a really important place today, right? I think it's going to have the largest economy in the world, whatever.
14:33
It is the second-largest population. It's an important place. There's a lot of interesting technological developments going on with that, you know, all of that stuff. My favorite of which are these like robots that I'm sure if you've been to China recently, I'm sure you've been countered these. If you stay in a hotel and you get takeout, somebody brings it to the hotel front desk and then this this GG Red, this robot sends it to your room. So, you don't have to actually talk to any human
15:00
beings, okay? The This was a This was a thing that came in during COVID, I think, and now it's just like standard across the country. So, I mean, you could say you get a medicine, you get all this stuff like that, but it was like the my first night in China this summer, I was I arrived at like 1:00 a.m. for a conference and then this like I got a phone call and this it was like a robotic voice and it said, "I'm here." And I'm like, "What's going on?" And then it was like, "Please open the
15:25
door." And I open the door, it's one of these. And they go, "Please press this button." And I press the button and then it's like and then there was this like rice and like all this food, right? And it's like they're walking all over these hotels, right? And they even say like, "Please excuse me. I need to get to the elevator." So, it's I don't know why we don't have them yet, right? And and and and if any budding anthropologists in the room, there's so much to study about
15:47
these these robots, right? About how humans interact with them and such like that. But yes, okay. So, I understand the current scene of China is worth paying attention to, is is is relevant, is important, okay? But then we get back to this question, why study dynastic China? One reason, okay, is that if you spend time in China and you talk to people in China, people in China talk about their history all the time, okay? Uh from from the top leadership all the way down to everyday people, people
16:17
driving cabs that you'll meet, you know, just in day-to-day life, okay? History really matters in this place, okay? It's the way that people talk about issues in the present. Um it also is really contentious, right? I just mentioned to you this kind of like question of the official Qing history. There's been an ongoing project to write the official Qing history in theory since the days of like Mao and Zhou Enlai. It started and then it stopped cuz of the Cultural
16:44
Revolution and then it got started again in recent years and now it's kind of again controversial. How do you officially record that history? That should tell you something. There's all of these debates, there's all these tensions that go on within China about how to understand what happened in dynastic China, okay? We don't pay attention to it. Well, the Wall Street Journal did a cover of it, okay? But that kind of signals its importance, right? So, I do not think in any way
17:12
that this class, dynastic China, is less relevant or less practical than modern China. I'd say if you had to pick, take this one. Forget about modern China. Okay? The 20th century, it's a tough century. This we cover a lot more centuries here, okay? So you get more bang for your buck. Okay, but they're both good. I mean they're, you know, take it take it in 2026, yeah? Okay. Um So now, let me tell you another reason, kind of building on what I was just talking about, is that people in China
17:44
like to talk about their history. They have a long There's a long recorded history in China. So that means there's a lot to talk about, there's a lot to debate, and there's a lot to analyze. I'm sure many of you may be familiar with this opening sentence. Has anybody read Sanguo Yanyi, Romance of the Three Kingdoms? I think um Professor Deng has a class on Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Some of you might be taking it or want to take it. You should You should take it. It's an interesting This
18:10
is another one of those two those great novels, okay? We talked about Journey to the West a little bit earlier. This is Romance of the Three Kingdoms. And there's a There's the opening lines of it, right? This "天下大势，分久必合，合久必分." Right? There's a saying There's a saying in our country that at
18:29
you know, long divided it must unite, long united it must divide. Think about that for just a second, and then let me show you this quote, okay? By Mark Elvin 1973. The Chinese empire is the major exception in the pre-modern world to what would appear to be the rule that units of territorial and demographic extent comparable to China are not stable entities over long periods of time. So one of the things where you say, "Why look at it? Why study it? Why think
18:58
about it?" is because actually this kind of does seem to happen, okay? That there are periods of division where everything falls apart, okay? And it looks like, "Okay, this is going to be Italy, and this This going to be France, and this is going to be Switzerland. And then all of a sudden it comes back Rome comes back. Okay, Rome comes back and it keeps coming back. And you're like, why? What's going on, right? And people, you know, across the centuries notice this,
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right? It was like a thing they they noticed and talked about or even anticipated. It's not to overstate continuity in Chinese history. I don't want you to think, oh yeah, 2,000 years ago that was China and China today it's like the same it's not the same. name is very different. Tons of things happened, tons of things changed. But this conversation that we're talking about right here is very old, right? So I think Chinese history is good for training your mind about how to think
19:53
about big difficult questions. You have a ton of data, you have a ton of information, you can think on different scales. When people do climate history, what's the first place they look to? They look to China, right? Because China wrote about its climate for people in China wrote about climate for like thousand at least 2,000 plus years, right? All all sort of meteorological phenomenon, comets, etc. All of these records are in those histories that I was talking about, you know? So it's
20:19
really really great to think about history, right? If you haven't taken another history course ever before, this is a great introduction. Even if you don't want to continue with China, right? You want to go and do England. Take this class and then go to think about England. Take this class and then go to think about India. Okay, you can you can do all of that stuff. Okay? History is ancient, but it's an ongoing conversation in really uh filled with nearly endless perspectives. And
20:43
here's the key point. This class is about eavesdropping into that conversation. This goes back to that image that I was giving to you. I take you to the ocean, you swim. Okay? You eavesdrop into the conversation. This is a huge conversation. Lots of people are going to say stuff. Lots of you're going to have Daoists, you're going to have Buddhists, you're going to have Confucians, you're going to have Confucians who hate other Confucians. Uh you're going to have terrible
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emperors. You're going to have some decent emperors, but really bad emperors, too, right? You know, you're going to you're going to have everything, right? And it all comes together as people over the centuries try to make sense of it, right? And that's that ongoing conversation. That conversation continues in China today. So, you get a little in this class you get to eavesdrop on it, right? Think about it a little bit. Okay. So, here are the class goals and aspirations. Okay, first of
21:29
all, let me tell you what the game plan is and it's like a really intimidating slide. So, just buckle up, okay? There you go. So, so basically that's the game plan, okay? Not this part, okay? So, not this this part's modern China, okay? So, that's the thing. I take two classes. One does this and then one does this, okay? So, so look, what I can tell you is I'm a historian primarily of this era, right? The Ming and Qing dynasties, the last two imperial dynasties. That's my specialty.
22:00
That's what I love. But, the thing is is that because this is the class you're taking it MIT that is dynastic Chinese history, I feel I I have to give every era its due. So, I really try. I really go out of my way, even though I'm not like the biggest fan of the Han dynasty. You know, I'm I'm like I'm I don't I I love the Tang dynasty as a sort of like a historian who works on another period, but I will give you what I think is the essentials to know about that era. Every
22:30
period that we cover, I try to get you, you know, that those kernels, right? That say, "Oh, wow, that's really interesting. I didn't know that before." So, that when you look at this by the end of the semester, you'll say, "I know what happened pretty much across this whole time span, right? I know something. I can say something about it, okay?" And then that way you go off in your winter holiday and you can have great conversations with your parents, right? Or friends. Or
22:58
you can travel and you can visit places and say, "I know what that is. I know when that was built. I know what I know what's going on here, okay? All right, so class goals and aspirations, learn something about China, 20% of humanity. This is a good aspiration. We should learn something about China, right? Especially in the United States, right? I mean, I it's incredible. I have to say it. Okay, learn something about history. Okay, so there's two things here.
23:22
This is a class about China. It's also a class about history. Okay? Of course, these things can overlap, right? But history is a discipline. It's a way of thinking. Okay? We have certain ideas in history, primary sources, secondary sources. Okay? This is a secondary source. This is a secondary source. These are not primary sources. Primary sources referring to the original sources that were written in the original language by people at the time, okay? Tho- those are the premiums in history,
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okay? But of course, we as historians, we write textbooks, we write books, right? So, just realize, history's not in a textbook. Okay? Textbooks are like the least We Historians look down on textbooks, okay? We We don't like textbooks, right? Cuz with textbooks, you have to edit, you have to take out, you have to do that. Go back to the originals. Make your own textbook, right? That's what we're going to do in this class, okay? So, that's that's why I want you to think about history. I
24:23
don't want it to turn you into a walking encyclopedia. Sort of I do, actually. Uh that would be nice, but to equip you to approach related issues. One of the things I say, and I'll just tell you right up here, yeah, it's a it's a content-heavy class, right? Because I sort of I don't know if it's old-fashioned or what, but like I think you just need to know it, right? I think you need to know it. You need to leave this class in command of knowledge, okay? And one of the things
24:50
that you will realize you might think, "Oh, this is a lot. I don't You know, why do we have to know all this stuff?" When you go to China, you will realize that people that you encounter in everyday life know so much about history. Okay? They blow They will blow away the average American about what they can say about history that happened 2,000 years ago, even if it's wrong. Even if it's wrong, okay? Even if it's just like kind of like romanticized or whatever, but they talk about it. They
25:18
know it. So, you got to know it, okay? That's the That's the thing. Okay? And it's not in Let me just emphasize here why you should take it. Why why I think you should take this class, why I think maybe this weekend you should convince your friends to take this class, okay? Is that it's not something you can just pick up like with a book like so many people think with history. Oh, yeah. I'll I'll Over the summer I'll read a book and catch up. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't with
25:47
computer science, with physics, you don't just read a book over the weekend and become an expert. Okay? Chinese history is one of those fields where you got to take a class in it. You actually you got to drill it. You got to know it. You got to think about it from all these different angles, and then you can say you know something about it, okay? It's not actually something that you just pick up with the osmosis, okay? Or what you can pick up by osmosis by reading
26:09
Wikipedia and sort of bad history, right? But that's what we're going to try to We're going to try to do something better than than that in this class, yeah? Okay. Okay, and this knowledge will stay with you. I always I always say that. I always say that, right? 50 years from now, well, let's say 30. You graduate from MIT. You're talking to your relatives or your children or whatever it is. What are you going to talk to them about? You're going to talk to them about this class. You're going
26:33
to say, "Hey, you know the Three Kingdoms? I know something about that." Cuz this is the type of thing that people want to talk about, not whatever Python or whatever, right? Like, you know, it's like it's not it's not a table conversation, right? This is. This is. I guarantee you I guarantee you a holiday break of great conversations after this class, a minimum. Okay. So, why do I like Chinese history? Oh, Wow, where do I begin? Okay, well, I went to China for the first time in like right
26:59
around the right before the Beijing Olympics. And that was me many years ago. You could say I've changed a little bit, maybe a little bit. That's me maybe in Taiwan. I think I'm in a Yonghe Dawang, which is like a breakfast place, and I love it, right? I go like you get the you get the doujiang, the the the soy it's soy bean sort of a milk substance with youtiao, this fried donut. It's like heaven, you know? I mean it costs like $2, right? And it's just like it's incredible. Huge lines, right?
27:25
Uh so that was me and then okay, food. So it's not just about the food, but we but we can't talk about food. I don't think I have to convince the most of you. China's got really good food, right? It's got a a ton of different types of food, okay? The US Chinese food has gotten better in my lifetime, but it's still it's that's right, it's it was starting at zero. So I mean it's so so the thing is is that it it is better, but it good Chinese food in the US tends to be expensive. In
27:51
China, you just get so much, right? You have so many options, everything like that. We can talk about food. I have another class called nature and environment in China. We do a whole week on food. So if you really want to talk about food, maybe consider that class. But we'll do a little bit of food here, okay? Uh and then this is me playing mahjong, right? So what I'm trying to say what I'm trying to say is that you get in, right? When you go to a place and it maybe it won't be China for you.
28:15
It could be Japan or it could be Mongolia. It could be Russia. It could be Italy. You know, something's going to grab you. It might not be the Colosseum. It might be just like everyday life, you know, drinking espresso, you know, on a Florentine afternoon. And you go, I just love this. I really love this. And then you go, I want to learn the language. And I I want to I want to understand what happened here. And I want to understand what happened here in the 19th century. I
28:41
want to understand what happened here 2,000 years ago, okay? The I want this to happen to you. It doesn't have to be China. It can be, right? It could be Mexico. It could be any place. But someplace that you weren't born in and then you go there and you go, "Wow, I really want to understand this place." That's a wonderful part of the human experience. I hope you all have it, okay? But that kind of happened to me in China, okay? And it wasn't one moment, right? It was many meals. It was many
29:03
gambling sessions. It was It was It was It was uh this is me on the many years ago, probably going to Tibet. I can't remember, but it was on one of those sleeper trains. You know, back in the day you I have to say, I have become like a middle-aged Chinese person in the sense of because I've been in China now for the like the past 20 years and I've seen all this change. So I remember like oh the green trains that went super slow and like you had to stay on them for
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like overnight. Like the train I took the train from Beijing to Shanghai. The first time I took it it was like I was standing. It was like I was eating instant noodles, praying that they wouldn't like tip over in a very crowded car cuz we didn't even have there weren't even tickets left for a bed, right? I mean, and now it's like oh it's it's business class high-speed rail all the way, right? I mean, it takes four what? 5 hours? 5 hours, right? 5 hours now, right? It's totally changed, right?
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But there were a lot of fun experiences on Chinese trains back in the day. You talk to Chinese parents or you talk to people of a certain generation, they will have stories for you about taking long long train rides in China. Uh and a whole generation who grew up in the Cultural Revolution have these especially, yeah. Uh and then I've gone back. Oh yeah, I wrote a book. I was there this summer talking about my book, right? And then oh yeah, the last thing I want to say.
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So I got into it. I continue to go back. I can't tell you the number of times I've been there. I probably live there you know for a few years overall, but it's like more every year I go for a few months. This summer I went for uh you know, a month and a half or something like that. The one thing that I say that really really has struck me in terms of changes. When I first went to China, hey, how you doing? When I first went to China, you know, the coffee was terrible. Uh and it
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for somebody addicted to caffeine, uh it was brutal. And I had to drink a ton of tea to make up for it, right? And it's just like too much tea, you know what I'm saying? Uh but I love tea, don't get me wrong. Coffee is now way better, okay? Coffee I and I actually tweeted about this like when I got back. Coffee in China is now better than coffee in the United States. I come back here and I'm like, this I'm just so disappointed. The thing is is that what China has actually
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accidentally perfected, and I says and you can also find this in Thailand, you also find this now in Korean cafes, is non-dairy espresso drinks. And it's just it it's a world that like Starbucks is just out to lunch, they're not getting this. You take espresso, you create an Americano with sparkling water, and you add lemon. Incredible. Grapefruit, incredible. Lychee, whatever. Like all of these they call it cafe like a twangy mixture cafe like creative Americanos.
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And I and I say like, why don't you take this global? You know, this is this is the next thing. I mean, this is the next bubble tea, for sure. But it's like I I think that there's an interesting thing of like they feel like, oh, but maybe it's we're not doing it right like the Italians. Enough with the Italians. Enough with the cappuccinos. We got to go to the next phase. It's all these milky drinks. It tires you out, right? This is like the absolute pick-up, low calorie, too. Love
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it. So, check out coffee in China next time you're there. Okay, that's been an interesting change. All right, let's talk about syllabus. All right. So, I just have like a bunch of I usually I used to do a printout syllabus, but then MIT students told me that like nobody does that anymore. So, then I felt like a historian, but in a bad way. So, I said like, okay, let's just put it all online, right? So, uh no prerequisites, you're all welcome to enroll. You can bring guests. Just let
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me know. You can bring your parents. Some people bring their parents, right? When they're visiting or they want to, you know, again, what are you going to bring them to computer science classes? Come on. Right? You want to bring them here, right? Okay, that's fine. Just let me know that they're coming, okay? Uh it's Chinese Chinese is not a prerequisite. Some of you are doing a Chinese minor. Okay? That's fine. And for all of the primary sources that I give you this semester, I'll try to
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give you the Chinese original if you want to look at it. If you're learning Chinese, take challenge yourself, take a look at it, right? You don't have to look at it, but you can. So, that's an option. If you want to do the minor for this class, you should be looking at those okay? Um so, do do do do do do that looks good. Study guides. Okay. So, the thing is is that when I first taught this class, it was like essays. And then I was like, I'm done with essays. I had a I had a
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historical evolution at MIT and I realized if you teach a class on Chinese history, you got to offer an exam. For those of you who know about Chinese history, you know how important exams are in Chinese history. You'll realize, yeah, you you need an exam. So, I just do midterm. We're going to have a final, don't worry. The average of the midterm last year it about every year tends to be about a 90. Most of the students who take the class, let's just be frank here, modern China
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we get 40 or 50 maybe. Many many people get A's, A minuses, A pluses, whatever. Uh some people will get B's, the occasional C. If you get below a B, you're trying. Okay? Uh you if you get in the B range, uh it's it's you know, what I mean to say here is if you put the work in, you put the effort in, there shouldn't be a huge issue. Okay? With getting the grade that you want, okay? Uh it is a challenge. You do have to study, all right? You do have to study and some people will bomb
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the midterm, some people and everything like that and that's that's okay. It's not the end of the world, we'll figure it out. I'll show you the group the here's the grading rubric. We'll talk about this, okay? So, first things attendance. Let's say Let me say something about attendance right up at the front. There are two excused absences over the course of the semester. You come in, you scan the QR code. That's how we know that you're in class, okay? You have two excused absences, just let
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us know, okay? I realize some of you want to take this class and you have a conflict with another class. That's a partial conflict, not a complete conflict, but a partial conflict. If you have a partial conflict and you can come to 50% of these classes, then Linda, the TA and I will make an arrangement for you. You can come, we will not take you down if you have a class conflict that you show us your schedule and you show us I have this conflict at this time and we'll give you
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two extra writing assignments over the course of the semester. And that way we just take the question off the off the table. So, you can. But, if you want that arrangement, you got to let us know in the next week or so, okay? Because we need to know that, all right? So, we're happy if to accommodate, but otherwise we're really hoping everybody will be here, you know, most of the time, okay? Um so, there's So, in terms of writing, the major writing that you will do over
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the course of the semester is your discussion responses. I'll tell you about what I expect for those discussion responses in just a second. There are 10 of them. Each of them is worth two points. If you do a decent job on them, that you get the two points, right? That's as simple as that. You can do it late, it's worth one point if it's late, okay? That's as It's just we Every time like in every semester somebody comes and says, "I'm I'm didn't do any of them. I
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didn't know that, you know, they were required or something like that." Okay, just letting you know, we will accept it late. That's what it's worth if it's late, okay? There's a geography quiz. All of the quizzes and the tests, with the exception of the final, okay? There will be a retake. And it's open to everybody, okay? So, what that means is you come in, you do the geography quiz. If it didn't go well, you can take it again, and I'll just take the highest score. If you
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can't make it the day of the geography quiz because you have to take an absence or you have one of those conflicts that I just mentioned, that's fine. There will be one retake, okay? Same with the classical text quiz, right? Where I quiz you on what Confucius and the Daoists and all that. One retake offered. Uh uh midterm, we do a one retake offered for the midterm, too, okay? And it's like a totally it's a new exam. Some people like literally take everything twice twice because they just
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like the challenge. I've had that. And my T students are incredible, okay? It's like you took this midterm, you got a 95. I want to take it again. All right. We're going for that five points, right? I get I got it, okay. All right. Uh so, there is a timeline a a project. It's not It's not bad. You just propose a topic. This is where you can kind of follow your own interest. If you want to do the history of a certain type of fashion in China, Chinese a certain type
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of Chinese food, you can follow that over time. You just create a timeline. I give you all the sort of how do you create the timeline? That's a It's not bad. And then final exam, and then that's the final grade. One thing that we do, and I just want to say we're really uh excited this semester. We have a TA from the Haas program, Linda Rinzwan, uh who's wonderful to join us. Anthr- anthr- historian His- his- history a historian of nuclear energy. So, really really excited to have Linda,
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and Linda does has does know Chinese history fairly well. So, definitely correspond with me, correspond with Linda. During the semester, as we as I try to do in all my classes, we'll do one sort of It's like a required office hour mid-semester. So, you come to my office, Linda and I will greet you, and we talk for 10 minutes about whatever you want to talk about, typically about what what confuses you in Chinese history or questions about the midterm or questions about whatever, right? So,
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everybody does that, and that's also part of the grade, okay? So, you you could you do you do have to do that once. You have I'm happy to answer questions at any time, okay? But that's that's that's what we do expect, okay? All right, so let me just say something final point about the discussion posts, okay? So discussion posts um Yes, I'll do I I've changed this. I'll do Wednesday. I'll give it to you Wednesday before 3:30. I'll give you a little bit extra time than Tuesday. So
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get them in before that time, the Wednesday class, okay? Basically, what you have to do is you have to look at the readings uh and you have to answer a question. I'll give you an example uh for the next week's discussion post uh just a second. You write two paragraphs, okay? Uh and the the the two paragraphs, right? I'll tell you exactly how we want the structure of these paragraphs to look like. You have some agency and creativity in it, don't worry. But I'll tell you about what
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we're looking for, okay? Um so the thing I want to just remind you all, the facts, inferences, uh judgments and opinions, right? How you sort of separate out those things, right? Facts, things that we know to be true based on evidence. Bees make honey. Inferences, statements of the unknown based on the known derived from reason, right? Judgments and then all the way to opinions like I like whatever ice cream, okay? When you write a post, I don't want just opinion, right? I hate Confucius, so
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congratulations. Okay, but that's not a post, okay? I I we want a combo, right? You can give me the opinion at the end, in the second paragraph. The first paragraph, we want you to focus on facts and inferences based on the primary sources of that week's reading. So you look at the question, you try to answer based on the primary sources, and then in the second paragraph, you can expand into judgments and opinion, okay? So So way you know what we expect, you know
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how to do it. All right? So I laid it out I think really just clearly and nicely for that for you there. Let's take a look at what we're doing next week. I have to tell you this is just give you an example for next week. So next week on Monday you come in. I'm going to like rush you through the rise of agriculture, the origins of state formation in China, and we end up on next Monday with I think one of my favorite lectures of the whole semester, the rise of writing in China. And
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writing is super fascinating. It's it's a technology and China was a very early place to have it. So what is writing? What counts as writing, right? One of the questions I think we have are are emojis writing, right? What counts as it? You can answer that question if you'd like next week. Right? So this is what we're kind of doing, right? So you look at it uh you'll notice up here. Every week you'll see, "Wow, it looks like there's a lot of reading." There's not that much reading. You just
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have to break it down. The primary sources are what you really need to focus on. That is the original, right, translation of oracle bone inscriptions, something like that. Translations of Joe bronzes, right? You'll see those are primary sources. That's what you focus on. But if you're like, "I don't really understand what this is," then you go to secondary source, which for the beginning part of this class will be Li Feng's Early China. Very nice book. I've given you sort of selections from it.
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I've uploaded them, right? This is like a pretty like sophisticated book of early Chinese history, right? It's it's like really good. It's it's fairly comprehensive, yeah? And then if you're like, "I took a look at this and I still don't know what's going on," we have the textbook big picture, okay? So this is the optional textbook, okay? I provide you with three different ways to break down sort of an era's writing or an the era's sources. The primary sources, secondary
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sources, and the textbook. The secondary sources in the textbook are optional for you. Okay? If you want to read it, you can read it. If you feel you need it. Some Some eras you might feel, I know Three Kingdoms, I don't need it. Right? I know Tang Dynasty, I don't need it this week. I'll just do primary. But some eras you might be like, oh, you know, North South Division, I want to read the textbook. Right? So it's there if you need it. Right? So it's not as
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much as it looks, okay? And then I got the uh Dynasty China's geography quiz study guide. I'll put up all the study guides, don't worry, okay? Questions? How's it sound? Interesting yeah? How do you compare to your other classes, yeah? Pretty good, right? Yeah? Let me know, let me know. You know what I mean? You know, like, all right. So, let's talk about how we talk about Chinese history. Periodization. All right. There are ways. This is just getting you into, like, foot in the door.
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Foot in the door. Remember that long little sort of like list, that chronology I gave you of all those reigns dynasties whatever? Here's how we break it down. First, pre-modern China. Pre-modern China, this is like, it's a loaded word. When does modernity begin? It's like, it's kind of a useless phrase, okay? Because like, 50 years from now, it's like, they'll be like, was the 20th century modern? It looks pretty old to us, right? But for the sake of conversation, for the sake of
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dialogue, you should know that in China officially, in Chinese textbooks in China today, modernity begins with a very actually Western-centric notion of the Opium Wars, okay? Middle of the 19th century, okay, basically. So you have like, modern history, pre-modern history. Ooh. Coming back. Uh Good. Thank you. Okay, I said to the computer, thank you. Okay, so so so pre-modern sometimes we could also say traditional. Okay. Uh so this is just like I'm not endorsing
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these terms. I'm just letting you know these are the terms you may encounter, okay? Uh so when we say Imperial China, Imperial China, that has a very very fixed beginning and end date. That is not like open to interpretation. Imperial China begins in 221 BCE or or or BC, whatever have you. Okay? It begins when Qin Shi Huang proclaims himself to be the first emperor. He was the first person to do it. Realize writing was invented in China approximately in 1200 BC. China's got a
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thousand years of recorded history before there were any emperors. Before there were any. So this is the amazing thing about thinking about scale in terms of Chinese history. When when Confucius was alive, he was already thinking about the deep past and antiquity. We think of Confucius and we go, "Wow, that guy lived a long time ago." He was thinking of other people thinking of living a long time ago. So 600 years ago, right? So this is just Imperial China begins
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with the proclamation of the first emperor, which was a new form of sort of royal kingship. You know, that sort of like superseded everything that came before it. That Imperial system remains basically the primary form of governance in China until 1912. Well, this is another thing of like, when does it end? 1911. The Xinhai Revolution, many of you have been familiar with it, might have heard of it, broke out in 1911. The emperor abdicated in early 1912. So, as a historian of
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late Imperial China, I insist on 1912. Okay, but you will sometimes see 1911. It's not Okay, what are we talking We're talking about a couple months here, okay? It's a I won't mark you down if you say 1911, okay? Uh it's it's when China had an emperor, okay? That's what we're talking about. All right. We also sort of have a few periods periodizations that we could say. Now, think about sort of like history that you might have encountered in AP World. I haven't taken AP World in like a
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million years. So, I don't know like And I heard now it's starting like 1500. Is that right? 1300. 1300? Still way way too late. What a tragedy, okay? But it's a it's it's it Whatever it is, so you basically start in like the late medieval period or medieval, okay? We have early China. Okay, this is again really good book on early China. What is early China? Early China basically means the origin of whatever we can talk about when it happens to basically uh the end of the Han Dynasty, about 200
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Common Era, 200 AD, okay? Approximately like that, okay? Appro- roughly. Then we enter We can talk about another era called the Middle Period or Medieval China. And that's from that end of the Han That's a great way I know everybody will hear will This is a better way to think about it. The Three Kingdoms period, right? Okay, the Three Kingdoms period is like the end of early China, you can think about. We're entering a new era at that point, okay? So, you can
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say that's approximately Medieval China, which you go When does quote unquote medieval or middle period China end? So, I mean, you Some people say Do you put it before the Mongols? Do you put it after the Mongols? Is it about 1,000? Okay, I'm just doing really really traditional reign reign dates here. I found in the Ming Dynasty. You don't have to it's approximate, okay? And then the last two dynasties are something like late Imperial China. Sometimes you'll also hear this like early modern
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China. It all depends on what type of historian you're talking to. If you're talking to a European historian, you might say early modern because that's how they talk, okay? Late Imperial China is how like if we if the Chinese historians are together in in the in a in a bus, that's how we go oh late Imperial, right? Cuz we all know what that means, okay? So either one is fine, okay? But just realize this is how you break it down this very long periods, yeah? Of history. All right, usually
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should we look at this? I don't know. Nah. Yeah? No. The computer answered the question. Well, uh I always I mean uh let's let's just we'll take a peek, okay? This is like this really like huh? Let's see. Is it going to go? Okay. Uh this like very foreboding music. Oh, no it did then it then it just like it just All right, let me try one more time. Let me try one more time. Okay, if it goes. This is like a kind of fun sort of like uh Is it going to go? Okay, I'm losing patience with it. Okay,
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let's So basically that was a sort of like it's like a looking at the borders of Chinese uh reigns over time, right? I can show it to you. I'll put a link online, okay? So we're going to get now maybe for the last half hour of class, I'm going to talk about sort of like a few more like big questions, big ways to think about Chinese history, and then we'll do a tour of China, which is like always again really fun. Uh so let's talk about a Chinese history hack. North
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and South, East and West, right? Okay, these are just cardinal directions, right? So we have a Western Zhou and we have an Eastern Zhou, right? We have a Western Han and we have an Eastern Han. That basically means in the early period of China, in early China, basically we have Western capitals and Eastern capitals, okay? Yeah? As time goes on this changes, this shifts, okay? The Tang Dynasty in middle in medieval China, 7th century, 8th century, 9th century, approximately around here.
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There's a still a Western capital and still an Eastern capital, a Chang'an, Xi'an, and Luoyang. But once you get to about the year 1000, this shifts and now we don't have Western and Eastern capitals, we have Northern and Southern capitals. And that's that Beijing and Nanjing, right? You know, Beijing Northern capital, Nanjing Southern capital. So, what's going on? Well, what you have to realize is that over a very, very long period of time, the Chinese people migrated south.
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Okay, there was a major migration of people, okay, from the from the North China plain, okay, to the south as the south is basically filled in with rice agriculture, okay? The south, that area south of the Yangtze River, don't worry, I'll show you where the Yangtze River is in just a sec, it was really swamp and marshland, okay? It was not there population as early as the Han Dynasty, as early as around the year zero, there were people moving down there, okay?
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That picked up over the first thousand years of this era, right? So, from the year zero to about the year 1000, the population moves south. And then by the time you get to that medieval era, sometime in the medieval era, most of the people, most of the population of China lives in the south, okay? And the south actually ends up becoming well, rather wealthy, right? Because they they grow rice, they have surpluses, they pay taxes, okay? Where do they pay taxes to? The north, okay?
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So, this is a very interesting dynamic, right? So, basically, let me just phrase it to you way. You look at it over here. That's That's Dayan Pagoda. Big Goose Pagoda. You'll recognize that in a few weeks from now. That's Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province. It's a very, very historic city. It's basically like a a great number of the early imperial capitals are located there. Okay? This is This is kind of what you might think of South China looking like, right? Mountainous green
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uh water, humid, and rice. Okay? So, that's that's what that's South China in a nutshell. Okay? All right. So, then we go back to That's our map. Okay. Here's This is the Mongol Empire. Okay? Mongol Empire. The Mongols create once the sort of their capital their their reign in China is established, they start they move their capital to Dadu, the Great Capital, which is Beijing. They They are kind of the ones who actually move it to Beijing, right? So, there there Beijing
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actually gets its start not as a Han Chinese capital. Okay? It was actually the northern the northern peoples, right? Non-Han peoples who started it. So, after the Mongol period, you get that Nanjing and Beijing mix. That's in the late the last two dynasties. Southern capital and northern capital. And what you can kind of say, even to this day, is that the economic heart of the country, the most basically profitable part of the country, highest incomes, are in that greater Shanghai
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area. Also in Guangdong, Pearl River Delta area. Okay? Those southern hubs. Okay? Those are the economic engines of the country. The political center of the country is in the north. Okay? And that's basically a bit been that way for a few centuries, actually. Quite a number of centuries, right? And that's what the the southern southerners end up paying for defense, right? The northerners handle frontier defense, right? When you see where Beijing is on a map, and you see where
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historical Mongolia was. Beijing is almost not in China, right? That's why it has all those sandstorms. It's almost in What is it? The Gobi Desert or whatever it is. It's It's really far up north, actually. Um so, that's a sort of Chinese history hack. Think of north, south, east, west. Right? That tells you a lot about what era you're in. Tells you a lot about the sort of geography and the and the sort of geography of power of the era. Okay, talk about north and south, okay?
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Some of you will If you've taken a class with me before, you might have seen this slide before. Let's talk about north and south, okay? What is north China? What is south China? Okay, well, let me just pause here for a minute. W- What is the northern United States? Like, is Is Maryland north? Is it south? It's north. Why do you say it's north? Okay, right. So, you've answered this question by referring to like a historical political geography. And that's great. Because there is no real objective
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answer to this question, right? Aside from doing that. The same is true in China. Basically, in the 20th century, there was a line drawn and it was like, okay, this is This is the Qinling Mountains over here and the Huai the Huai River. Draw a line. If you're to the to the north, that's the north. If you're to the south, that's the south. And that the joke I've always made, right, is that in the I think 1950s I think we went over this 1950s Zhou Enlai basically made it so that if you're
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above that line, you got free subsidized or free central heating from the state. And if you're below that line, you froze. Uh because the south was generally warmer. But, you know, this is the whole thing. It's one of those things where it's like, how do I describe it? I once did a New Year fest- Chinese New Year Spring Festival in Guangyuan, which is in the northern part of Sichuan province. You could imagine how frozen I was. That's pretty far north, but staying south, right?
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That's one of those border places, you know? I went to bed at night with like eight blankets over me. I shared a bed with like a 60-year-old man. And and and for days, and I and there were so many blankets over me, I couldn't move. So, when I woke up, I was just like, "I'm up." And then somebody came and took off the blank I mean, it was just incredible. That it was I don't want to say that's There are many warm parts of the south, don't get me wrong. If you're in Guangdong or Hong
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Kong, that's warm, you know, that's a nice place to be in the winter. But just to know, this is this is a very large area with a very diverse climate, okay? So, that can be really cold. So, this is a Mason-Dixon line, okay? This is kind of like this kind of idea, yeah? Uh but there are cultural, you know, traits that we associate with northerners. There are cultural traits we associate with southerners. Again, nothing is ever absolute, but we can talk about that when we get into more specific
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geographies okay? Let's say political jurisdictions of the PRC today. I, you know, I realize this is a dynastic Chinese history class. Uh so, you might be kind of like, "Why do we need to know this?" And I think the reason you have to know this is because well, you you do need to know the geography of China today to appreciate where things are happening, right? To be able to have a conversation about it. Just realize there are 20 34 total units, 23 provinces. There are
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also these autonomous regions. Tibet is today recognized as autonomous region, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia the Hui Autonomous Region, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. So, there's also special zones, right? Shanghai, Chongqing, and so forth. Um so, you know, just, you know, we can talk more about I have the whole geography quiz for you. Uh and I have the study guide to tell you what exactly you need to know. Okay? One other sort of like way to think about Chinese geography
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is this line. This is called the Heihe-Tengchong Line. And it was so interesting. This summer I finally got a chance to visit Tengchong. And you see, you might not find that impressive. But like actually Tengchong is not a particularly famous place. The only reason why Chinese people across the country know about it is cuz of this line. But it's actually a great place. Uh and it's it's a really fun part. It's in Yunnan Province. I have some photos when we go through the when we go
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through the tour here, right? But the key is is that basically this is 64% of the area of the country. And in 1934 it had 4% of the population. Okay? And this is in 2015 it had 6% of the population. Okay? So this is actually something that hasn't changed all that much, right? Most Chinese people live in the red zone, right? They live in this this area, right? This a very high dense area like, you know, the big cities, you know, city with 2 million people doesn't
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count as anything in China, right? This is all that. Over here Tibet, Xinjiang, lots of land, not so many people, okay? So that's like a sort of big way to do it. All right. So I was going to do Let me just say pronunciation. Should I say this? Let me do it really really quickly so that you know I know many of you probably know Chinese. Uh many of you speak Chinese. Uh you know, Chinese is tonal. That means that it's very hard to be a beginner in this language, right?
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Because you're constantly asking for like hor- you're constantly saying, you know, "Horse, I miss you." But it's really your mom, right? You know, there's there's all the It's it's tricky when you're when you're getting into it, right? Cuz uh cuz the tone makes the difference, right? Just realize that uh maybe just going through a few things here. The Z in the ZH, right? It's like ZH is like a a hard Okay, but these are words that like I sort of encounter in the in in in
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research, right? So, you know, be Oh, sh Okay, A- X, right? You see X, okay? It's like a It's like an SH, right? So, sh right? Bi sha, something like this, okay? So, just know like this is how This is how the pronunciation works, okay? All right, what do I got? All right, let's start uh let's start talking about China's geography. We got like 20 minutes left. Cover the country, okay? I'm going to start purely for no apparent reason in Sichuan province, okay? It's just because this is what my
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PowerPoint told me to do. I I open it up and I was like, all right, let's We got to start somewhere. Let's start over there. Okay, you have probably encountered Sichuan province before. It's actually a pretty famous province. It's got like Compared to other Chinese provinces, it's got a lot of international cachet, in part because look at all the Sichuan restaurants all over the Cambridge-Boston area, right? When Chinese food traveled, right, Sichuan Chuan's high was a sort of kind
1:00:26
of cuisine that just traveled. A lot of times the restaurants are not owned or operated by people from Sichuan, but they just created Sichuan restaurant. I don't know why. But it was like there it is. You also sometimes see Sechuan, all right? That's again that older transliteration system. Same thing. It refers to that province, okay? There it is in western China. Sichuan is famous for spicy food, okay? A lot of parts of China today have spicy food, to be frank. It's also famous for
1:00:55
hot pot, right? Sichuan is like where hot power Chongqing. Now, I again, I'm sort of like biased here because I'm a historian of the imperial period. I sort of take Chongqing and Sichuan together. Culturally, they are together. They all speak a very similar kind of Mandarin dialect, okay? But Chongqing was set was siphoned off from Sichuan in the late 1990s, okay? And it's now it's sort of its own sort of it's a separate political entity today. But you can see Chongqing and
1:01:28
Sichuan, culturally they're kind of in the This is Chongqing right here, okay? Right there, okay? It's also home to Let me just say one thing about hot pot. The The problem I feel about talking about Chinese food today is that now China has been so flattened. And in a sense, it's a good thing. It's It's part of the progress of the country. It's part of the wealth of the country. But now every place has hot pot. Right? It's not like, you know, you're going to go and you Oh, I got to
1:01:57
go to Sichuan. I got to go try the hot pot. It's like you're going to get hot pot in Kunming and Yunnan. You're going to get You're going to get hot pot in Beijing. Whatever they I realize they have a Beijing hot pot. It's different. I get it. But the point is nowadays, if you're in a provincial capital, you can pretty much get the food of all the other parts of China. It might not be good. But they will have it, okay? So it's like it's like it's kind of like Mexican
1:02:20
in the US, right? Massachusetts has it, right? Like if you want to eat it, they they have it, right? Is it as good as Arizona? I don't know. But like you get what I'm saying, all right? So it's also home to the panda, right? Sichuan's most famous export besides the peppercorns okay? Right. The panda, right? We talk a lot about the panda. The Just realized something about the panda. Just realize it is not important in Chinese history, okay? I I'm not I'm not
1:02:50
I I'm not breaking any hearts here. It's a very, very lovable vegetarian bear. It fits so well with so many of the aesthetics of modernity in so many ways, right? Like it is sort of friendly, vegetarian, and a bear. How How do you get that combination, right? I mean, it's like evolution, right? I mean, okay, it is actually a bear, okay? So it is like related to like the Russian brown bear and all of that stuff. How did this happen? Well, I don't know how many years ago a bear
1:03:25
moved to Sichuan and said, "I like it." And then just said, "I'm just going to eat bamboo all the time, right?" And so, like so basically you ended up with that. Okay, uh the the panda became a symbol in actually really the communist era. Because the panda was not associated with imperial symbols, right? The dragon is an imperial symbol. The tiger is a very ancient symbol. The elephant even is an ancient symbol. All of these things like are fair game. You can see
1:03:56
them in imperial history. You can see them in ancient history. The Nobody talked about the panda. Nobody was impressed by the panda. Okay? But then that's why perfect, we're having a communist revolution, we're throwing out all the old. We got a new animal right here. It's the panda. And it worked. You just got to say it worked. It was incredible marketing. And now it it's it's on the World Wildlife Foundation's, like it's their emblem, you know? I mean, this is like it's the
1:04:18
most famous bear in the world. Let's face it. Uh and then the other thing is with Sichuan you get this great culture of tea houses that go back to the 20th century. Sichuan also had a great number of mafias. Like we could talk about mafias in China. The south was loaded with them. And they would hang out in the tea houses and there was so many interesting things that happened there. It's got a great lifestyle. The way that people talk about life in Sichuan, they
1:04:42
say it's "han ai." Right? It's like easygoing, easy life. There's even this expression, "When you're young, don't go to Sichuan. When you're old, don't leave it." Okay? There's every There's expressions in China for like everything that kind of give you advice. And this is one of those advices, right? So, I I didn't listen to this expression. I went. And you know, you can see what am I doing now, right? So, so it continued. Um One interesting thing about Sichuan is that it is a basin. It is a
1:05:12
geological basin. What that means is that it is surrounded on basically all all sides. To get into Sichuan is difficult. To get out, there is one really easy way to get out, which is through the Yangtze River, but it only flows in one direction. So as you can send rice out of Sichuan, you can send people out of Sichuan, but getting into Sichuan is rather difficult. That is actually why across Chinese history, it's been a place to flee to. So during the Tang Dynasty, we're going to have a
1:05:45
really really big rebellion called the An Lushan Rebellion. It's one of the most famous, devastating civil wars, rebellions of Chinese history. The emperor will go from Xi'an, he will go from Chang'an. Don't worry, you you will memorize all these places. You will know what I'm talking about. And he will flee into Sichuan. And actually, this actually happened in the 20th century as well. Some of you will know this, right? Chiang Kai-shek's government, Chiang Kai-shek's government, when Japan
1:06:12
invaded from the east, right? And Nanjing fell, the government basically had to move to the west and it moved to Chongqing, which is again basically the Sichuan region, okay? So that's where they held out for the war, more or less. So just realize this is a big part of the sort of geography of Sichuan that gives it its interesting flavor. There's another expression that I love here. When China has yet to fall into chaos, Sichuan is the first to fall. When China
1:06:39
has yet to be pacified, Sichuan has yet to be pacified. Again, cuz it's hard to get to, right? So that gives it a unique culture in a way, you know? Really interesting. Okay. Now we continue on with our tour and let's go We're going to go from Sichuan. You can see where Sichuan is right here, okay? That's Chongqing. Now we're going to go to the northeast. We're going to go to Shanxi province, okay? Now Shanxi province is if you love history and you take this
1:07:03
class, this is province you really got to go to. It's loaded with history. You basically cross the Qinling Mountains down here in the southern part of the province. You get right up here. The It's called the Guanzhong region. Don't worry about it. But Xi'an, right? Western peace literally, or Chang'an was its older medieval name. That's the capital of the province. That tower that you see right there, that was built a very long time ago. That was built in the medieval period. It is not very
1:07:31
common across China to see towers that are that old. It's an incredibly impressive piece of architecture. You probably know this place because of course the Terracotta Warriors are here, all right, more or less. There This is where you would go if you're going to go see them. And that's certainly something to go see. We of course will cover them in probably a few weeks, okay? So we will cover all of this. Let's talk a little bit about local food, right? Again, the caveat
1:07:57
being nowadays in Xi'an, you can get whatever fish you want. You can get hot pot, whatever. So again, you know, it's all flattened. But there are still local tastes and there are still local specialties. Northerners in general eat wheat. They eat you know, not not as rice heavy. So there it's a noodle eating culture, okay? Most of North China eats noodles. In Shaanxi Xi'an is famous for its all different types of noodles and noodle type dishes. This is a Sauteed Mian, a
1:08:28
Qishan Sauteed Mian, right? So Sauteed Mian is it's from a county. It's like a sort of It's a very nice. It's got like a vinegar taste. It's a little spicy. It's a noodle dish. This is Does anybody know what this is? Yeah, Paomo. Yangrou Paomo, right? This is a lamb sort of You take a like it looks like a naan bread and you you you you you destroy your hands by cutting it up into a a million little pieces and then they pour like a soup in it with lamb. It's delicious. It's super heavy.
1:08:59
So like when you eat this, like you don't eat anything else for the rest of the day, okay? Uh so it's it's it's fun. It's it's it's it's really good. Now, let me just tell you when you're learning Chinese history for the first time, you're learning Chinese geography for this first time, you will say, "How is this true? This is totally not fair. The province right next to Shanxi province is called Shanxi province." Are you kidding me? Right? Like you say, "Couldn't they couldn't they put it in
1:09:26
another place?" Yeah, listen. You just got to learn it. You just got to learn it. In English, this will be transliterated, okay? The one that I was talking about, the ancient capital with the terracotta warriors and all that stuff, two A's, okay? There will always be two A's. Shaanxi, it's in the third tone, okay? It's another tone. If you come over to this one, you go east, it's the first tone, one A, right? Shanxi, okay? So, for a Chinese person, these don't sound alike.
1:09:57
But when you're when you're in the US and you're like, "Okay, what's going on?" You're like, "Seriously? Did I have to learn this?" Yes, you have to learn it. So, not the same, okay? It actually will make it easy for the geography quiz cuz you'll know that approximately in this area there's a place and you and it's approximately spelled the same way, okay? Shanxi province, really great place, lots of interesting stuff, lots of great Daoist temples, old temples to
1:10:21
visit. Also, noodles, right? Dao Xiao Mian, I believe is from here. This is like a knife-cut noodle is famous from this region, you know? Hang uh the hanging temples over there, that's really fun, okay? Continue on. Let's go. I think our next one Well, let's go. All right, it's coming. Okay, Beijing. Okay, the imperial capital, Beijing. So, if you look over here, we went from Sichuan and we're going to the northeast, okay? We went through Shanxi, we went through Shanxi. I sort of cut
1:10:50
through Hebei, okay? And then now we're here in Beijing. How many of you have been to Beijing? You've been there? You've been there? You've been there? How was it what you remember? It was kind of smoggy. It was kind of smoggy? Yeah. Okay. What do you remember? Uh Forbidden Palace. Mhm. Yeah, the palace is incredible. Yeah. And what else do I remember? The weather is terrible. Look, you just got to You just got to say the weather [snorts] it's like hot and then all of a sudden
1:11:19
it rains and it's like it's not a nice rain. It's like a killer rain and it's like I don't have an umbrella big enough to handle this. And then there's tons of traffic. I realized just being there this summer, even though like all the cars are many cars are now electric and there's great public transit everywhere, the traffic in Beijing is still really bad. So it's like whenever we were like, "I'll be there in a half hour." It's like, "No, just say an hour." Okay? It
1:11:42
was It's It's really But it's loaded with historical sites. It's an incredible place. I've been there, you know, probably a dozen times in my life, you know, over the years. And I've seen You don't see everything, right? You could always go back and see something new there. So it's it's really really fun. Of course, many people who go to see the Great Wall will go to Beijing to see it. You actually don't need to be in Beijing to see it. There's Great Wall in
1:12:06
Gansu province out west. There's Great Wall in other provinces, but Beijing has the most famous ones. Like the panda, just realized that this {quote} Great Wall was often times not very important. It was a little bit more important than the panda, okay? It was mainly It was important in certain periods of time in history. In other periods of time just nobody cared, okay? It just depend who was like controlling Beijing at the time, okay? We'll get into all of this,
1:12:31
okay? But just realize I I'll say one thing here. I was going to say I have a little video here. I'll show you about Dongbei. Has anybody ever been to Dongbei? You've been to Dongbei? Why did you go to Dongbei? It's north This is northeast China, Manchuria. Where did you go? Because I was born there. Mhm. Oh, no way. You're born in Jilin province. Fantastic. Fantastic. Where else? You went there? Uh go skiing. You went skiing. Oh, nice. Okay, yeah. You went to like Heilongjiang? Yeah, yeah,
1:13:00
yeah. Nice. I I was in Liaoning this summer. I had a very nice time. Great historical place. I was going to say so Dongbei is definitely unique. It's unique in a number of ways. So, you will see if you go up to Heilongjiang, one of the provinces, you go to Harbin, it's like almost in Russia. And it does have some old sort of Russian architecture that's around. It's very interesting to kind of see. Manchuria is very important in the 20th century. You realize that like during
1:13:29
World War II, it's a big side of contention. Japan sort of sets up a puppet government in Manchuria. I guess I would say what would I say about it? Just realize that first of all I I don't This is again one of those things I noticed over the years that people in China today associate people with from Dongbei with being very funny. With being humorous, okay? And there's all of these folks I'll just see if this see if my video plays. You could see you could watch these shows on Chinese TV.
1:14:00
It's like a humorous talk show. So, so she's like from Dongbei. She's got a Dongbei accent. And and and it there's this like there's like this kind of humor and I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it's like people just think Dongbei people are funny. I don't I I I I I I don't know what Is there a scientific basis of this? I don't know, but just realize that like that's what people will say, okay? So, do you think it's true? Yeah. You think it's true? You think
1:14:31
it's true? They're a little bit funnier. Like you know, I don't know. Like are there parts of America where you'd say like, "Okay, people from that state are just funny." Do we have that? Where are people funny? I don't think Massachusetts people are that funny. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm from here. Where are people funny? I feel like it's more that we know where people are excuse the like jerks. Oh, okay. I see. I see. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
1:14:55
We know where people have attitude. Yeah. Yeah. Attitude for sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you know, humor it's kind of an interesting question, right? Like like who's funny? Who's not? Right? But like this is one thing just to kind of throw in there, right? All right. So, to continue on we don't have a ton of time left. I want to take if you go south from Donbei, from northeastern China in that area all around Beijing. Basically the south of Beijing mainly, you get to this North China Plain and
1:15:23
it's flat. This is a very very old area. Okay. What I mean by that is people have been farming here for thousands of years. Very very early Chinese history starts here you know, is around here in a big big way. And this is a fascinating place because on the one hand it's so important. It's near at least the capital in the later eras. It's also where the Yellow River sort of it gets to the North China Plain and this is where the Yellow River gets really violent. Because the North China
1:15:56
Plain is flat. So, the Yellow River every few hundred years changes course across the North China Plain and you can it's devastating floods, crop failures and this chaos. That's in a way one of the things you could say this is again a generalization northerners have a sort of like let's say the state has been more interventionist in the north, right? The state kind of originates in the north, right? Around in some ways the control of the Yellow River cuz you have to control it.
1:16:25
Is the south very far far away, right? It's less controlled, more laissez-faire. More like oh, you know, Tiān gāo huángdì yuǎn, right? Heaven's high, the emperor's far away, right? It's a different relationship, you know? That's what's this is sort of this is one of the ways that you you think a little bit about south-north, yeah? Uh Confucius is from the north China plain, right? He's from Shandong province. We'll encounter him in a bit. A number of the big early Confucian philosophers
1:16:51
are from this area. Okay? So, it's got like an association, you could say, with um with with Confucianism and with ancient learning and with, you know, again, the area around the late imperial capitals, as I mentioned. But, it's also a place, you could say, of in sometimes like lawlessness. Okay? And rebellions, right? That threaten the state. There's one of those big Chinese novels, Shuihu Zhuan, right? Water Margin. This is the We've already went over it. My god, just
1:17:20
one class, we went over three of the big novels today, yeah? Uh takes place, you could say, in this area. It's like outlaws, right? So, there's It's a very interesting location. It's a very interesting place. All right, 2 minutes left. I use it By the way, I always use like all of class time. Okay? I just like I just keep talking. You know what I mean? Like I just can't shut up about this stuff. I apologize, guys, but like I just love it. Okay, one really, really, really,
1:17:43
really, really fascinating thing that's important in dynastic Chinese history is this thing, north to south, the Grand Canal. This was like the superhighway of dynastic China. It is constructed, believe it or not, you won't believe this, but it's like when I tell you this, it's like, "Well, where is it? Go back. Go back, please." Here we go. Where's my date? No, it doesn't There Okay, whatever. I'll just tell you. The origins of the Grand Canal go back to the 7th century.
1:18:10
Okay? So, you got me This is one of those things in China where you're like, "What? Really? What do you mean? You mean like a canal was constructed in the 7th century and then remained being used until like 100 years ago?" Yes, basically yes. Uh it doesn't It didn't flow in exactly the same area. The origins of the Grand Canal were actually the southern This This one that you see here. It connected the Tang Dynasty capital of Luoyang with the south. Okay? Then in later years, it
1:18:39
got expanded. And eventually in the late in the later period, it basically connects Beijing and the south. It goes all the way down. You could say like to Nanjing, Hangzhou, that area. All the way from north. It's like you get on there and you and you can go north-south. It's like you can transport grain. The emperor can travel it if he's going to the south, right? It's a super important way that the empire was connected. Today there's high-speed rail. At that time there was the Grand
1:19:06
Canal. Okay, I realize we're out of time. So, go home, tell your friends, tell your friends, enjoy the weekend. I'll see you on Monday. We'll finish up our tour of China and continue onward.
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