PAC2 –macastillomu The changing Dragon: becoming Chinese

in the east of Asia

As Peter O'Toole said in "The Last Emperor" while teaching Pu-yi

how to ride a bicycle: "Head up, shoulders back-- as in life!"

1. Becoming Han-ren. An ordeal of the highest order.

1. The question of identity. A flashback (from the current picture to the
past)
This chapter wants to do justice to the changing picture of the East area in Asia.
No matter how backwards we plunge into Chinese history, up to 2000 years, the
sinicization of the adjacent cultures suffered the great presence of her
neighbourgs. Interested in diversity and familiar with the historic developments
in European lands I have been puzzled by a contradiction related to Asian
changing borders. I would like to dive with this paper into the dozens of oft-
forgotten peoples involved in East Asia sweeping history. When we consider the
population of China we are dealing with Han-Chinese and some others. This
etcaetera group is very heteregenous. To start with the numbers are small but
they cover a large spectrum of families as we will see.

Does nature decide who we are? I start my pack-2 convinced that we are made
by culture. But China was shaped by different forces. After the first thousand
years of fighting form the northern lands of the Huang-he the Laoshan culture
was finding a wayout southward, while preventing the nord from taking part. In
771 BC the northern Quanrong Tribes from the Ordos region force the Zhou to
move their capital eastward from Shaanxi to Luoyang. This marks the decline of
centralization and the rise of regional power i.e. a large number of feudal states.
During the Shang and western Zhou, the northern tribes are agricultural. During
the eastern Zhou, the tribes practice husbandry and decorated their artifacts
with zoomorphic motifs. Those changes will be mentioned in our last chapter.
Jared Diamond advances an answer to most changes, and it was probably Geo-
graphy:

China does not have mountain ranges that transect China. In Europe big rivers flow
radially — the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, and the Elbe — and they don't unify
Europe. In China the two big rivers flow parallel to each other, are separated by low-lying
land, and were quickly connected by canals. For those geographic reasons, China was
unified in 221 B.C. and has stayed unified most of the time since then, whereas for
geographic reasons Europe was never unified. <1.1>

I understand that the ideas about Chineseness have changed over the years, and
are also changing elsewhere, even in Asia. The notion that identity relates to a
political entity known as the Middle Kingdom started with a name ‘Chinese’. But
clearly after reading my sources I utterly confirm what Aldous Huxley wrote in
1935 “it will be clear that 'racemixture, has in the past been beneficial”.
1.2. Identity bonds. Half truths and other white lies.
Gish Jen, a Hyphenated Asian, was questioning himself about what is to be, or
not to be, Chinese nowadays.
A few years ago in Hong Kong, for example, I had heard Chinese intellectuals question
whether anyone was really Chinese anymore. After all, they joked, the Chinese in Hong
Kong were so British, the Chinese in Taiwan so Japanese; the Chinese on the mainland so
communist. <1.2>

But if it is not politics perhaps we can assume that the Han identity is in some
sense homogeneous, as they make up to 92% of the population. But in what
sense? China's linguistic near-unity is also puzzling in comparison with the
linguistic disunity of other parts so I will spray some doubts on its genetic unity.
The very notion of minorities (minzu) is political:
Indeed the Han have a very long recorded history of their dealings with various
"barbarians", who were divided into "raw" (sheng) and "cooked" (shu) "according to
whether they were cultured enough to accept moral edification and eventual
civilization." <1.3>

The southern Han popular mythology states that their ancestors migrated by
stages to southern China because their "homeland" was occupied by "barbarian"
tribes. No doubt, this conspiracy gives extra bonus at group pride (old dynasties
were all from north, Huang-ho river and surrounding, weren’t they?). But the
interlocking migration pattern tells them away.
To make matters worse, I would venture into an old hat trick: the case of Hakka.
Clearly a Han-ren situation. To compare, read this <1.4>:
The Hakka were called “guest people”when they began migrating into Yue-speaking
territory, and the exotic name seems to have stuck quite simply because, until fairly
recently, many Cantonese and Min mistakenly thought that the Hakka were not Chinese
at all, but rather some kind of strange non-Han "barbarians" like the Tai or the Miao.”

That the south of China is more heterogeneous than the north of China seems to
be true without exception, from history to geography, ecology and culture, and
now genetics. The greater heterogeneity of southern China is likely to reflect the
greater geographic fragmentation of this area, resulting in greater isolation of
local populations, probably mostly determined by the nature of the environment
as Cavalli-Sforza as shown. This southern population had more in common with
their cousin from the bordering states (Laos, Cambodja, Thailand, Myanmar,
Malaysia and Vietnam) than with their northern couterparts, which in turn were
more related to Mongol, Tibetan and Nepali groups <1.5>.

2. Civilised vs barbarians.

2.1. Variety across time and space

My powerful standpoint was language diversity, past and present. A glance at a
linguistic map is an eye-opener to all of us accustomed to thinking of China as
monolithic. In addition to its Chinese language(s) China also has some 160
smaller languages, many of them with just a few thousand speakers. But Chinese
characters stood as a visible symbol of the dominance of Chinese culture in East
Asia.
With its vast area and long history of settlement, present China ought to have
hundreds of distinct cultures and peoples. In fact, all the evidence indicates that
it once did. Coming from a modern uniform Europe we ponder, what happened to
them all? Two thousand years ago the southern parts of the country were
variously inhabited by speakers of Miao-Yao, Austroasiatic, and Tai-Kadai
languages until they were largely replaced by their northeners Sino speaking
neighbors. On the northern lands, the inimitable Wall was at the same time a
door and a doorway to the swift peoples of these language families: the Tibetan
cousins, the large Altaic group with its Mongolic branch and the Turkic gangs.
From the beginnings of literacy in China over 3,000 years ago, it has
expanded with no broken scenarios, at most some short interludes. This is a clear
connexion between the Chinese world and its area of influence towards the
south. From the north there were fighting neighbours, some who were anihilated
and some who took hold of the Empire of the Middle.
Suffice it to say that they were not only the tribes of yesteryear, as I can see
now, I found a bountiful of names about nonsensical places in lost areas of the
reconstructed maps at times I never foresaw I could be searching. I tried to
strike a balance between the old and the new, but only the reader can assess
that. There are three parts here. Firstly, the initial centuries until the end of the
Han Dinasty when the eastern people become Chinese; then the next millennia
just before the mongols hold power and the process of sinicization took over. To
conclude, an afterthought that balances the Chinese perspective I read in our
course materials.

2.2. A glimpse at the course materials

2.2.1. Towards a Confucian state.
One main point is that the no-chinese peoples appear out of focus, they are
shown against the landscape of the civilised centre. Following the information
provided in our learning modules 1 and 2. I gathered the relevant points (I relate
to the number of page in every module) to explain the premonitory sentence
read in page 10: “a l’any 221 un imperi multiètnic que es va imposar”:
I will intersperse the scarse information given in our module 1:
From the Shang people > “cavalls que tiren carros… mòmies caucàsiques” (1.27). Also
the peoples on the Sichuan, these discoveries: Sanxindui de l’any 1000 a. C. & “els
barbars interiors” sense escriptura … pobles Shu i Ba (1.29). From the Zhou: “magma de
tribus … que la proto-cultura xinesa començava a alterar” (1.31). At the battle of Muye,
Wuwang allies with: “tribus occidentals (qiang) I donen pas als Zhou orientals” (1.31).
The development of a feudal system: “que estava incorporant als bàrbars” (1.33).

I will summarise the contents from our module 2 as follows:

Entre els 770-500 els bàrbars interiors quedaren absorbits … El regne de Chu amb un
component bàrbar important (p. 9). Les terres incivilitzades del sud … van patir trasllats
de població (p.15). Sima Qian va portar informació dels siong-nu. Han Wudi (>87 a. C.)
va fer l’expansió per l’Àsia Central.
L’ocupació del nou territory … (i) la fixació de les fronteres exteriors va portar a fer
alliances (p.21) d’aquí el concepte de heqin ‘relacions amistoses’ (p.21) ..amb dos tribus
Yuezhi I xiong-nu. Al corredor de Gansu van portar colonies militars en gran nombre (fins
a 700.000).
L’expansió exterior al sud contra els germans Trung per Ma Yuan i Yunnan dels
emperadors Guang Xi i Guang Dond (p. 25). L’expansió cap a l’est per Gansu va arribar
fins el Pamir ila Ferghana an les expedicions de Ban Chao al 73 I 94 d. C. (p.26).
2.2.2. Living in a confusionable melting pot.
I gathered the relevant points from modules 3 to explain the premonitory
sentence read in page 5: “els regnes del nord d’origen bàrbar però fortament
sinitzats” and as stated in objective n.2 “conéixer aquest procés” (p. 6):
I will interweave the scattered information given in our module 3:
The way to pay the barbars was threefold and very dear: ransom, princes or
prized goods. But war won the upper hand in most of cases. The army went
anywhere to find fighters from any origin. Those soldiers were sent along the
outer borders getting greater interaction with the Chinese way of life <2.1>.
The new groups onto the scene: Xianbei and Run-run (relatives of our Avars). The
transfer of whole clans such as Xianbei and Qiang took place. Who else? The
proto-Tibetan groups of the Di and Qiang quarreling for 150 years on the west
borders.
Defecting Chinese crossed borders and also made a life for some counsellors who
could see the way of life of those ‘peculiar barbars’. The first nations (Man, Liao
or Li) had to escape to the higher lands. The Dynasty graded the civil servants in
the Administration with 9 grades (jinpin) and in so doing, set a clear way of
becoming Chinese.
Finally at module 4 for the first time we get some idea of some connexions better
explained. The new rulers proposed to be a part of a multiethnic empire with the
Emperor Wudi from the Tang. The new player was the tribe of the Turkic
Khaganate (the Yue in Chinese sources and forerunners of present Muslims
Uigurs) made an advance westwards and entered in contact at the end of the Sui
with the intention of showing no compromise. Events proved resilient and the
Turks were successful at showing their own set of beliefs, political ambitions and
had the upperhand in some moments. But they are not the aim of our research
by now.

2.3. A troublesome combination?

There is some hindsight in my search. Some times I found pondered voices that
shown what Gernet wrote about the ‘melting pot’ or ‘mosaic of peoples’:
L’aport de la steppe, des confins sino-tibetanisn et de la Chine du sud a été capital dans
la formation de la civilisation chinoise. La influence de la cultures voisines s’est fait
sentir dans tous les domaines : procedés d’attelage, science des plantes medicinales et
des posisons, art nautique (p.173).

My other striking notice comes from the Russian Orientalist Lev N. Gumilev who
strongly advocated at the narrowing scope of Han-ren versus Barbarians <2.2>.
He argumented the case of the Xiong-nu as interested in barter, trade with the
Empire, and that neither the Qing nor Han took any interest in exhanging with
their northern neighbours adding that in their clashes the nomads never took
territorial concessions! Not conciliatory enough Gumilev adds the showcase of
the epoch-making Touba sinizised as Wei (see 3.2):
Yet all the measures (change language of administration, the Xianbei dress and hair
style forbidden) failed to reconcile the Chinese population.

3. Historic mobility of people: Two models of systematic Sinicization

We can refer to three main areas of developments to display the Sinification of
the Eastern Asia: mobility of peoples and languages, agriculture and arts; the
systems of writing; and finally linguistic borrowings.
As we have seen in the previous chapter the role of civilised people was deeply
rooted in Chinese minds. I foresaw the risk at confronting the Zhongguo Ren
(Chinese people -Han) with the others, exploring the touchy issue of migrations
(with adaptation of minorities or pockets of cut-off tribes).
The four directions are divided in two parts per convenience: south and north.
Anytime some fringe parties are relevant, they are dealt with, showing some
trends for the future of the Chinese expansion.

In this chapter I will explore the variety of peoples who came in touch with the
Chinese empire and are oft-hidden in the vastness of the rich civilisation of
China. "At last the whole world is mine," the first Han emperor, Liu Bang, is said
to have declared as he claimed the imperial throne in 202 B.C. Far from the
whole world, his power extended across a territory only about half as large as
today's China. Moving forwards, the “United China” -as the name clearly tells
‘Zhong Guo’ (the Central Country)-, or the place where everythings starts and
from where everything is controlled-, for example only one time zone where the
US mainland has got three! Somehow is pretended that the relationship
between the Chinese and Barbarians had, through marriage between royal
families and meetings leading to alliances, cemented political and kinship ties of
unity and political friendship, and formed close economic and cultural relations,
laying a solid foundation for the ultimate founding of a unified nation. Peace is
required –the word pax comes from ‘pactus’, which implies ‘two parties’: union,
empire and civilised are equated.
The film Hero shows the First Qin emperor pondering the meaning of the
outstanding character “espasa” at the end of the film. He sums up: ‘peace’.
Likewise, twenty years later, the victorous Han above mentioned put his capital
in the city of Changan ("eternal peace"), whose ruins lie today in the suburbs of
its bustling, tourist-packed successor, Xian ("western peace").

But mostly idyllic lies can not hide the blunt truth. Everybody is aware of the Qin
dynasty (or Chin, from which "China" derives) being the first dynasty to weld
China's quarreling kingdoms into a single state. To put it short, it was cruel and
soon collapsed. Either under the pressure of strife or appeased from the royal
treasure - as Gernet shown in his book- Barbarians were not accepted unless
sinizised. From Li Chi, ca. the end of the Chou dynasty, describing the
surrounding peoples <3.1> .

3.1. The South(west)ern lands: From Qi’n to Yuan.

In this part we have to focus on well-known spaces. The central area in the
southwest is definitely the Sichuan Basin. Among the Chinese it often is said that
"Sichuan is the first province to declare independence and the last to be reunited
after there is peace." Because the Chengdu Plain's rich soil and flourishing
economy made it an important strategic post, and for 2000 years both warlords
and statesmen prized it. These lands were capable of a wholly self-sufficience
from the rest of the mainland. Let us notice that today form the largest regional
sub-group of China's Han people: the Sichuanese.
From this standpoint, I will move successively towards Yunnan, the anammese
(Viet) borders and Tibetan interactions in this section. As we move some millenia
backwards we meet an interesting picture. I will make headways from the outline
given by Jared Diamond’s Empire of uniformity (see sources). He states:
With the Chou dynasty the people of the Huan-ho Basin started to move southwards and
this produce a large scale migration of the peoples that were catched in between.
China's Chou Dynasty, from 1111 B.C. to 256 B.C., describes the conquest and
absorption of most of China's non-Chinese-speaking population by Chinese-speaking
states <3.2>.

A. Sichuan enters in scene. Their first recorded inhabitants were the Ba and
Shu peoples, who lived in what was then called Liangzhou from about 2000 BC.
The Shu people lived on the Chengdu Plain while the Ba kingdom was centered in
Eastern Sichuan.
The Qin Dynasty, in its drive to establish a single rule over all Chinese societies,
invades and subdues some Thai principalities or kingdoms located in what are
now Sichuan and Yunnan areas, like those of the Pa and the Ngio. These
kingdoms are annexed placing a part of those groups considered ancestors of
present-day Thais under central Chinese rule.
In 316 B.C., the rising semi-barbarian kingdom of Qin conquered the Shu and Ba
peoples, and turned them into prefectures in order to take advantage of the
fertile plain and secure his hold on Sichuan, he moved thousands of Qin faithful
to Chengdu, the former Shu Kingdom’s capital. Efforts were made to develop the
mountainous region thereafter. The Qin kingdom, under the soon-to-be Emperor
Qin Shi Wang, then went on to conquer all of China.
This ushered a new age for Sichuan - the settled and more sophisticated peoples
of the Yellow River valley migrated to the Sichuan Basin, intermarried with the
local Shu and Ba, which will take part in our new move southwards.

B. Behind the cloudy scenery of Yunnan. Around 200 B.C. forces of the
Chinese Han Dynasty invade Yunnan in order to have an unrestricted land
communication with India (yun in Chinese means "clouds" and nan "south").
Sima Qian, the author of The Records of the Historian, was among the emissaries
sent by Emperor Wu on his way to India to inquire about the teachings of
Buddha. In his writing on the southwest indigenous peoples- the first
comprehensive record of that region- he mentions more than twenty native
groups, the ancestors of contemporary minorities. To summarise, the province of
Yunnan shows today a perfect patchwork of many ethic populations living side by
side. That should have been the situation at the Han times.

On the other hand, tribes began emigration from the steppes mainly to the
southwest and southeast for better pasture. Weakness of Han's court also
encouraged the tribes to move further into China. For example Tu fa tribe, (an
offshoot of the Tui Yin, part of the strong Xiabei) settled in the eastern
mountainous area of today Qinghai province.

Between the year 122 B.C.-51 a.C. the small proto-Thai Kingdom of Aliao (the
kingdom remains widely independent as a Chinese vassal until 225) is formed by
inhabitants in Yunnan and migrants from territories earlier settled by proto-Thais
but then conquered by Chinese armies. Already at this stage, a tendency is
established for those ethnic groups seen as ancestors of present-day Thais to
move southwards to evade Chinese pressure. This trend continued throughout
the centuries. However, the Thais at that early time did not seem to flee from
Chinese rule as a complete group or as an expelled nation. The whole ethnic Thai
group somehow splits, with each of the two groups developing independently in
the following centuries. Those in the north (the areas of present-day Yunnan and
neighboring Chinese provinces) develop their culture and language with Chinese
and Annamese (Vietnamese) influences and more and more are assimilated into
Chinese and Vietnamese societies.
After this initial contact, the upper classes of these indigenous peoples were
culturally assimilated by the Han Chinese and parts of the Thai populations
remained in Chinese-ruled areas, intermarried with Chinese, assimilated and
finally became Chinese. Confucian schools were built with the support of the
Chinese government. However, the Chinese influence reached only the urban
areas, and the lifestyle of the natives living in the countryside was left
undisturbed until the twentieth century.
During the Era of Three Kingdoms in China (220-589), southern Chinese troops
attack Thai settled areas, beat the Thais in battle and submit them to the rule of
the King of Sichuan.
By the mid-seventh century Thais in their former areas of settlement, today's
Chinese Yunnan and southern Sichuan provinces, rebel against the Chinese and
succeed in winning back their sovereignty. Out of this victory grows the kingdom
Nanchao (650-902), first ruled by King Sinulo. Instead of trying to subdue this
new kingdom through military force, the Chinese Emperor Kao Tsung of the Tang
Dynasty rather accepts its existence and binds it to China through a treaty of
friendship.

C. From the high lands of Tu-fan. The dynasty also had to deal with Qiang
(and Di) on the western border. The Qiang, nominal ancestor of modern Tibetans,
had begun carrying out campaigns of invasion but never were successful. They
played their part in the “great game of war” and eventualy were a frequent ally
with the Han court against Xianbei and the Xiongnu although it sometimes allied
with Xiongnu to fend off joint attacks by the Han and Xianbei.
That being the state of affairs, when from further west, Tibet emerged as a
unified state and a mighty empire under Emperor Songtsen Gampo. They were
known as Tu-fan or Tubo. With his rule, an era of political and military greatness
and territorial expansion started that lasted for three centuries. Two landmarks
were Trisong Detsen (755-797) who expanded the Tibetan empire by conquering
parts of China and invading her capital Chang'an in 763 so that China had to pay
an annual tribute to Tibet which lasted 20 years. A peace treaty concluded
between Tibet and China in 821 reads as follows:
Tibet and China shall abide by the frontiers of which they are now in occupation. All to
the east is the country of great China; and all to the west is, without question, the
country of great Tibet. Henceforth, on neither side shall there be waging of war nor
seizing of territory. <3.3>

By mid-VIIIth century three powers are consolidated in the area. As the Tibetan
expansion threatens the Chinese at the southwest frontiers, the Chinese Emperor
Ming Li of the Tang Dynasty enters into alliances with local Thai and other
principalities at the southern and southwestern border of the Chinese empire.
Among the kingdoms with which the Chinese form such an alliance is Nanchao
with the Sionulo Dinasty (650-902), being his king Pilaoko recognized by the
Chinese court as Prince of Yunnan with the task of repelling all danger at the
Chinese southwest border. This gives the Thais an excuse to launch a war of
conquest against Tibet. Nanchao swaps chances on both sides becoming a power
to be considered in Southeast Asia and south China at the eyes of the weak Tang
dynasty. The last fifty years of the Sinulo dinasty they expanded towards
Vietnam and Chengdu with uncertain gains. To conclude:
Thereafter, for a considerable period of time Nanchao is not mentioned in
Chinese annals. Common belief is that the following three-and-one-half centuries
of Nanchao's relations with China were more peaceful than the last two-and-one-
half centuries. As troublesome neighbor (or what Chinese officials would have
considered as such) the Nanchao kingdom would certainly have figured more
prominently in Chinese records than it actually did for the next three-and-one-
half centuries <3.4>.
For several centuries, Nanchao will, for most of the time, remain an ally of China
and in the course of late history become more and more Chinese in its character.
In 1254 Kublai Khan annexes Nanchao. Waves of Thai migrants move south,
especially into the then already existing Thai state Sukhothai, considerably
enhancing Sukhothai's population and power base.

3.2. The north: the ever-lasting clash of two modus vivendi

The Loess region was the meeting zone between several ethnic groups. It was
located in a crossroads area with their four directions: the Tibetan Plateau, the
Xinjiang area, the Mongolian Plateau and proper Qin flat lands.
These communities of nomadic people move from place to place, rather than
settling down in one location. Many cultures have been traditionally nomadic
raising herds and move with them so as not to deplete pasture beyond recovery
in any one area.
To some generations of war-mongering short periods of peaceful settlements
followed.
The remnants, just escaped annihilation, conceded defeat, began migrating out
of the Mongolians steppes and disappeared as a distinct group of herdsmen from
the records of Chinese history once and for all. Others assimilated into other
tribes by intermarriage. Those herdsmen helped one party again the other to
gain something in return. The more they engaged in commerce with the Chinese,
the more they preferred staying near the dynasty's border, to facilitate trade,
instead of residing on the steppes of Manchuria and Mongolia.
To summarise: there were diverse moves that kept the contrast between nomadic
herders of the Mongolian and Central Asian steppe and the more settled farming
communities of the South.
We well centered our summary on two groups: Xiong-nu and Xianbei <3.5>.

A. The Xiong-nu. References in Chinese sources to peoples called the Xiong-Nu

go back to 6th century BC and were active until the 5th century a.C., then
assimilated.
Xiongnu was in fact the most powerful non-Chinese ethnic group neighboring the
Chinese Han who simply referred them to as the "Wu" (the "non-Chinese" or the
"barbarian"). Both terms were used concurrently. Nevertheless "Wu" later
became the collective term of non-Chinese ethnic groups.
The western branches (designed with colours) were famous in Roman sources as
the Huns <3.6>. The establishment of the first Hun state is one of the first well-
documented appearances of the culture of horseback migration in history. These
tribespeople achieved superiority over their rivals (most of them highly cultured)
by their splendid state of readiness and amazing mobility
The origin and the homeland of their spin-offs tribes have been an object of both
past and present study and research. They have generated and are still
generating many hypotheses and violent disputes. This is most likely to continue
for a long time to come. The scarcity of clear and reliable sources could hardly be
expected to be made up for. Their languages may be related to the so-called
Turko-Altai group.
B. Xianbei. They were active in the northeastern lands during thousand years
till the 6th century. The Xianbei were a significant tribe residing in modern
Manchuria and eastern Mongolia before migrating into areas of the modern
provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Hebei, Inner Mongolia and
Liaoning. Let’s go to the time they make their most striking appearance in
Chinese history.We may start with their inclusion in the Wu Hu group. Wu Hu has
become a collective term for all non-Chinese nomads residing in North China at
the time <3.7>.
I will focus on two key events: the greatest confederacy of tribes and the Wei
dinasty.

The Xianbei confederacy will be our first case of study. Tan Shi Huai managed to
unify all Xianbei tribes under a military and commercial confederacy against the
Han's court at the third quarter of the 2nd century. The confederacy was a
rudiment of a centralized government. All tribes had to share all trade profits,
military duties and a unified stance against the Han's court. Supported by this
confederacy, he brought Southern Xiongnu to a close alliance (including at times
Wuhuan, Dingling, Qiang and Di) which at that time stretched from today
Jilin province to central Xinjiang.

The all-out campaign of all troops (30000-strong cavalries)

deployed on the northern border to annihilate the confederacy once and for all
failed and 80 percent of the troops were killed. This victory in the year 177 A. D.
marked the zenith of confederacy.
The Xianbei tribe now propagated into a group of more than one million
herdsmen after two decades of prosperity. But his successors after his death in
181 never earned the respect from chieftains of the smaller federations. (see
image in http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/english.html )

The Touba will be our second case of study. It is thought the dynasty Bei Wei
originated from the Tuoba (originally Tabghach, a clan of the Xianbei people –
famous at the Tan Shi Huai confederacy). Their main fixture was to establish the
Northern Wei Dynasty in year AD 386 and reunited northern China in AD 439.
They took the northern of the west to the Xiong-nu ar the north of the Shangxi,
then the Gansu corridor to the Liang and the Chinese lands of the Yan. This
particular series of frontier formations were not related to nomadic life or Chinese
society but a well weigh up mixture. The organisation of the lands in the 5th
century gains the respect of some Southern Chinese (Jin). The official state
religion was Taoism in the beginning as a result of the influence of K'ou Ch'ien-
chih but the new faith of Buddism got strong support as the great grottos reveal
their majesty still today.
The Tuobas renamed themselves the Yuans as a part of systematic sinicization
and left their original language in 494 to adopt Chinese.
Perfectley settled, their key move was to place the capital 700 km south in
Luoyang (current Longmen) in 474. More precisely:
La sinisation des Tuoba s’accélère. Les marriages mixtes sont très fréquents et les
familles adoptent des noms chinois (xing). En 471, le clan Touba au pouvoir prend le
pseudonyme ‘Yuan’. Les vêtements, les coutumes, la culture, la langue chinois sont ou
deviennnet obligatoires. La langue ‘barbare’ est interdite à la court de Luoyang. Le
mécénat des Touba envers le boudhisme peut être asussi interprété comme un desir
d’assimilation <3.8>.

Epilogue. Playing against the odds I will subscribe the insightful words of
Gumilev:
The odd combination at the eyes of the Chinese procuded a handful of kingdoms that
lost their connection with the steppe (case of the Tang or Liao (Khitan). That was not the
case of the last two succesful empires the Yuan and the Jürchen Jin, but they belong to
another era. (op. cit. page 33)

Our chapter will end as it started with conquers from the northwest:
In 1207, the Tangut Empire north of Tibet fell to the advancing Mongols, and in
1271, the Mongols announced the establishment of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty to
rule the Eastern part of the Empire. By 1279, the Chinese Song dynasty in
southern China fell before the advancing armies and the Mongols completed their
conquest of China.

4. A brief cultural synthesis.

4.1. Cultural assimilation: foreign things made Chinese

I started to take notes on this topic after I saw the cultural exchanges plate in
Book IV Chapter 3 in our classic Le Monde Chinois. Arrows and directions interact
and opened the eyes of the beholder: me.
These pre-digested comments will help my appetite for more chewable morsel.
Two different directions were accounted for. The predominant direction of spread
seems to have been the one from northern China. For instance: bronze
technology, Sino languages, and state formation.
Bronze is brought from southern Mongolia. This is a period of extensive trade;
from Greece at the third millennium BC the types of knives found are from China
and are the same as those found in Turkey.
Language spread with Chinese characters as its only medium and the rulers
applied the cohesive force of the Tianzi of the Zhou (that stemmed from the
concept of Di in the Shang). At different times entered the myth of Pangu, the
Chuci poems (clearly influenced by their chamanic ancestry), and the refreshing
melodies of the Yuefu, rhythmic songs of the plains of Central Asia.
What else entered? For instance, western contributions to ancient China's
economy were wheat and barley, cows and horses. From the steepe were
incorporated some cultural items: ballesta, knights riding horses, trousers as
attire; the grape harvesting with the journey of Zhang Qian in the 1st century. And
the steepe pastoralist nomads entered into the barting trade. Hordes of
herdsmen began trading. Horses and animal products were traded mainly for
agricultural tools (the harrow and the plow), and clothing of which silk was the
most demanded article. And Buddhism.
From the south came especially iron smelting and rice cultivation. The weaving of
cotton from south made a bright contribution to the commerce in the Yuan
period. And music, as Gernet stated:
l’orgue à bouche chinois, le sheng, est un emprunt aux populations de la xona tropicale
et n’est autre dans son principe que la khène laotien. (page 173)

The silk road was exporting paper and porcelain as well. At the first century the
trade with the west was consolidated with foreign merchants (some open space
in the new capitals which were empty and didn’t reperesent the whole of the
population –slaves, working in agriculture.

4.2. Artifacts: writing systems. 3 exemples

The northern cultural dominance shows its clearest action in writing. To
summarize, literate civilized Chinese states absorbed or were copied by the
preliterate barbarians. This classification remained vivid until the modern era,
and can come back. I will bring an anthopological example: burning the scapula
of an animal then prophesying from the pattern of cracks in the burned bone. As
J. Diamond wrote:
This distinctively forerunner Chinese method for reading the future,
scapulimancy, appears progressively in the whole region. From the earliest
known appearance of oracle bones in northern China, archeologists have
traced scapulimancy's spread throughout China's cultural sphere.

I already stated in the introduction that one of the many things that left me in
bafflement at the time of studying the first unit was the divergence of alphabets
in Asia. Languages are not writing systems: the first ones are the software, the
second ones the hardware. When something is printed you have a material thing.
A cultural construct if you like. The transmission of these civilizised artifacts
indicates the craftmanship of the human race. The main direction in Southeast
Asia was the dominance of Chinese features, and Buddhism in the other
direction.
By far, and concerning my research interest (as I told you in my first mail) I still
consider the best display those found in a couple of plates inside an excellent
classic such as Le monde chinois by Jacques Gernet about writing systems the
introductory chapter of Dealing with Language systems in Asia, I found showing
the great diversity and a clear account of the main writing systems in Eastern
Asia and their origins (pages 38-39) that I display below:

4.1. The circles of expansion in the ancient world: Korea, Vietnam &
japan
Chinese characters are one of the most distinctive artifacts of Oriental culture.
Chinese characters stood as a visible symbol of the dominance of Chinese culture
in East Asia. With
Chinese characters came huge numbers of Chinese loanwords, which are still an
important part of the vocabulary of East Asian languages. Chinese characters,
Hanzi, are called ‘Hancha’ in Korean and ‘Kanji’ in Japanese which, incidentally,
all three use the very same two Chinese characters.
The expansion of China warlords gave those neighbouring peoples a new writing
tool for their own tongues: Koreans (IV cent. AD), Japanese (IV-V cent. AD), and
Vietnamese (VIII cent. AD). Considering the fact that the respective languages
belong to different families, the effort come short of nothing less than a great
deed. Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese were originally complete 'strangers'
belonging to different language families. Roughly 2,000 years ago, the less
developed Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese cultures came into China's orbit,
whether willingly or unwillingly, creating what might be termed an 'East Asian
cultural sphere'.

4.2 Faith. The showcase of Buddhism: from ideas to language in 3

steps.
The highest foriegn influence was Buddhism with its appeal to the sinizise
newcomers to the Middle Kingdom. Self-centered Chinese <4.1> regarded all
things foreign with disdain. To gain respectability, Buddhist thought had to get a
layer of Taoist, or Confucian, terms and Buddhist practices changed to conform to
Chinese customs.
In the next passage I provide an account of these early translators from India,
Persia, Nepal and China itself. We can bear in mind that the daunting task of
these middlemen that had Persian-related language as a native one (which
shared with Sanscrit the same Indo-European family).
Those were the earliest contacts: First arrival of monks, Kasyapa Matango and
Dharmaraksha, in Han Dynasty China under Emperor Ming. 148 CE: An Shih-Kao,
a master from Persia, arrives and begins translating and teaching the dharma-
translating Indian Buddhist texts, initially causing many Chinese to believe that
Buddhism was another version of Taoism. <4.2>.
5th century CE: Kalayasas arrives in China from Central Asia and translates
Sutras. Buddhabhadra (359-429), born in Nepal, arrives in China along with
Kumarajiva (344-413) from Central Asia, both who translate sutras and teach the
Dharma. Kumarajiva was an Indian Buddhist scholar and missionary who had an
epoch-making influence on Chinese Buddhist thought, because he did much to
clarify Buddhist terminology and philosophical concepts. His translation was
distinctive, possessing a flowing smoothness that reflects his prioritization on the
conveyance of the meaning as opposed to precise literal rendering. Because of
this, his renderings of seminal Mahayana texts have often remained more
popular than later, more exact translations.
The next wave of exchange starts in 520 CE when Indian Master Bodhidharma
travels as a Buddhist missionary to China, being the forefather of Ch'an and Zen
Buddhism which emphasized meditation. Also, Bodhiruci, Ratnamati,
Buddhsanta, and also Paramartha arrive in China and translate sutras. Later,
Sikshananda, who arrived from Central Asia, translated the Avatamsaka Sutra.
Master Hsuan Tang (596-664) after mastering the knowledge of Sanscrit in China
makes pilgrimage to India in 641 as an envoy from the Chinese emperor and
established the first Chinese diplomatic relations with Harsha-vardhana (606-
647). He returns to China with hundreds of scriptures and images, and ushers in
a new era in translations as he ‘feared to pervert the truth’ <4.3>.
4.3. Cultural exclusion. Two forgotten peoples (Khitan, Mongolians)
When we consider the peoples inside the mainland of current China we can find
the origin of different alphabets. From the early times China had contacts with
the western Asian powers. From the steppe came a pool of influent tribes with
different languages between the X and XIV centuries: the Khitan, Tangut, Jurchen
and Mongolians. I followed mainly www.omniglot.com here.
The Khitan people, who dominated a large chunk of Manchuria between 916 and
1125 AD, used two different scripts - the "large script", which came into use in
about 920 AD, the "small khitan script", which was reputedly created in about
925 AD by the Khitan scholar Diela, who was inspired by the Uighur alphabet.
The Tangut logographic script was modelled on the Chinese and Khitan scripts. It
was apparently devised by one 'Teacher Iri' in 1037 and was used for the
translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit and other languages. It was was until
the 16th century. The Jurchen script (also known as Jurchi, Jurchin or Southern
Tungusic) was created by Wanyan Xiyin in 1120 and officially introduced in 1145.
It was modelled on the Khitan script and contains a large number of characters
from Chinese, many of which were modified or distorted.
The Mongolian alphabet was adapted from the Uighur alphabet in the 12th
Century. The Uighur alphabet was a derivative of the Sogdian alphabet, which
ultimately came from Aramaic. Between the 13th and 15th Centuries, Mongolian
was also written with Chinese characters, the Arabic alphabet and a script
derived from Tibetan called Phags-pa. In 1269, Khubilai Khan commissioned a
Tibetan Lama called Matidhvaja Sribhadra (1239-1280) to create a new syllabic
alphabet for Mongolian. At that time, Mongolian was written with the Uighur
alphabet, which wasn't really suitable for the task. Khubilai wanted the new
alphabet to reflect the sounds of Mongolian more accurately, and also hoped that
it would help to unify his vast, multilingual empire and could be used to write
other languages. Sribhadra created a new alphabet based on the Tibetan
alphabet. Inspite of being actively promoted by the Mongol government, the
Phags-pa alphabet was not adopted by the Mongolians or the Chinese. The most
recent example of Phags-pa writing dates from 1352.

5. Literature and sources

Alay, J.L., Història dels Tibetans, Lleida, Pages editors, 2000.

Blanchon, Fl. (ed.) Arts et histoire de Chine Univ. de la Sorbone. Paris, 1999

Diamond, Jared Empire of Uniformity Discover Magazine, March, 1996

http://www.huaren.org/heritage/id/082698-01.html (good cultural approach back into
history)
Gernet, Jacques, Le monde chinois, Paris, Armand Colin, 1972

Gumilev, Lev N. Earches for an Imaginary Kingdom. The legend of the kingdomof Prester
John (Cambridge University Press, 1987) [1970]
Katzner, K. The Languages of the World, London, Routkledge, 1990
Nelson, S. The Archeology of Northern China (beyond the Grat Wall), Routledge, New
York, 1995
www.omniglot.com has been the most productive website for the topic, especially for the
visual display of the scripts. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the topic.

The Cambridge History of China. Vol. I. The Ch’in and Han Emprires. Taipei, 1986

Footnotes
<1.1> J. Diamond is Professor of Geography at the Ucla
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/diamond_rich/rich_p8.html
<1.2> In the article “Asia Profiling”:
www.time.com/asia/chinatime/2003/journey/china_gsh_jen.html
<1.3>Harrell quoted in http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/anth230/ethnicities.html
<1.4> In their diaspora, those pioneers were called “Lao Fa Kiao” (Old Chinese Abroad).
And their decendents see themselves as Chinese, because they have strong ties to their
roots and bound by a common language. (quoting Robert Ramsey) :
http://home.i1.net/~alchu/hakka/toihak2.htm
<1.5> The Chinese Human Genome Diversity Project. (PNAS vol. 95, Issue 20,
1998). Chu et al. strongly support the existence of a genetic difference between
northern and southern Chinese, which, as mentioned in their paper, already was reached
by a variety of other approaches, archeological, craniometric, and dental.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/95/20/11501
<1.6> Similar to the northern border at the Roman Empire against the Germanic tribes.
<2.1> Searches for an imaginary kingdom page 33. His home page
http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/english.html
<3.1> Book III Section 3.14. The people of those five regions-the Middle states, and the
Zung, Î, (and other wild tribes round them)--had all their several natures, which they
could not be made to alter. The tribes on the east were called Î. They had their hair
unbound, and tattooed their bodies. Some of them ate their food without its being
cooked. Those on the south were called Man. They tattooed their foreheads, and had
their feet turned in towards each other. Some of them (also) ate their food without its
being cooked. Those on the west were called Zung. They had their hair unbound, and
wore skins. Some of them did not eat grain-food. Those on the north were called Tî. They
wore skins of animals and birds, and dwelt in caves. Some of them also did not eat
grain-food. http://www.sacred-texts.com/cfu/liki/liki03.htm
<3.2> Further south all the Indo-china populations were put under great strain and the
populations of the area (today the remains of these peoples can be found in Andaman
islands and the shores of New Guinea) had to cope with the invaders from the Yang-tze
region. The studies of Cavalli-Sforza showed that this southern population had more in
common with their cousin from the bordering states (Laos, Cambodja, Thailand,
Myanmar, Malaysia and Vietnam) than with their northern couterparts, which in turn
were more related to Mongol, Tibetan and Nepali groups. Today the modern inhabitants
of Indonesia and the Philippines are fairly homogeneous in their genes and appearance
and resemble southern Chinese.
<3.3> The story is of particular importance in illustrating the nature of relations
between these two great powers of Asia. The text of this treaty, both in Tibetan and
Chinese, was inscribed on three stone pillars: one was erected in Gungu Meru to
demarcate the borders between the two nations, second in Lhasa where it still stands,
and the third in the Chinese capital of Chang'an.
<3.4> http://www.csam.montclair.edu/earth/eesweb/feng/eastasia.htmln
<3.5> Our readings on new agents in the lands (Tujue, Khitan and Jurgen) before the
well-studied Mongols will have to wait to further work. The Xiong-nu name meaning
Xiong's Slaves (Xiong being a Chinese transliteration of a national name but also
meaning 'savage/raucous/ferocious') was the term given by the Chinese to nomadic
tribes on their northern boarder under the control of the Xion of Trans-Jaxartes perhaps
based around Sibir. Variations include: Hun-no, Xiung-Nu, Hsiong-Nu, Hsiung-Nu, Hiung-
No or Xianyun. As for the Xian bei (or Hsien-Pi) eren els del ‘nord’.
<3.6> In other words, this first “far-west” put on European soil some groups of Asian
stock previous to the Magyars (the Bulgarians, the Huns, the Avars, the Pechenegs and
the Cumans –from this last group we have nowadays the ‘Comenius exchange students
program!? as a homege to Jan Komensky, a real European avant-la-létre).
<3.7> Wu Hu literally means "five non-Chinese races", hence giving its another name
the Five Hu. Wu Hu were composed of five nomadic tribes: Xiongnu , Xianbei, Di, Qiang
and Jie. This composition of Wu Hu is the most accepted since those five tribes were the
major ones. The term Wu Hu was first used in Cui Hong's Shiliuguochunqiu, which
recorded the history of the five tribes' ravaging Northern China from the early 4th
century. Sovereignties founded by Wu Hu were coined the ‘Sixteen Kingdoms’, short-
lived sovereignities after the retreat of the Jin Dynasty.
<3.8> page 322 in Arts et histoire de Chine.

<4.1> We Know that ‘Qin’ was the name of the Chinese given by the Hindus as the
western kingdom of Qin had the first contacts (started at the beginning of the 3rd century
b. C. across the Sichuan lands southward the Himalayan range). If we observe the
spelling the “Q” and the “CH” sound the same: apalatal sound. In our cultural circles the
word is spelled “sino-“ as in sino-sovietic, due to the contact with Catholic people in the
XVI century. The modern languages go back to the palatal sound.
<4.2> I will follow www.buddha.net here His Ssu-ti-ching had 3620 characters, with no
concept transliterated.
<4.3> From this time we have the word for ‘sutra’ in Chinese (related to our “sutura”,
and translated the eymological sense: ‘enfilall’). As late as this century, he wrote in the
Ta-t’ang His-yü-chi:
Sanskrit words should be translated. One must make an effort to keep the original form.
Take the pattern of the orthodox textbooks, infer and then discourse about them. I fear
to pervert the truth.