A History of China (4 page)

I studied the Chinese language when the Wade-Giles system of Romanization was standard. Around 1980, books and articles about China started to use the
pinyin
system, although a few stayed with Wade-Giles. I am not entirely satisfied with the
pinyin
scheme, but I have used it for the convenience of the reader because nearly all publications he or she will encounter will employ it.

I have eschewed diacritical marks, with the exception of the umlaut, for all Arabic, Iranian, and Turkic terms and names.

I have adopted Antoine Mostaert’s scheme for the transliteration of Mongolian, as modified by Francis W. Cleaves, except for these deviations:

• č
  is ch
  
• γ
  is gh
  
• ĵ
  is j
  
• q is kh
  
• Š
  is sh
  

Along with Russia and the USA, China is one of the world’s largest countries, stretching about three thousand miles from the east coast to its boundaries to the west in central Asia, the Himalayan states, and Vietnam. This vast domain embraces the tropical island of Hainan and the subarctic areas of Manchuria. Its landscape of plains, deserts, and lofty mountains has created various kinds of economies, based upon the environment. There are multiple Chinas, depending on the topography and the inhabitants’ differing responses to the lands in which they reside. Two-thirds of the land consists of mountains or other demanding terrain, with limited or almost no opportunities for transport, precluding the development of agriculture. However, the melting snows from the mountains provide water and, in modern times, hydroelectric power. The Tibetan plateau (Tibet and Qinghai province) has the most daunting mountains. The lands east of the mountains are China’s agricultural heartland.

Within the traditional boundaries of China, the north and south regions differ. The Qinling Mountains and the Yangzi River divide the country. Flowing from Tibet to north China and then to the original core of Chinese civilization in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, the Yellow River (or Huang He) is vital to the northern economy. Loess soil blowing from Inner Mongolia into these provinces and Gansu province permits sedentary agriculture. The yellowish soil builds up with silt and mud in the Yellow River and necessitates the construction of embankments to protect against floods. The river is, in many sections, fifty meters or more above the plains, and proper maintenance of embankments is essential to prevent flooding and changes in the course of the river, which could ravage the land. When a government, in traditional times, did not undertake such flood-control projects, the dynasty declined and peasants suffered, leading to frequent disorder and rebellions. At the same time, the north suffered from a lack of precipitation and endured severe droughts. Deficiencies in water and a short growing season due to an early onset of low temperatures limited staple crops to wheat, oats, and millet. Rice required considerable water and could be grown only in the south.

At this time, the Yangzi River dominated south China. The largest waterway in the country, it was navigable and readily linked the southeast coast to its hinterland to the southwest. Abundant precipitation and good soil offered optimal conditions for a rice-based intensive agriculture in the southeast. The Sichuan Basin, in the southwest, with its mild and humid climate, was also a rich agricultural region. Even farther to the south, below the Nanling mountain range, a tropical climate permitted the planting of two crops a year. West of the Nanling, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces also had a bountiful agricultural base. The southeast coast has excellent ports, and ships from southeast, south, and west Asia reached these harbors, but traditional China generally, with some exceptions, oriented itself inland throughout its history. Like the north, the south has not always been blessed by nature. The southeast coast has been prone to typhoons and monsoons and the attendant flooding and loss of life.

Both natural and man-made disasters have afflicted China. Floods have threatened the Yellow River basin as well as the southeast coast; earthquakes have proved to be devastating throughout the country (in recent years, they have caused damage and much loss of life in an area not far from Beijing and in Sichuan); and dust storms emanating from Inner Mongolia have created hazardous conditions in the north. Such a listing of catastrophes does not include locusts and predatory birds and animals and their effects on crops. Human error or lack of concern for the environment has had similarly devastating consequences. Felling of trees and erosion, especially in the north, has resulted in growing desertification, leading, for example, to the increased size of the Gobi desert. In modern times, the use of coal for heating and unregulated emissions from automobiles have contributed to poor air quality in many cities, including Beijing, while chemical effluents from factories and untreated wastes have fouled numerous lakes, rivers, and streams, further jeopardizing the relatively paltry supplies of potable water in the north.

China’s territorial parameters have changed throughout its history. Modern China controls much more land than the Han or Tang, the great traditional dynasties, did. The Han did not totally dominate south China, and the Tang did not control parts of the contemporary southwest. Yunnan province did not become part of China until the thirteenth century, and the region of Xinjiang (comprising one-sixth of modern China’s land) was not ruled by a dynasty from China until the eighteenth century. Like the histories of Russia and the USA, China’s lengthy past is a narrative of colonization. China in the second century
CE
did not encompass many areas that are now considered to be part of its lands. It was a much lesser domain – at least in territorial extent – than contemporary China.

As a result, there have been many Chinas. Starting with a base around the Yellow River, China expanded to the south and the west. As the Chinese added territory and peoples, they also incorporated new cultural patterns and values that they adopted from the native inhabitants. When they advanced along the current northern borderlands, they gained control over non-Chinese peoples, which contributed to the cultural mix. Localism prevailed, as many areas retained their own identities. Although these regions fell under central control, they often persisted in their own lifestyles. Yet historians cannot readily identify these deviations and regional variations because the written records, most of which derived from the central authorities, ignored both local patterns and opposition to the dynasties’ institutions and policies. Nonetheless, readers should be aware that the trends and policies described in this book may not apply to all regions at all times in Chinese history. There was considerable variation in this large land mass.

Before China expanded into the regions of the non-Chinese peoples, geo­graphy determined the divisions between it and its neighbors. Chinese peasants spread to lands suited for farming. They planted in terraces on mountains, constructed canals, built banks to tame rivers, and created ditches to preserve water for irrigation and to avert floods. The available land imposed limits on such sedentary agriculture. Mountainous and desert terrain, especially in the north and west, prevented farming in those regions. The areas north of China proper had short growing seasons, low temperatures, and soil unsuited for intensive agriculture, precluding Chinese settlements. This territory was principally the nomads’ land. Hunting and fishing prevailed in the northeast area in northern Manchuria, which resembled the Siberian territories. Directly north was the Gobi desert, which prevented Chinese colonization, and, ­farther north in modern Inner Mongolia and Mongolia, nomadic herders dominated. Only late in history (the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) did Qing China, governed by the Manchus, attempt to encroach on the northern lands of Mongolia and Xinjiang. Because the Tarim Basin and the Tian Shan in Xinjiang have proved to possess oil, coal, and precious ores, Chinese expansion in that region has been important. However, it has resulted in ­considerable turbulence because the Turkic (principally Muslim) population in the area has repeatedly chafed under Chinese domination.

The study of China in its preliterate stage has undergone dramatic changes since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. New construction, the opening up of more arable land, and systematic surveys of ancient sites all have contributed to discoveries of a treasure trove of fossils and artifacts. Major finds were also made before the founding of the People’s Republic, but the pace of discovery has accelerated since then. For example, a leading text on the archeology of ancient China, first published in 1963, was revised and enlarged on four separate occasions before 2000 because of the rapid increase in knowledge during that time. Thus, generalizations about preliterate China are quickly dated and often require emendation. The specific portrait drawn in this text will no doubt be superseded, although the general outline may remain valid for some time to come.

The most spectacular and significant site of the Middle Pleistocene (about 400,000 years ago) is Zhoukoudian, a complex of caves about forty kilometers west of Beijing. Found by the Swedish paleontologist J. G. Andersson around 1921, these limestone hills proved to have a wealth of materials for the reconstruction of early hominid life in China. Scholars have identified about fifteen geological strata in the caves and various different levels of culture. The most renowned fossil in the cave was the so-called Beijing Man or, to paleontologists,
Sinanthropus pekinensis
or
Pithecanthropus pekinensis
. Isolated skulls, bones, and teeth of forty individuals were found in this site; forty percent of those individuals had died before the age of fourteen. Their diet consisted of the meat of other animals, including the ancestors of deer, leopards, elephants, water buffaloes, and horses. They also gathered and ate nuts and berries. They had discovered how to make fire and how to produce stone tools and implements. However, having been found after half a million years, the fossils were lost only twenty years after their discovery. In 1941, the Chinese and the Americans responsible for the remains feared the growing turbulence in China and decided to send the fossils to the USA for safekeeping. However, the USA’s entry into the Second World War in December of 1941 upset these plans, and the fossils were either lost in a ship bound for the USA when it was sunk by the Japanese navy or were simply stolen while awaiting shipment to the USA or later.

These fossils found in the Zhoukoudian caves are among the most significant evidence of Paleolithic culture in China, but sites throughout the country have yielded other Paleolithic remains. In recent years, excavations (which have uncovered Paleolithic sites in southwest China, Manchuria, and Inner Mongolia, among other locales) have proven that the earliest evidence of hominid life is not limited, as previously believed, to the areas around the Yellow River. Many scholarly controversies have developed about the interpretation of these hominids, including so-called Beijing Man. Additional discoveries may help to resolve some of these issues.

Those finds that can be definitively linked with modern Chinese people date from the Neolithic era. Evidence about the Neolithic age is plentiful and histo­rians have sifted through it to provide a clear image of cultural and ­technological innovations. The most significant changes from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic were the development of agriculture and a growing dependence on farming for survival. A fragile hunting and fishing economy became a more stable, agrarian-based society. Archeological excavations since 1949 have challenged the earlier view that China had two, and only two, demarcated Neolithic cultures. At least four such cultures have been identified, and the sites are scattered throughout the country. The new discoveries have considerably altered the previously accepted dates for the Neolithic. J. G. Andersson, who excavated one of the Neolithic sites in the early 1920s, had given 2500
BCE
as the approximate onset of the Neolithic, but more-accurate dating techniques have shown that his village was founded as early as the fifth millennium
BCE
and that other Neolithic sites existed around 6500
BCE
, if not earlier.