Early China

Chinese civilisation is an important symbol of China's historical development and cultural inheritance, while Chinese excellent traditional culture is an important expression and inheritance way of Chinese civilisation thought. The connotation and characteristics of Chinese civilisation and Chinese excellent traditional culture are studied in depth through literature analysis and comprehensive research methods. It is found that Chinese civilisation is the root and source of Chinese excellent traditional culture, which contains a rich system of ideas, moral values and artistic expressions. The core ideas of Chinese civilisation, such as benevolence, harmony, filial piety and loyalty, are passed on and expressed through Chinese excellent traditional culture. As an important carrier and medium of transmission of the ideas of Chinese civilisation, Chinese outstanding traditional culture has passed on the values and wisdom of Chinese civilisation to future generations through education, cultural exchanges and the promotion of digital technology, and has provided important support for the cultural identity and spiritual pursuit of the Chinese nation. At the same time, the Chinese civilisation's identification with and promotion of Chinese outstanding traditional culture not only strengthens society's sense of identity and pride in traditional culture, but also promotes the inheritance and innovative development of traditional culture. Chinese civilisation and Chinese excellent traditional culture are closely connected and interdependent, together constituting the cultural genes and spiritual symbols of the Chinese nation.

By the start of the twenty-first century, China's status as a major international economic and political power was beyond dispute. China now manufactures everything from microchips to motor vehicles, and the 'Made in China' label is found in all corners of the world. Along with this economic influence, China's role in global political and cultural affairs is becoming both more significant and increasingly visible. China's hosting of the 2008 Olympics is just one of the more obvious manifestations of this impact. Chinese cultural products, ideas, customs and habits are steadily spreading around the world in the wake of China's economic and political reach. The chapters in this book explore the key domains in Chinese culture and reveal the dynamism produced by a formidable culture's interaction with both its own ancient, albeit never static, traditions and the flood of new global cultural influences. The connection between global economic and political weight and the changes in China's cultural realm are complex and profound. To understand contemporary China - an absolute necessity if one is to understand the world today - it is vital to appreciate the evolution of modern Chinese culture. Interest in Chinese literature, philosophy, cinema, qigong and other cultural artefacts around the world is stronger now than ever before. There has been a plethora of books about Chinese culture published in anglophone countries and a steady increase in students enrolling in courses on Chinese language and civilization.

Reviewed by: Modeling Peace: Royal Tombs and Political Ideology in Early China by Jie Shi Armin Selbitschka Jie Shi, Modeling Peace: Royal Tombs and Political Ideology in Early China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. ix, 358 pp. US$60 (hb). ISBN 978-0-231-19102-9 Jie Shi (or Shi Jie 施傑 in the Chinese reading) has been a prominent and prolific scholar in the fields of Early China and Early Medieval China studies ever since he published the first of numerous articles in 2012.1 The book under review (hereafter Modeling Peace) is his first monograph and it is the first title from the recently established Tang Center Series in Early China at Columbia University. Modeling Peace seeks to unravel the social and political significance of royal burials during the Western Han period (206 BCE–9 CE). The author asserts that although "tombs were associated with the afterlife, it is more important to realize that the purpose of a tomb varied with the tomb occupant's status" (p. 10). In other words, a royal tomb can never be just a tomb; it is always also a political statement. Modeling Peace's introduction indicates that the book takes the author's doctoral dissertation as its template in as much as it presents an in-depth analysis of Tombs No. 1 and 2 at Mancheng 滿城 in Hebei province.2 These two multi-chambered structures were hewn into the face of a mountain almost as mirror images right next to each other, and once housed the remains of Liu Sheng 劉勝, King Jing 靖 of Zhongshan 中山 (r. 154–113 BCE; Tomb No. 1), and his queen Dou Wan 竇綰 (Tomb No. 2). Their bodies have long since decayed, but their tombs and burial goods have largely survived. Due to the immense labor necessary to build such elaborate rock-cut tombs in addition to the extraordinary quality and quantity of finds they have yielded, the author counts them "among the most important material remains of Early Chinese civilization" (p. 1). Moreover, he argues that they "set the highest standards for the lower classes" and can thus be properly understood only if they are distinguished from "lesser tombs" (p. 1). Yet, scholarship, so far, has mainly viewed such tombs as structures that either were intended to guarantee the personal welfare of the deceased in the afterlife, or to facilitate their immortality. Past discussions have failed to realize that differences in size and quality were imbued with deeper meanings. Since Western Han kings wielded actual power over people, their tombs needed to reflect the political and social importance of their occupants as well as fulfill their religious needs. In Liu Sheng's particular case, the goal was to present him and his wife [End Page 166] as virtuous and well-adjusted rulers of the newly established Zhongshan kingdom in an area whose cultural traditions still differed considerably from those of the Central Plains. Chapter 1 traces the trajectory of the development of early imperial Chinese tombs from vertical shaft pits to horizontal multi-chambered structures. Shi contends that the spatial arrangement of personal attire and burial goods in both Mancheng tombs symbolizes the postmortem transformation of Liu Sheng and Dou Wan from human beings with bodies into spirits without physical form. For instance, jade suits (yuyi 玉衣) for both occupants and additional sets of clothing that were deposited in and around the coffins of both deceased represent the bodies and souls of the deceased. The latter, in turn, were sustained in perpetuity in order "to secure a postmortem immortality" (p. 60) not only by materials with close links to immortality such as jade, but also by the intentional placement of food and drink throughout various chambers of both tombs. The respective containers and their edible contents symbolize kitchens, banquets, and sacrifices that were catering to the souls of the occupants.3 Shi strongly emphasizes that the desire for the longevity of Western Han rulers in this life and the next was not, however, rooted in personal vanity, but rather in a sense of responsibility. After all, the stability of the world depended on the fact that virtuous regents were around long enough to guide their realms. Chapter...

Silk is a symbol of Chinese traditional garment culture, it represents the characteristics and spirits of Chinese civilization; Cheongsam is an integrated epitomization of modern Chinese civilization and western culture, and is an acknowledged quintessence of traditional Chinese garment. No matter cheongsam chooses the silk or silk chooses the cheongsam, it is the excellent match of unique material and classical style that accomplishes the elegant appearance and cultural connotations. However, in reality, cheongsam culture has been deducted but failed to come to any agreements, and presents awkward cheongsam phenomenon. This paper ascribed and explained cheongsam phenomenon, discussed the real situation and culture passing-down in terms of modern garment culture.

Kuo Ting-yee, not only a nationally renowned professor of modern Chinese history, but also paid close attention to the development of contemporary Chinese pre-history historiography continuously, edited a class-note style manuscript called Chinese General History in the late 1940s. The first two parts of the Chinese General History, ”The Prehistory period” and ”The Expansion of Ancient History” that describe the pre-history Chinese civilization era constitute the main subjects I will discuss in this article. From the late Ch'ing to early Republican periods, the discovery of the historical value of non-Confucian pre-Ch'in texts and their historical implications, as well as the challenges posed through Ku Chieh-kang's suspicion toward the records of Chinese antiquity renewed from that time onward the intellectual concepts of the development of Chinese historiography. Under such current, the originals of Chinese civilization and the royal lineage of San-tai were drastically reformed in many historical textbooks in 1920-40s. Kuo's Chinese General History reflected in part of the concepts of this new paradigm of modern Chinese historiography. During the same period of time, the nationalism historiography and the archeology achievements of Anyang directed by the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica diverged the development of contemporary Chinese historiography into two directions. In the Chinese General History, we can see that Kuo fully understood the philological research of oracles bones discovered at Yin-hsu sites played the key role to realizing the history of Shang Dynasty. On the other hand, Kuo also inclined another way with the idea of nationalism historiography to construct the outline of early Chinese civilization years.

Early Chinese histories sometimes record two extremely different myths about the origins of a foreign people: a native version and a Sinicised version. This is the case with myths about the Xiongnu, Xianbei and Korean peoples. Native and Sinicised origin myths had different functions. Sometimes, Chinese wanted to create psychological distance between themselves and potentially dangerous foreign peoples. Recounting a native myth bolstered Chinese ethnic pride by making other peoples seem strange and exotic, in contrast to normative Chinese culture. In other instances, Chinese told Sinicised myths to assimilate foreign peoples into Chinese culture. These myths legitimised Chinese expansion and conquest, but could also be used against China by foreign invaders. The coexistence of native and Sinicised versions of ethnic origin myths in early historical records shows the mutability of ethnicity in early China, and the manipulation of ethnic identity for political and military ends.

By focusing on the “feminine at large” as a ubiquitous presence in modern Chinese literature and culture, this book outlines the cultural battle between colonial discourse and nationalist discourse in the form of two competing gender ideologies. The empowerment of the feminine, as my chapters show, marks a salient invention of Chinese colonial modernity. It shows more than a passive imitation of the “civilized” Western gender relations where women enjoyed higher social status; in fact, it is precisely this colonial cultural h ierarchy—that a weak China should learn from a strong West—that the empowered Chinese feminine was set to subvert. In essence, this study of the feminine in the early twentieth-century China is not about how the feminine was empowered following Western modernity, but how the power of Western modernity was feminized to empower a feminized China. By undoing the sex binary in colonial gender ideology, the feminine in early twentieth-century China effectively challenges “the limiting way in which sexual difference operates in Western culture” (Oliver 97).

Zhengzhou is not only an important birthplace of Chinese civilization, but also a key area for studying the origin, formation, and development of Chinese civilization. Due to historical reasons, the museum career in the Zhengzhou area started late and slow with imperfect mechanisms. It has not yet played its full role as a showcase for “early China” and the 5,000 years of continuous Chinese civilization. In recent years, Zhengzhou set up the “people-centered, museum construction results shared by the people” museum career development concept. It refines the city's cultural core values and theme, strengthens financial security and policy guidance, and takes a series of innovative practices. The new pattern of development of state-owned, non-state-owned, and industry museums constantly meet the cultural needs of the people for a better life and has achieved milestone results.

The Way and the Word Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece. by Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2002. 368 pp. $35, £25. ISBN 0-300-09297-0. Comparing the cosmology, science, and medicine in Greek and Chinese civilizations in the six centuries from 400 B.C., Lloyd and Sivin discuss the social, political, and intellectual context of scientific concepts and thinkers and relate conceptual differences to these circumstances.

Each ancient civilization launched and then evolved its unique philosophies and quotidian worldviews that helped determine its historical development in the world, and Chinese civilization is no ex...

“Early China” refers to a long period from the beginning of human history in East Asia to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty in AD 220, a date that is often, though imprecisely, used to mark China’s entry into the Buddhist Era. As the initial period that gave the Chinese civilization much of its foundation, Early China has always served as the gateway to China, by offering a series of essential lessons in government, social practice, art, religion, and philosophical thought, necessary for students of all periods of Chinese history. But in a more general sense, if history is the best way to teach about a culture in which people live, it is perfectly natural that knowledge of Early China can provide what is often the most fundamental explanation of aspects of the social life in modern China and of its underlying values. As a field of research, Early China Studies is one of the areas that have most dramatically benefited from the advancement in modern academia, particularly in the discipline of archaeology which has been renewing daily our understanding of China’s distant past. It is also a field that has seen occasional interplay between politics and scholarship, and that has been much shaped by different national or international traditions. To begin our journey into this distant past, below I will first introduce the natural and temporal settings of Early China as necessary for understanding the social and cultural developments soon to be discussed in this book. For the same purpose, the chapter will then turn to a brief discussion of the process by which Early China Studies has emerged as a modern academic field, and the state of the field will alert the reader to the need not only to see the past, but also to understand the different ways in which it was seen and interpreted.

The research aims at highlighting the specific traditions and culture in daily life of the Chinese society. The research was carried out by means of socio cultural and comparative approaches. The authors admit that for conducting global research on specific traditions and culture in daily life of the Chinese society it is necessary to have approval of the Chinese Government. Due to this fact, the authors used questionnaire and observation methods for collecting empirical data. Questionnaire method was used as structural interview in January 2016 before the Chinese New Year. The interview aimed at revealing the attitude of Chinese people to their traditions and culture and highlighting most typical elements of traditional culture in their dai ly life. Confucianism and lunar calendar are revealed as cultural dominants in modern culture of China. Confucianism as a spiritual tradition is supported by the Chinese Government. Confucianism contributes to ideology and spiritual values of modern China. Lunar calendar enhances the rhythm of the Chinese daily life. The respondents outlined lunar calendar and its derivatives (agricultural calendar and 12 zodiac signs) as the first one in ranging the elements of Chinese traditions and culture. Chinese culture is full of western assimilations, which are adapted to Chinese culture in order to fix there. In some cases, this process does not change the cultural sense of assimilating cultural element and rendered as an element of foreign culture. In other cases, adaptation is long and it changes the cultural sense of substitution. This results in the fact that this element becomes the element of Chinese culture. Traditions and culture remain the value core of national culture. Modern Chinese culture includes traditional culture, its transformation and western assimilations adopted in China. The authors speak about stratification of Chinese society on subcultures appeared on the basis of attitude to the values of traditions and culture. Modern Chinese culture is a new form of national culture that differs from traditional culture and assimilated one. The authors make a case that further investigation of modern Chinese culture is impossible without these peculiarities.

Hailed at its first release as exceptional among studies of Chinese philosophy, a work combining philosophical acumen with sinological competence that raises the study of early Chinese thought to a new level of sophistication, The Concept of Man in Early China remains a staple in the study of early Chinese civilization. Addressing the very roots of Chinese culture and thought, this path-breaking work frequently compares concepts from the Confucian and Taoist traditions with those from Western classical philosophy. Donald J. Munro clearly identifies key ideas about human nature and links these ideas within the intellectual universe of classical China.

Reviewed by: Public Memory in Early China by K. E. Brashier Erica F. Brindley Public Memory in Early China by K. E. Brashier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014. Pp. viii + 511. $69.95. Public Memory in Early China provides a rich, exquisitely detailed, and important account of early Chinese strategies for creating and maintaining a shared, public memory. Guided by such questions as, “What things should we remember?” and “How does a society measure and mark what is important to it?” Brashier discusses how certain oral and literary cultures in early China sought to mark, preserve, and commemorate individuals and ancestors, as well as other aspects of the past. With nuanced, mellifluous, and meticulously organized language, Brashier transforms the cold bones of mortuary culture—in particular, stele inscriptions, which form the springboard for his inquiry—into a wide-ranging intellectual feast. In the introduction alone, this feast includes in-depth discussions about education, about orality and literacy, about the mechanics and performative aspects of remembering, as well as about the role of the classicists in creating a memorial culture, to name a few. The bulk of the book presents a neat, threefold approach to discussing public memory. Parts I, II, and III highlight names, age, and kinship respectively as prominent ways of marking one’s status and public value during life and during the afterlife in early Chinese society. Parts IV and V examine what Brashier calls “the tangible and intangible tools of positioning the self” (pp. 263, 317). Central to the discussion of the first three parts is how names, age, and kinship help position the self [End Page 456] so as to locate individuals within a web of culturally meaningful relationships both during life and after death. This manner of organizing the book is innovative and interesting; it sheds light upon some of the most important techniques used in ancient Chinese culture to situate individuals not just hierarchically but also laterally and in every conceivable, three-dimensional direction, according to a complicated and dynamic calculation of social worth. In part I, on names, we learn about the circumstances in which various names, such as familiar, courtesy, posthumous, family, and clan names, were bestowed, used, and tabooed. We learn how names served to position individuals according to a hierarchy of value and to link them to a particular region or plot of land. Indeed, one of Brashier’s most interesting points in this section is his discussion of the tight relationship between territory and ancestral cult: the surname could locate and associate individuals with specific areas on the map of the known world. In part II, on age, we learn about the various administrative systems of valuation and ways of honoring people during and after their lifetimes. We learn about the office of the “thrice venerable” (san lao 三老; p 175), about why early Chinese culture venerated their living elderly as well as their dead, and about the administrative seniority system (jue 爵) that was used during the Han period. The overarching comparative point that Brashier stresses in this section contrasts traditional, Western views of the arc of life—which allegedly rises to midlife only to decline thereafter—with a dominant ancient Chinese view, expressed through administrative grades as well as through religious attitudes toward the dead, of an “ever-climbing stairway” (p. 166) from birth through death and afterward. Brashier’s discussion of the shared symbols used in stele inscriptions demonstrates how this medium helped reduce the particular qualities of a person’s life to a common language of hyperbole and praise, despite stele inscriptions’ ostensible focus on individual traits and biographies. A significant point that Brashier makes in part II thus has to do with the reductionism associated with age-related positioning of the self. In his discussion of “The Age of the Afterlife” (sec. 11), he especially zeroes in on this point. Specifically, his discussion of the spatial arrangement of ancestor worship and sacrifice shows how one’s individuality eventually recedes into a cloud-like, “corporate, ancestral body” (p. 200), indicated by the vertical height of an ancestral tablet [End Page 457] located at the top of the sacrificial hall. Noting the direct relationship between...

In the Six dynasties, the clans of the scholar-official stratum not only occupied a dominant place in social and cultural life but also played an important role in maintaining Chinese civilization. As a succession of northern minorities entered the Central Plains, foreign culture became widespread and the Chinese people and culture experienced an unprecedented crisis. Thanks to the scholar-official clans who shouldered the burden of preserving Chinese culture, Chinese civilization was able to persist through the ages to become an “unbroken” civilization. These clans can be categorized in three groups according to their territorial origin: “Clans of the Wu Area” which developed in Jiangnan after the Han dynasty; “Immigrant Clans” which moved to Jiangnan from the north during the Jin dynasty and the ensuing dynasties, these being referred to jointly as “the Southern Clans”; and “the Northern Clans,” being those clans that remained in their homelands (Shandong and the Central Shaanxi Plain) during the period of ethno-national amalgamation in the north of China. Though these clans had various cultural characteristics due to different historical roots, cultural traditions and ancestry, their clan learning had a common core, i.e., the study and practice of Confucian rites as established in the Han dynasty. This formed the basis for the integration of Han with other cultures, making a sound foundation for the further development of the Chinese civilization.