The History of China - #47 - Special: Happy Anniversary!

Episode Date: November 17, 2014

As promised, here we take a short break before launching into the Jin Dynasty of the late 3rd century to celebrate our first anniversary and of course answer those pressing questions you guy have sent in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Just go to www.maatsilk.com. That's M-A-A-T-S-I-L-K dot com. And when you order, please mention that you heard about them from the history of China, since again, your order will help keep us chugging along. And now, on with the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 45, Happy Anniversary! Hey everyone, and welcome to our very first anniversary special. What I hope to be the first of many. It is hard to believe that I've been working on this podcast for almost an entire year at this point. And, well, to be honest, actually a bit more than a year at this point,

but since I wanted to finish The Three Kingdoms before taking a break from the narrative, I pushed it back about a week. But who's counting, right? I started this project really on a lark, having only begun listening to the podcasting medium as a whole for a few months at that point, and yes, especially Mike Duncan and Dan Carlin, and thinking to myself, hey, that seems like something I could do. And thus began the project that would devour the remnants of my social life, eat into my nights and weekends, leave me with a sleep deficit rivaling that of the US budget,

and honestly, be one of the most intriguing, fun, and rewarding undertaking so far in my life. Here's to many more nights and weekends pouring over ancient texts. So let's get right into what you all are here for. You sent in the questions, and I'm here to answer them. And they've really run the gamut too, from all over the timeline so far, and even a few about contemporary China. So in the interest of maintaining some sense of cohesive structure, I've decided to answer them in basically a chronological order. I'll give you the question,

the period it's asking about, and then do my best to give a decent answer. And at the end, I've got a couple of extra non-historical questions about China that I thought were just fun to include. So, sound fair? All right, let's jump right in. This first question takes us all the way back to China's first two dynasties, the Xia and the Shang. Way back in episode three, I detailed the reforms and policies of Yu the Great, and I made a passing reference to him enacting a series of tributary taxations using bronze, which I referred to then as being used in coinage. Russell noticed that and wrote in saying, I thought I heard coinage from this week's episode,

and it seems far too early for coins. Were the Bronze Age Chinese using something equivalent to coins? And the answer is, of course, yes, it was way too early for coins as we think of them. One of my frequently early misspeaks, as it were. That said, there is more to this answer than a mere mea culpa. During the Xia and Shang periods, the Chinese did work with bronze, though the relative scarcity of known tin deposits to smelt with copper to produce that alloy had made it exceedingly rare, and therefore quite valuable.

So obviously it wasn't going to be tied up serving as a general circulation currency when it had far more important and useful things to be used in, namely weapons, armor, and farming. That said, it was such a valuable commodity that it could, and was, leveraged as a way to produce large payments, such as a tribute tax to the reigning emperor. When Yu the Great demanded a tribute in copper, he wasn't kidding around, and he ended up receiving something on the order of 67 tons of it from his vassal kings.

Yu then turned that small mountain of ore into the famous nine-tripod cauldrons for ritual purposes. Once more and more copper and tin deposits became known and mined, we would eventually see the coin come into more general use, but it absolutely was the $100,000 federal banknote of its day. So what did the common people use in their day-to-day trades, if not metal coins? China had definitely advanced out of the barter system of direct trade and into currency by the Xia and Shang periods, but their mode of money was actually quite interesting. Seashells.

Specifically, those of the Kauri sea snail. Since both the Xia and the Shang civilizations were inland empires of the Middle Yellow River Valley, the shells provided a reasonable balance between availability and scarcity to provide a stable enough value to serve as currency. Trade with the western tribes provided the shells from the sea, but that trade was uncommon and difficult enough that cowries served as a scarce commodity. In fact, the excavation of the Lady Fu Hao's tomb at Yin, which is an incredible view into prehistorical Chinese society in that the tomb had not been stripped bare in the interceding millennia,

there archaeologists found that she had been buried with more than 6,900 cowrie shells, along with jade emblems, slaves, and sacrificial horses to serve her in the hereafter. In fact, these particular shells, buried circa 1200 BCE, show the metalization of Chinese currency beginning, and by that I mean they were actually coated in bronze. Even the language reflects China's early use of shells as currency. The ancient Chinese word for money, pronounced bèi, is in fact a pictogram of a cowrie shell. As a radical, the shell also serves as the basis for the traditional forms of the words for goods, buy, and sell, which are huo, mai, and mai, respectively. Actual metal coins would begin supplanting the shell system around 900 BCE, which is about a century and a half after the fall of the Shang Dynasty,

initially in the form of daggers, before ultimately mutating into the behold circles we are all much more used to. Our second question comes from L. Montesi, who asked, in reference to the dramatic climate and weather shift that presaged the fall of the Xia Dynasty to the forces that would become its successor state, the Shang. She asked, Do you have a scientific reference for the link between Santorini and the volcanic winter? I'm particularly curious to know how the yellow fog is explained. What he is referencing here is the link I drew

between the last dated eruption of the volcanic Greek island Santorini, also known historically as Thera, and its eruption as the Minoan eruption, and the fall of the Xia dynasty. Its explosion some 3,600 years ago completely wiped out the highly advanced Minoan civilization on the island of Crete through a tremendous tsunami, and is thought to be the source of the Legend of Atlantis, as well as what allowed the civilizations on the Greek mainland to assume supremacy over the region. I had put forth the theory that the circumstances detailed in the bamboo annals surrounding the Xia dynasty's contemporaneous collapse could be attributed to the nuclear winter that massive eruption could have caused even as far away as China.

The bamboo annals speak of yellow fog, a dim sun and then three suns, frost in July, famine, and the withering of all five cereals. So all we can say for absolutely certain is that the Minoan eruption occurred at roughly the same period as the supposed overthrow of the Xia, and it ought to be mentioned that the traditional tale of the Shang overthrowing the floundering Xia is questionable at best, and that archaeological evidence so far suggests that both civilizations could very well have existed contemporaneously. Nevertheless, prevalent wind patterns would have blown the ash cloud east from Santorini towards Asia, and perhaps reaching as far as China. The fact that the story involving the Xia

civilization's collapse detail not only bizarre weather patterns, but these specific weather patterns is suggestive, or it's at least tempting to link the two events. The bamboo annals, after all, seems to be describing a set of climate shifts very similar to what a volcanic ash cloud mucking up the seasons would do. But that's about as close as we're going to get to a real answer. Conjecture. Solid evidence that a Greek volcano overthrew a Chinese dynasty is still forthcoming and probably is not going to be. Besides, the story of the Xia is, for all intents and purposes, not actually historical.

It's a story written thousands of years after the fact, based on the scant ruins of a preliterate civilization, and so I'm inclined to think that its authors threw in at least a few literary flourishes in there for effect, such as an ever-mysterious yellow fog. Our next question is from Bryant, who wrote in quite a long while ago, asking about my summation of the legendary colonization of Japan by the eldest son of the Duke of Zhou, Ji Taibo, and his foundation of the Wa or Wo clan on the faraway islands during the Shang period. Bryant wrote, quote, the idea that it was not only for, colonized by people from mainland China, but also by a specific individual, is a new one to me.

I also wonder at the use of the term colonize. At least, the relationship between Japan and China at this point in history doesn't resemble the more familiar ideas of the later European colonies. End quote. Now, at the time, the best I could do was to say, in effect, hey, these are just the stories from the Chinese legendary histories, and the whole question of where the Japanese came from actually remains up in the air. I certainly don't claim to know the truth of the matter.

But the question stuck with me, no doubt in large part because my answer was just so unsatisfying. So when I happened upon some additional information that more solidly placed the peoples of Japan on a genetic level, it was indeed interesting. In 2005, a study of East Asian genetic sequences was conducted by Japanese researchers, and the results were very intriguing.

The results came in for participants in China, Korea, and Japan, and were as follows. For China, DNA sequence results came back as 60.6% uniquely Chinese, 1.5% Japanese, 10.6% Korean, 1.5% Ainu, 10.6% Okinawan, and 15.2% unidentified. For Korea, 40.6% was uniquely Korean, 21.9% Chinese, 1.6% Ainu, 17.4% Okinawan, and 18.5% unidentified. And for Japan, only 4.8% of their genetic sequence was identified as uniquely Japanese, 24.2% Korean, 25.8% Chinese, 8.1% Ainu, 16.1% Okinawan, and 21% unidentified. So the results for China and Korea are for me nothing terribly special. China is and has been for millennia a multi-ethnic regional empire, incorporating many different peoples, and as such, it's relatively homogeneous 60% uniquely Chinese.

I have to assume it reflects the fact that the supposedly barbarian tribes surrounding the Yellow River Valley civilization were just that, neighbors wearing slightly different clothes, but with very closely related genetic ties. As such, when the Han people sinicized them, there wasn't much genetically to differentiate them in the first place. Likewise, the Korean results reflect its status as a genetically and culturally distinct nation, but with significant influence and encroachment by its southern neighbor, sometimes willingly, sometimes forcibly. This, as well as significant contact with the outlying island kingdoms of the East China Sea. It's Japan's results, then, that have raised more than a few eyebrows, in that there seems to be almost no distinctly Japanese sequence within the population.

A solid two-thirds of the Japanese genetic sequence apparently originates not in Japan at all, but instead indicates a series of colonization waves by Koreans and Chinese, likely over long periods of time and certainly not attributable to an individual and legendary Chinese noble. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg, from the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse, from the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877, from Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. To Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich.

And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era, when a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. One final wrinkle I'd like to add to this question of Sino-Japanese relations during the period we've just concluded, the Three Kingdoms. In 2005, Wan Jinping of the University of Hawaii

wrote in his Ambassadors from the Island of Immortals, China-Japan Relations in the Han through Tang Dynasties, quote, When chieftains of various Wo tribes contacted authorities in Le Long, a Chinese commandery established in northern Korea in 108 BC by the Western Han court, they sought to benefit themselves by initiating contact. In AD 57, the first Wu ambassador arrived at the capital of the Eastern Han court. The second came in 107.

Wu diplomats, however, never called on China on a regular basis. This irregularity clearly indicated that in its diplomacy with China, Japan set its own agenda and acted on self-interest to satisfy its own needs. No war ambassador, for example, came to China during the 2nd century. This interval continued well past the 3rd century. Then, within merely nine years, the female Wu ruler, Himiko, sent four ambassadors to the Cao Wei court in 238, 243, 245, and 247, respectively. After the death of Himiko, diplomatic contacts with China slowed. Io, the female successor to Himiko, contacted the Wei court only once.

End quote. Next, we jump way ahead, almost catching up to where we last left off. Yuan wrote in to ask two questions, the first of which was about the period of the Red Eyebrow Rebellion surrounding Wang Meng's usurpation of the Han Dynasty. He asked, So if you don't remember, and I don't blame you if you do, the Luan rebels were a force that existed alongside but separate from the Red

Eyebrows and worked to take down Wang Meng, and then after that the two organizations began fighting one another for the right to re-establish the Han Dynasty. Yuan asked some pretty amazingly in-depth questions, I've got to say, even as he describes them as silly. And that's no slight, by the way, I've had a great time looking into this. As far as I've been able to ascertain, there is no direct link between the two names. The Lulin rebels apparently took their name from one of their earliest bases of operations along the slopes of the Lulin mountain range in modern I-Chang Hubei.

Meanwhile, Robin Hood's merrimen were often attributed, at least in English, to Sherwood Forest rather than Greenwood. So my first thought is that it might be a bit of a cultural adaptation at work when translating Robin Hood into Chinese, i.e. adapting the forests of Sherwood into the somewhat more culturally familiar name, that of Greenwood or Lulin. That said, the capital F Forest undoubtedly plays a tremendous role in the popular mythos of both China and England, and heck, most cultures with deep, dark woods through time.

Lest we forget the German legends of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood and their respective misadventures through the ominously titled Black Forest of old. Forests represent a rather primal force to humans and their cultures. The wild, the unknown, that which exists beyond the precarious walls and laws of men. And of course, where those who wish to exist outside those laws make their homes and lairs by choice or necessity. There is a certain romance to that idea, not to mention more than a little danger. Yuan's second question is regarding the Three Kingdoms itself, and he asks,

When Zhuge Liang went to set up an alliance with Sun Quan against Cao Cao, what chips did he really have, given that Liu Bei is best known as the general of constant flops? Even the romance elaborates on Liu's failures to build Zhuge's drama. What compelled Sun, who had far more soldiers than Liu and had more wins in the past, into an alliance that would turn out ultimately to be fruitful. And that is a real doozy of a question, isn't it? Why would Sun Jun have agreed to ally with a guy who's not only remembered for a track record of embarrassing defeats, but one whose admittedly extended family he'd been in the midst of a blood feud with for decades? Now the short answer is, of course, I don't know. The records don't give us much in

the way of personal insights into these figures. That said, I've got a few guesses. First, I'd guess the fact that Liu Bei had been able to employ the services of no less than Zhuge Liang himself had to have some sort of an impact on the King of Wu. Sure, Liu Bei was a joke, but Zhu Ge certainly wasn't. He was noted for not being summonable, meaning that if you were going to talk to the guy, you didn't tell him to come over to your house. You made an appointment, and then you went to him, if he felt like it. Liu Bei actually ended up needing to schedule three appointments just to get an audience.

That is the kind of upper echelon strategist Zhuge Liang was known to be, even before his exploits for Xu Han. The fact that he chose to serve Liu Bei must have communicated that his was a force to be taken seriously, since Zhuge clearly had. Zhuge Liang also made a pretty effective case to Sun Quan when he was dispatched to form an alliance in 208. He likened continued service to the north as tantamount to absolute surrender, saying, quote, If you can use the forces of Wu to resist the central government, why not break ties with Cao

Cao in advance? If you cannot oppose, why not demobilize the troops, discard your armor, and surrender to the north? End quote. In essence, what are you, chicken? And nobody, nobody calls Sun Quan chicken. Mostly though, I understood the alliance as being one of necessity. An enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of situation.

It was clear that neither Shu nor Wu had the manpower to resist Wei on its own. Tao was and long had been the clear main threat to the continued political survival of both Shu and Wu, and so it behooved them both to put whatever differences they clearly had aside when sheer survival was on the line. This being an alliance of necessity rather than actual desire was, I think, evidenced by the fact that it didn't even survive the Battle of Red Cliffs, with the two forces breaking down into their old factional infighting as soon as it became clear that they had gained the upper hand. Next up, a few requests for source recommendations.

Garrett wrote in asking, In listening to the podcast, Dou Yifeng jumped out as a particularly interesting and admirable figure. Can you recommend any modern scholars who might have researched her specifically, or the rule of Wen and Jing more generally? And indeed, I do. First, let's get the obvious out of the way. There is the Records of the Grand Historian, Volume 10, the Book of Han, Volume 4, and the Zhizhi Tongjian, Volumes 12-15, which all give accounts of the rule of Wen and Jing,

and the goings-on of Empress Dou. All are available online, by the way, for free, and in English, or at least some of them, through www.ctext.org. I assume, however, that you're looking for something a bit more approachable. Well, for that, I'd suggest the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Dictionary, Antiquity through Sui, 1600 BCE through 618 CE by Lily Xiaohong Li and A.D. Stefanovska. And also, Notable Women of China by Barbara Bennett Peterson. On that same vein, another listener, who asked to remain anonymous, asked a similar question. Can you provide a list of resources that you used to gather info for your podcast? Your podcast is great, but I might want to dig even deeper than your podcast would allow, to which I'm more than happy to assist. In addition to the sources I already said,

I have a few more that I'd definitely recommend. In terms of the Three Kingdoms specifically, Australian historian, sinologist, and professor emeritus at the Australian National University, Ralph de Crespigny, is a must. Though he's now retired, he has continued to put out amazingly insightful analyses of Chinese history, and one of his more recent works is titled Imperial Warlord, a biography of Cao Cao, 155-220 AD. Another excellent source is Professor de Crespigny's own mentor, Hans Bielenstein, who is a specialist in the Han Dynasty and Professor Emeritus of Columbia University. And of course, how could I conclude the recommendation section without once again mentioning the Romance of the Three Kingdoms? If you're unfamiliar with it, consider it as the

Chinese King Arthur tale, complete with dragons, magic, massive battles, heroes and villains, and the unification of a terribly important kingdom. Seriously, you should read it. Or see it. It's a stage play, too. Heck, it's a major motion picture. It's a great story, and is available in English online. Although just having looked through the A audible.com database, apparently it's

not yet as an audiobook. Maybe that will be my calling after I finish this podcast, however many years from now that may be. I'm going to finish out with a, well, a fun question that doesn't specifically relate to Chinese history, but more to contemporary Chinese culture. Ed asked, are there crossword puzzles in China like you'd find in English newspapers? Now, Ed initially replied that, well, I'd never heard of anything like that and it sounded rather unlikely to me,

but hey, it turns out you'd learn something new every day. In fact, yes, there are crossword puzzles in China. Specifically, they're called Xiao Chuang and they've been a regular feature in the newspaper Southern Weekly since the late 1990s. In fact, if you're so inclined and use an Android phone, you can download the app and play for yourself at infzm.com. So, that's a relatively recent addition

to the rich and ancient Chinese tradition of word games. But given the density and complexity of the written language, it's not surprising that they've mostly been centered around the far more homophonic, and therefore easy-to-play-with, spoken language, and mostly centered around the concept of cheng yu, or four-character couplets or idioms. One such example of a couplet word game is one person says a couplet idiom, such as qi hu nan xia, meaning between a rock and a hard place. Then the next person takes the final syllable of the phrase, in this case xia, and thinks of a new couplet, such as xia li bar en,

meaning like a redneck. Then the next person makes a new phrase based on the final syllable of the previous one, and so on and so forth. And in the past year or so, Chinese TV has also put out a game show that showcases the Chinese love of wordplay, called 成语 Charades. It's like a Chinese game of taboo, where there are teams of two. One partner is given an idiomatic couplet, and then has a limited amount of time to make the other partner guess the phrase. They're able to speak but may not use any of the words in the couplet. A precursor to this show was the Chinese character dictation competition, which was sort of like a spelling bee for Hanzi. Contestants were told a very difficult word and then were tasked with correctly writing the character for the word, which could frequently be more than 20 brushstrokes.

Finally, my personal favorite Chinese wordplay is one of the earliest I ever learned. It's a very simple phrase. Four is four, ten is ten, 44 is 44. Or in Chinese, 四十四,十十十,十十十十十, 四十四,四十,四十四,四十四, See, simple. I'd like to thank all of you who wrote in and asked questions for me to answer.

And moreover, all of you listening and who have been back week after week for a year now. You guys are absolutely what keeps me going and sacrificing sleep and socialization for the sake of Chinese history. And I'd have it no other way. You guys are awesome. And with your ears and continued support, we are going strong after 47 episodes, and with things only looking up from here. Fellow Cynophiles, you are absolutely the best. Here's looking forward to year two, and all the years after that. And for that, thank you all very much. Next time, we launch into the state that has emerged victorious from the trauma of the Three Kingdoms,

the Jin Dynasty under its emperor, Wu. But though he had managed to seize power from the Cao clan and reunify the Chinese Empire, the Jin Dynasty's celebration will prove, well, let's call it troubled. As always, thank you for listening. Hey guys, hope you all enjoyed the show this week. If so, please consider helping us climb the charts by giving us a review on the iTunes store, which remains by far the cheapest, easiest way to get new people interested in Chinese history and this podcast. For any of you who might wish to go one step further than a review, the History of China's WordPress site also has links to our donation pages, either through PayPal or Patreon.

So if you think we're worth a dollar or more, please click and donate. Our server costs are entirely paid for by listeners like you. Thanks very much, and see you again next week. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. next week. of terror. You can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today.