The Han dynasty

[yoMAMA]

There's an article in this month's issue of national geographic about the Han dynasty, pretty interesting stuff.

Anyone else read it?

[amietron]

is this the article?

By Mike EdwardsPhotographs by O. Louis Mazzatenta

As mighty in the East two thousand years ago as the Romans were in the West, the Han emperors—brilliant, cunning, and cruel—left a mark on China that endures today.

Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt.

"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., the first of 27 Lius to reign. Far from the whole world, his writ extended across a territory only about half as large as today's China. Tough, and common as his surname—China swarms with people named Liu—he despised learned Confucians, whom he readily identified by their distinctive peaked hats. According to an incident recounted by a famous Han historian, Sima Qian, when Liu Bang encountered one of these worthies he "immediately snatches the hat from the visitor's head and pisses in it."

Liu Bang had been a minor official in the previous dynasty, the Qin (or Chin, from which "China" derives). The Qin was the first dynasty to weld China's oft-warring kingdoms into a single state. It was also cruel and soon collapsed. With the throne up for grabs, Liu Bang raised an army. His most formidable opponent, a general named Xiang Yu, captured Liu Bang's father and sent Liu Bang an ultimatum: "Surrender or I will boil your venerable sire alive!"

Liu Bang replied merely: "Send me a cup of the soup."

Bravado won out; Dad wasn't stewed, and Liu Bang finally crushed Xiang Yu, who then, to deal with the humiliation, committed suicide with his one remaining concubine.

The victor 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"). In those ruins on a June afternoon, I stood atop a mound 50 feet (20 meters) high—the site of Liu Bang's palace. Portions of Changan's city wall, which encompassed 13 square miles (33 square kilometers), poked from fields where peasants were reaping wheat, some with scythes, some at the wheels of combines.

Liu Bang, also known as Gaozu, "high ancestor," (symbolic names were often posthumously conferred on emperors) called his palace Lasting Joy. Joy? I thought I heard screams from the ruins. After his death in 195 B.C. his empress, Lu Zhi, tried to hijack the empire for her own family. She had several Liu Bang sons born to concubines murdered and for good measure mutilated his favorite mistress and had her tossed into a privy.

Routing other Liu kin and loyal generals from their fiefdoms—the spoils of rulership—she replaced them with her own relatives. Fifteen years passed before the Liu clan managed to regain control, enthroning a surviving Liu Bang son, Emperor Wen. The Lius then wiped out all the empress's kin they could get their hands on.

Oh, the Han women! This wouldn't be the last time an empress or concubine colluded in a dangerous political game.

Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine.

[yoMAMA]

Originally Posted by amietron

is this the article?

yep!

[Napoleon Chynamite]

Interesting. Yet conveniently cutting the article off after insinuating they would go into greater detail regarding Han women. Conniving bastards ^^ they must be desperate for new subscriptions.

[yoMAMA]

Originally Posted by Gumby

Interesting. Yet conveniently cutting the article off after insinuating they would go into greater detail regarding Han women. Conniving bastards ^^ they must be desperate for new subscriptions.

they are desperate-they even have a swimsuit issue now.

[SunWuKong]

arguably the most glorious dynasty in the history of China, after the Tang dynasty.

[hooligan]

i ran across the article in a national geographic at the student clinic, i was going to steal it but i carelessly left it out in the open when i left so i couldn't grab it on my way out. :( looking at the captions and pictures, the article is definitely well put together. i didn't have a chance to read it before i left.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

Originally Posted by hooligan

i ran across the article in a national geographic at the student clinic, i was going to steal it but i carelessly left it out in the open when i left so i couldn't grab it on my way out. :( looking at the captions and pictures, the article is definitely well put together. i didn't have a chance to read it before i left.

haha, I used to have those types of temptations as a teen, except it was more like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and not National Geographic.

[hooligan]

Originally Posted by Gumby

haha, I used to have those types of temptations as a teen, except it was more like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and not National Geographic.

well i only flipped through the pages of national geographic to catch some nudie shots <3

[Seamus]

I subscribe to NG and read that article. It was short, but the writing was better than NG's usual cliche-ridden boilerplate. Good photos, too. I was actually in Xinjiang in December, one of the areas discussed in more detail in the article, as the Tarim basin was the western outpost of the Han dynasty. Incidentally, does anyone know why only Northern (or "real," as I like to kid) Chinese people (like myself)--not counting ethnic minorities--consider themselves "Han" people? Why do Cantonese people name themselves after the Tang dynasty, and do they consider themselves ETHNIC Chinese (as opposed to citizens of the Chinese state, which they obviously are)?

[SunWuKong]

Originally Posted by Seamus

I subscribe to NG and read that article. It was short, but the writing was better than NG's usual cliche-ridden boilerplate. Good photos, too. I was actually in Xinjiang in December, one of the areas discussed in more detail in the article, as the Tarim basin was the western outpost of the Han dynasty. Incidentally, does anyone know why only Northern (or "real," as I like to kid) Chinese people (like myself)--not counting ethnic minorities--consider themselves "Han" people? Why do Cantonese people name themselves after the Tang dynasty, and do they consider themselves ETHNIC Chinese (as opposed to citizens of the Chinese state, which they obviously are)?

well, really, it's Minnan Hua that's the closest to how they spoke in the Han dynasty, but i don't think Fukienese people consider themselves to be northern.

and there was a wave of migration to the south during the Tang dynasty, specifically to the area of what is now Guangdong. that's why many Cantonese people still refer to the Chinese as Tang people, and that's why Tang poetry sounds better when read in Cantonese.

[kuilong]

Originally Posted by SunWuKong

well, really, it's Minnan Hua that's the closest to how they spoke in the Han dynasty, but i don't think Fukienese people consider themselves to be northern.

Actually, Minnan is not descended from Middle Chinese (while Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka (kejia) and Gan (the dialect spoken in Jiangxi) are. Here's a nice family tree: http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/9/92/...guage_tree.png.

[Edit: Not to mention this page: http://www.chinesedc.com/4WenYi/Lang...o-tibetan1.htm (in Chinese)]

Cantonese does preserve most of the finals and tones of classical Chinese, and while in Mandarin the pronunciations of some characters have merged, they're still separate in Cantonese. That's why reading Middle Chinese poetry in Cantonese is usually easier to understand (and sounds better?) than if it's read in Mandarin.

[SunWuKong]

Originally Posted by kuilong

Actually, Minnan is not descended from Middle Chinese (while Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka (kejia) and Gan (the dialect spoken in Jiangxi) are. Here's a nice family tree: .

doesn't that diagram say that Minnan at least partially from the same ancestor as Hakka? i'm not sure how to read that diagram, because it seems to be colour coded and the children have more than one parent.

Originally Posted by kuilong

[Edit: Not to mention this page: http://www.chinesedc.com/4WenYi/Lang...o-tibetan1.htm (in Chinese)]

that's a very informative chart. thanks for linking it. i'll probably be looking at it quite a bit.

but how does it say that Minnan doesn't resemble the original Han dynasty dialect the most out of the current spoken dialects? it puts Minnan under the 閩 group, Mandarin under the "Northern" group, Hakka and Gan under the 客贛 group, all three of which are at the same level of divergence as Cantonese (or 粵語) from the Sino branch of the Sino-Tibetan family.

Originally Posted by kuilong

Cantonese does preserve most of the finals and tones of classical Chinese, and while in Mandarin the pronunciations of some characters have merged, they're still separate in Cantonese. That's why reading Middle Chinese poetry in Cantonese is usually easier to understand (and sounds better?) than if it's read in Mandarin.

i don't know if it's easier to understand - my Mandarin sucks.
but in my opinion it does sound better when read in Cantonese, as opposed to Mandarin. some of the rhyming actually does not exist in Mandarin while existing in Cantonese.

[kuilong]

Originally Posted by SunWuKong

doesn't that diagram say that Minnan at least partially from the same ancestor as Hakka? i'm not sure how to read that diagram, because it seems to be colour coded and the children have more than one parent.

It says that the language during the Han dynasty was the ancestor of Mandarin, Cantonese, Gan and Hakka, but that the branch that eventually became Min split off from that group earlier on. Something like this:


Zhou Dynasty Chinese splits into:
1. Qi --> ... --> Min[bei|nan|dong|xi]
2. Han Dynasty Chinese --> ... --> Mandarin, Cantonese, Gan, Hakka
3. (also split into what became Wu (Shanghainese PrYdE!), Hui and Xiang)


(Look at the section entitled Hanyu Yanhua Tu (漢語演化圖), that's what the first colorful map is based on)

[Seamus]

Yeah, I remember reading that Cantonese has changed less from the original ancient Chinese than Mandarin has, which is kind of surprising given that the Sino-Tibetan languages originally came from the north, and that the south of China was originally populated by speakers of the Miao-Yiao, Tai-Kadai and Austroasian language families. I know there is a bit of Altaic influence on Mandarin pronunciation and vocabulary due to the influx of Turkic peoples into the northern Chinese population, but the grammar is obviously not in the least bit Altaic.

I think Cantonese songs are beautiful, but I think the spoken language sounds rather harsh, maybe because I understand none of it.