LEGACY: The Origins of Civilization

LEGACY: The Origins of Civilization
China: The Mandate of Heaven
Film-Viewing Guide
(DVD series available in Stewart Library)

Neolithic: c 5000 - 2400 BCE various cultures; most significant: Yangshao (also mentioned: Longshan culture; Liangzhu culture)

Shang Dynasty: c 1600 - 1050 BCE (formerly 1750 - 1045)

Zhou Dynasties: c 1050 - 480 BCE (Western and Eastern Zhou dynasties)

Warring States Era: c 480 - 221 BCE

Qin Dynasty: 221 - 206 BCE FIRST EMPEROR

Han Dynasty: c 200 BCE - 220 CE

Period of Disunity

Tang Dynasty: 618 - 907

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period

Song Dynasty: 960 - 1279 (also spelled: Sung)

Yuan Dynasty: 1279 - 1368 (also spelled: Yüan; the Mongols rule China)

Ming Dynasty: 1368 - 1644

Qing Dynasty: 1644 - 1911 LAST EMPEROR

Chinese Republic: 1911 - 1949

People's Republic of China: 1949 - (Communist Party takes over China in 1949)

CHINA ..... was the last of all ancient civilizations to develop ....
1989: Tianamen Square Massacre, outside Forbidden City
The search for "harmony on earth" is ultimately the goal of civilization itself.
Control of the past gave rise to ancient civilizations in the east (unlike the need for control of nature which prevailed in western civilizations)
In 1889, old bones with writing on them ("dragon-bones") that used to be ground up for medicinal powders, were discovered in the oldest pharmacy in the world, founded in 1663.
They were the "ground-up ritual archives of the Shang dynasty."
They came from Anyang, on the Yellow River (Huang-Ho/Huang-He) and were found in tombs, used as "oracle bones" to communicate with the past, with the ancestors; dated to ca. 1100 BCE
文 "wen" is the Chinese character/word for "writing" ~ "wen" in Chinese became the word for civilization itself ..... in the beginning was the word (I disagree! In the beginning was the image :-)))
Chinese bronzes are mentioned .... they were used in rituals that (also) gave access to the wisdom of the ancestors ...
The three major philosophies on which Chinese civilization was built:
1. Confucianism: Practical applications
Confucius (551-479 BCE): formed the concept of the state as a moral order sustained by virtue and ritual; he was not concerned with the afterlife, but how to build goodness in the here and now, a goodness based on mutual trust; from this Confucian concept of the state developed the:
Mandate of Heaven: the ruler can only rule as long as he is good and just
Confucius' teachings became the foundation of Chinese politics for centuries; he believed that people are not born good - that goodness must be taught and it was up to the scholars (literati) to formulate ideology/ies.
2. Taoism/Daoism: Search for the Right Path: Mysticism to complement Confucius' practical side

Based on the teachings of Lao-Tzu/Laozi (born ca. 400 BCE - debated) ..... nature, the cosmos, humans ~ we are all connected .... and in the end, everyone returns "to one's own destiny", i.e. one's roots. The narrator mentions the Chinese concept of Ying-Yang in the context of Daoism, but it is not at all solely connected to that philosophy ...

Pilgrimage up Mount Taishan, one of five sacred Taoist mountains.

From the LEGACY-inspired blog: The search for the right path, Taoism, is the second-great stream of Chinese thought — a natural mysticism beside the natural common sense of Confucius, which wasn’t an alternative, but the other half of a necessary life balance.

Western culture sees nature in terms of control and exploitation. However, to the Chinese, it is the source of all harmony and balance.

The little Taoist Temple on the top of sacred Taishan Mountain was wrecked during the Cultural Revolution. Now, it has been rebuilt and real Taoist monks and nuns returned in 1985 to live there and be committed to the old ways.

.... the Silk Route in the far west of China, established during the 2nd century CE ~~ (narrator calls that century the "first international age" when ideas, goods and people were 'exchanged' between empires) ~~ enabled contact with India and Buddhism, the third major philosophy to form Chinese civilization:

3. Buddhism: Path to inner enlightement:

..... by leading a moral life, being mindful of thoughts and actions and developing wisdom and understanding (often through meditation). Buddhism does not subscribe to the idea of a "personal God" as western religions do.

Xuanzang: the Chinese monk/missionary who during a 17-year journey in the 7th century (Tang dynasty) wanted to learn more about Buddhism, travelled to India and came back to Xian/ancient Chang'an (the grand ancient capital of China) with 650 Buddhist texts on palm leaves

also associated with the Tang dynasty (considered to have been a "golden age" of Chinese culture):

Li Bo/Li Bai: 701-762; beloved poet .... who died when he fell, drunk, into a river while trying to catch the reflection of the moon ....

Sung/Song Dynasty, and especially the 11th century during that dynasty: another peak of Chinese history:

The city of Kaifeng was the center of that dynasty; a city that included a large population of Muslims and a small group of Chinese Jews ~ making Kaifeng the farthest outpost of Judaism.

During the 11th century, China is the most literal society on earth .... even experimenting with printing (which developed from the ancient practice of stamping) and moveable type!

During the 11th century, China also developed the first great cuisine in the world and (Kaifeng?) still boasts the oldest restaurant in the world, established in 1153 ~ and still open! As with everything else, in Chinese cooking there also must be harmony ....

Marco Polo (1254-1324) arrives in China at the end of the Sung dynasty, calls it the greatest civilization on earth and observes that if the Chinese were war-like, they could conquer the whole world ....

Examples of silk work

Examples of calligraphy and stamping (red)

In the 15th century (and decades before Columbus!), the Chinese admiral
Cheng-Ho explored the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, East-Africa .... he could have gone all the way west, but bureaucrats abruptly stopped his explorations which resulted in "deeper introspection", in China "turning inward", "cultivating its inner landscapes" rather than continuing to continue to conquer, invade, and impose itself upon other cultures ~ as the west would (continue to) do ....

New capital: Peking-Beijing

During the 16th/17th centuries, the prevalent attitude in the west was "how to control the future", while in China it was "how to perfect the past" .... this is illustrated by 79,000 handwritten volumes of an encyclopedia, that catalogued all the great classics, history, philosophy and literature of China's past .....

In 1779, however, a young scholar (Chiang Siu Chung) asked for a more open attitude towards the venerated past and suggested that "we use the past to reform the present and look into the future", i.e. we should not merely linger in the past for its own sake, but use the past to learn for the future.

From the LEGACY-inspired blog: One Chinese scholar, Chiang Siu Chung, said that the Confucian texts were history and Confucius may be a true guide to life but the time was past to continue following this old curriculum of study.

Two years before this scholar’s death in 1799, he wrote a letter that said that history should no longer concern itself merely with the past but should use the past to reform the present and to look into the future.

Near Chiang Sui Chung’s death, China was about to come face to face with another culture whose view of history was diametrically opposed to Chinese tradition.

The Europeans with their Judea-Christian heritage believed that history had a purpose — that it was leading toward an appointed end and they would be the winners.

When The Chinese first met the Westerners, the Chinese had a dark description of the Europeans as a savage people who didn’t just come to sell but came to impose their ideas, their religions and their will on everyone they met.

This era culminated in the Opium Wars, which meant the Europeans wanted to get as many Chinese addicted to Opium as possible.

China was defeated by the very technology they had developed centuries earlier because they had stopped in their development. Unable to cope with the pressure from the West, the Chinese government collapsed and the Western Imperialists treated the Chinese people as if they were animals in their own land.

Then a great time of revolution had arrived as the I-Ching, the book of changes, says. In the I- Ching, there is a hexagram titled revolution. In a revolution, the I-Ching says there are two mistakes that must be avoided. You must not move with excessive haste nor use excessive ruthlessness against the people.

In the 19th century, China encountered the West (again) ~ and had a rather unflattering view of Westerners: "at the heart of their conduct is violence".

The 19th century is marked (marred?) by the Opium Wars (1839 - 60) in which China, India and Great Britain are involved.

After years of civil war, Mao Tse Tung takes over in 1949.