Why are books on Chinese history so scarce?

>>2318346
Iv always wondered the same thing.
I think it has to do with the language barrier, and us just not translating enough of it before the communists came in.

Yeah it's like the communists tried to eradicate chinese culture or something. Really makes you think.

>>2318346
Because Chinks have been writing their history since 1950s. New Temples, new parts of Great Wall, new "chronicles". Its so cheap and rude level of falsification, that not worth to see.

>>2318346
>Why are there so few books on Chinese history
what period are we talking? there's a ton of scholarship on 19th and 20th century china for example. There's even a lot on tang, song, yuan, ming. I think ancient history is harder because the lack of sources, but I can't be too sure.

>Where are all the works focusing on a narrow aspect of the history?
you can find those in the periods i mentioned above

>And where the hell are all the Chinese scholars?
commies didn't allow history to develop as a discipline and used it to convey ideological messages. plus, a ton of it hasn't been translated but that may change in the next few decades. it does confuse me though that such a project hasn't arisen yet. maybe there's a lack of will, funding, and people able to translate linguistic concepts from one language to the other. I also suspect that the government still plays a hand in making sure that no history puts china or the communists in a poor light. I had a professor who said he had to disguise the thesis of a book he was writing when talking to chinese officials or otherwise they would have blocked his access to archives n shit.

>>2318496
>>2318539
combination of these two

honestly chinks are so disassociated from culture and that is part of their culture

>>2318346
The Chinese destroyed their own history and culture. It's up to foreigners to save it.

Probably because it's mostly in Chinese and westerners in general don't care about Chinese history apart from meme people and happenings.

>>2318346
>Why are there so few books on Chinese history
There are plenty of official records even dating back to the Imperial era, but they're all in Chinese.

>Why can't I read Chinese? Why do I have my head up my ass? Why am I so goddamn stupid?

There OP I fixed your typos.

Do you want modern history books written by chinese and then translated into english or classic history books written in chinese and translated into english?
If it's the latter, a lot of them are translated into english like the classic of history or the records of the grand historian.

>>2318685
Too many people are too lazy in regards to this stuff.

It's one of those "if it isn't accessible as fuck it doesn't exist" pleb shitter thing. Other places have it more difficult then China since you only have to know Chinese as the barrier of entry to actually go below surface level shit extensively "or wait ages for a translation".

Using Cameroon for example you have to know German to be able to read the colonial records, papers and media at the time as well as having to go there to have access to it. Then you do have to do the same for English and French since they ruled over it as two separate entities when Germany lost them as well.

Then there's the issue of engaging with locals who may or may not be able to speak to you due to language barriers (if you speak English gg Cameroon is mostly francophone and you may need a translator in case some uses a local toungue).

>>2318346
There are plenty of books that are on Chinese history but most of them aren't available in English because they can't be fucked to translate them

>>2318346
Translation:
>I can't read Chinese, therefore all the history books in Chinese do not exist

>why are almost all of them written by Westerners?
Because Westerners write in English and Chinese historians don't?

>>2318346
You have so little access to Chinese histpry for the same reason you have so little knowledge of Chinese internet memes. The distance between our bubble and their bubble is quite vast.

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>>2318346
>Why are there so few books on Chinese history, and why are almost all of them written by Westerners?
>Is this just a case of the Chinese hating their own country and trying to remain willfully ignorant of its history, or what? I
This is a load of horse shit. Chinese people are ravenous consumers of their own history.

The reason you never see any books is because they're written in Mandarin for other Chinese, so what possible good could those books do on the shelves of the average western book store?

A better question to ask is why don't more Americans give a shit about Chinese history? If they did more western publishers would make more Chinese history books written in English for other westerners.

>>2318346
I... guess I'll do it. More Mei please.

>Mandachan, why are books on America so scarce? It seems like all of them are written by Chinese authors too. Do white piggu really not care about their history enough to make it accessible?

>>2319395

Literally this.

I also imagined that the person saying it was the statue in the picture.

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>>2319395
>The reason you never see any books is because they're written in Mandarin for other Chinese, so what possible good could those books do on the shelves of the average western book store?
Pretty much. You have no idea how disappointed I was when I discovered that Zhou Youguang's entire bibliography wasn't translated.

Most chinese history books are either bias or untrue so better stick to those that have been translated

>>2318685
>>2318904

Were you two dropped on your heads as children? So if I have a budding interest in Chinese history, that means I have go to learn Chinese?

I guess I would then have to go learn the language of every culture if I wanted any access to its history, from Church Slavonic to ancient Greek.

>>2319238

I seriously don't get how all of you in this thread can be so fucking DENSE.

The entire point of my OP was with reference to the Chinese living IN THE WEST. I am well aware that the Chinese have their own historians and probably plenty of books on this shit in China. That wasn't what I was saying.

However, if you look at something like Islam or the Middle-East in general, the Muslims have taken a way more active interest in peddling their own (albeit at times distorted) history. The same goes for Indians. As opposed to the Chinese.

>>2319536
>Most chinese history books are either bias or untrue
Evidence? Generally white people like Gavin Menzies do the wewuzzing for us. Give an example of an untranslated Chinese History book which contained false claims.
>>2319818
Maybe Middle Easterners and Indians in the west feel the need to peddle their ethnic history because your average westerner is unaware that they even had civilizations.

>>2318346

Because from the average chinese fellow's point of view the history of China is of nothing more than cruel subjugation, torture, oppression (not the modern sjw flavour mind you), toil and misery.

For example for westerners the Great Wall is a monumental feat of engineering, but for native chinese it was a cruel reminder of the thousand of peasants that were made to work to dead building it; of the totalitarian rule of the state.

It's only until very, very recently that your everyday streetwalker in Beijing has an interest in his country's glorious history, as a fountain of national pride.

>>2318346
For a great Mao-era history check out Tombstone by Yang Jisheng

>>2319823
Evidences of their version? They just constructing new buildings and claim it is ancient. And crying about documents which were lost during Cultural revolution. Its not serious.

>>2318685
This.

>>2319818
>The entire point of my OP was with reference to the Chinese living IN THE WEST. I am well aware that the Chinese have their own historians and probably plenty of books on this shit in China. That wasn't what I was saying.

Fucking liar. There's nothing in the OP about Chinese diaspora.

>>2318346
How is that pic SFW?


MODS!

>>2318346
>Why are there so few books on Chinese history,
Not really sure how one measures that.

>and why are almost all of them written by Westerners?
Okay now this is bait

>>2319818
>The entire point of my OP was with reference to the Chinese living IN THE WEST.

Care to ummmmm, point out where in OP you said that or even implied that?

>>2319818
>So if I have a budding interest in Chinese history, that means I have go to learn Chinese?
Why the literal fuck do you think most Chinese sources would not be written in fucking Chinese?

>Chinese living IN THE WEST
Because many Chinese who live in the West were more interested in getting AWAY from their culture until recently. In the 1960s Chinese people in America were almost ashamed of being Chinese, you can't really avoid it even considering the "century of humiliation" that more or less broke their cultural camel back. Lately, in the 2000s, Chinese have become proud that they are Chinese, owing to the resurgance of their nation and the newfound pride in themselves this creates. Thus you may find that university students in the west from China are more interested in their own national history.
Furthermore it's the case that Chinese people in the West have more interest in making it big than making their nation known, and this is historically true - China has not had spectacular interest in spreading their history and culture outside of their borders, for the most part, even if the Sinosphere nations tended to pick up many aspects on their own.

Stop saying chinks, that's a racial slut

>>2320141
>For example for westerners the Great Wall is a monumental feat of engineering, but for native chinese it was a cruel reminder of the thousand of peasants that were made to work to dead building it; of the totalitarian rule of the state.

>for native Chinese
Since when? Before the late Qing dynasty people as close as Beijing literally didn't even remember it existed, it was the westerners and Jesuits that brought attention to it.
The Great Wall was then taken as a nationalistic symbol starting with the original Republic of China, since they didn't have that many rallying points.

>>2320429
>Before the late Qing dynasty people as close as Beijing literally didn't even remember it existed,

Ummm... maybe the peasants who were too busy starving. But the Imperial palace and scholars clearly knew about it...

Most Americans don't even know the year when the USA was founded or that we were essentially something else 1781-1789.

>>2320466
>clearly knew about it
The peasants in Beijing were not really starving during the early-mid Qing dynasty. The scholars and Imperial Palace knew about it but their reaction when confronted by that one French dude who wrote a ton on China was "oh yeah...that old thing...like, okay what about it?"
No pride at all.

>>2320467
[Citation needed]

And okay. I don't see how that's meaningful or relevant. Every nation has a "national pride" no one gave a shit about a century prior.

Just a few examples of this
WE WUZ ROMANZ
WE WUZ GREEKZ
WE WUZ CONQUERORZ
TURKZ
QINGZ!
BRAHUMPUTRAZ!

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>>2318346
Because of that.

>>2320475
>source?
I forgot exactly who it was so I'll admit I don't have direct evidence on hand. Superficially, almost all accounts we have of the Great Wall as anything impressive come from foreigners like Shahrukh until post-Imperial China. There's also quite a dearth of written works referencing it as oppression despite it having a grim nickname, and even when referenced it is generally simply used to show how Qin was barbaric as fuck and almost never mentions the later building projects. This implies it wasn't viewed as such.

>And okay. I don't see how that's meaningful or relevant.
My point is that the Great Wall was not viewed as a 'cruel reminder' of anything because it wasn't viewed period, almost everyone who wasn't thinking about it from a military point of view was not thinking about it at all.

>national pride
China came into the nationalism thing late. Even their term for nation is a reverse loanword from Japanese, they didn't have a notion of national pride, only cultural achievement.

>cruel subjugation, torture, toil, and misery
From what we can tell if they weren't at war at the time China tended to be pretty goddamn rich and that wealth was distributed among the people as well to an extent. If you read accounts like say Matteo / Niccolo / Marco, Al-Hakim, or Matteo Ricci, or Shahrukh's embassy. Now obviously if you listen to shit like >>2320476 then they were literally behind Abos until relatively recently, but that isn't quite accepted by most mainstream historical circles so let's just ignore that for now. If anything, the suffering and toil and misery was only in conciousness starting from the so-called Century of Humilation.

>oppression
There is a phrase in Chinese dating to either Ming or Yuan that goes "The Heavens are high and the Emperor is far away", or alternatively "The Mountains rise tall and the Court is distant". The notion is that for the most part there was hardly any oppression and enforcement of most rules was lax at best.

>>2320476
Although this is bait, both lines are clearly wrong

>>2320501
>Even their term for nation is a reverse loanword from Japanese, they didn't have a notion of national pride,
[CITATIONS NEEDED]

Spouting memes I see.

This lie triggers me

>>2320504
>[CITATIONS NEEDED]
Jesus fucking christ anon how about you read a motherfucking book? The Chinese did not have a concept of a nation as tied to a state, merely a chinese cultural zone and therefore a state, this is entry level knowledge for anyone studying their history.
民族 Minzu is borrowed from Japanese 民族 Minzoku, as equivalent to nation (it technically means something like family of the people). Sun Yatsen even expressed the notion that nationalism was considered by many to have "served its purpose" after the fall of the Qing, which obviously implies it isn't a natively Imperial concept. The term of 中華民族 i.e. Chinese Nation (as seperate from the Imperial Chinese state, the ethnicities within China, or the Chinese culture) was coined by Liang Qichao, who was born in the fucking 1870s.
If you know literally fucking nothing then I can't discuss shit with you.

>>2320523
t. Lucian Pye

>>2320424
>>2319818
overseas Chinese outside America (e.g. in Southeast Asia) aren't shy about being Chinese.

This thread is the first time I truly felt /his/ might have been a mistake.

>>2318496
Fucking decrepit anti-communist Cold War propaganda that shouldn't even stand up to a basic wikipedia run over of the Cultural Revolution

>>2318685
Morons that have nothing to say pretending to say something by attacking posters with barely coherent trolling

>>2320774
They also don't speak English and won't be writing books in English.
Also the surge in national pride has already happened - overseas Chinese just about everywhere aren't shy about being Chinese anymore

>>2320779
Yeah, but SEA Chinese have been fiercely Chinese for a long time, see Malaysia's long-standing racial politics and tensions and how Singapore was expelled for example

Also Singapore national language is literally English

>>2320799
Well that too but see >>2319395, there's just no market for Chinese history outside of their cultural sphere for some damn reason, the best you'll get is either cursory summaries of their history as an 'introduction' (and good luck trying to find any material to move past that introduction) or shit like Meeting China Halfway / The China Threat / China's Expansionism under Xi Jinping / The Economic Miracle / Red Dragon Rising or whatever other """""modern history""""" books you can find
Oh and obviously a ton of books on the cultural revolution and communist atrocities.
I'm pretty sure there's a decent number of Vietnamese books on Chink history.

>>2320811
There doesn't need to be a market. This stuff exists in academia. People don't publish works based on large numbers of expected audience. Chemical Engineering doesn't have a popular market either, but that doesn't stop modern works from being translated into Chinese, English, Tagalog, whatever.

I can't be the only one that finds this "oh it's it's in Chinese and nothing can be done" excuse to be incredibly suspicious and unconvincing. There's over a billion Chinese. At least some of them are bilingual. No one has translated the major history works into English (the most popular language in the world)?

>>2318346
what are some good books on chinese history /his/?

>>2320854
>this stuff exists in academia
You'd be surprised at the number of Chinese versions of English historical.
They're quite rare indeed.
Academic histories are different from academic sciences. To begin with, many people learn their sciences in English and mathematics papers consist of 90 pages of equations and maybe a dozen of text annotations and conclusions.
Actual books on high-level sciences don't generally get translated. The papers MIGHT get translated but more often than not you're expected to just learn German if you want to read a paper from the University of Berlin.

>No one has translated the major history works into English (the most popular language in the world)?
Nobody cares to. People who are interested on the academic level often just up and learn the language to use primary sources anyway, this is why historians often know all sorts of languages from Greek to Sanskrit to Latin. They may or may not translate the works they used - they often don't, preferring to spend their time writing up new works.
Some of the works are translated, just not many. Some of the more famous court records are as well.

>>2320326
You just supported an unsubstantiated claim with another unsubstantiated claim.

>>2318346
>why are almost all of them written by Westerners?
because the chinese government likes to airbrush out the less favourable parts of chinese history like Tienanmen square.
A history book on china written by the chinese is called properganda

What are some good books in English about Chinese history?

The way history is taught in Asia is different to the West, their way of learning history is much more oriented towards simply learning dates and names instead of being taught to critically evaluate and balance sources against each other.

>>2321357
>he says when ancient Chinese historians like the Sima bunch were noted for using immense numbers of sources to the point they sometimes had entire chapters discussing why he chose to believe one source over another when they had mismatches
Come on mate

>>2321297
No it's because you can't read Chinese and mistakenly assume that English is the only language in the world.

>>2320778
Every communist government to come in power has tried to destroy the people's culture and history to make them more fluid and less likely to revolt.
When /pol/ comes here they are expected to not be autistic because of their ideology and that standard also applies to communists.

During the revolution there was a purge of scholars and cultural artifacts. Recent history has seen a reversal in this trend as the Communist party increasingly wishes to see themselves as the new Chinese imperium. To an extent past emperors are now revered when once their reign was reviled. Especially Qing.

>waifufag manchild needs to be spoonfed
What a surprise

>>2321538
Don't forget Confucianism

>>2320351
>>2320412

Oh, I don't know, maybe by saying

>And why do no historical works originating from China get any translations here?

The statement is fucking implicit. Why else would I pose the question? I don't live in an English-speaking country either, so I know how it works. And funnily enough, we have books from Japan translated here that the English-speaking world doesn't have at all. Nevertheless, even though we're a tiny country, the few historians we have abroad all study things related to the Balkans and publish papers on that.

Evidently they must have a multitude of studies in China, given they've always been obsessed with history. That's the whole POINT of the fucking thread. When there's SO MANY Chinese in the West, it's insane that most authors writing these books are white and all the other historians referenced in the works are all also white.

It makes way more sense to me that the person trying to convey all this stuff to a Western audience would be a Chinese person raised in the West, rather than a weit piggu that spent years just to get a basic grasp of the language.


>>2320424

I don't. My point was that it seems retarded to expect everyone to speak a certain language in order to read about that culture. I don't speak Russian, but I have access to plenty of books on Russian history, even in my own country.

>>2321281

OP here and not that guy, but I remember reading in Keay's China about how the government tried to show the waterworks and the Great Wall as single monumental constructions when they were just patchworks done throughout Chinese history.

And then mentions of how they tried to dismiss different finds that didn't fit the idea of a homogeneous Xia people back in the day, and how they've consistently tried to do away with evidence found in Xinjiang due to the political conflicts in that region, like the Caucasian mummies and so on.

Not saying he's right because I've never researched this stuff, but the reading was compelling.

>>2321636
>how the government
But anon, the original people trying to show the great wall as single monumental constructions done entirely in Qin dynasty were Europeans who mistakenly thought the Beiping section went like that all the way to the west when it's more like little bits of wall using mountains and cliffs as natural bastions.
The actual education system in China makes it very clear that the Great Wall was only started in Qin and patched up repeatedly, and the canal systems likewise
Hell, the "Wild Great Wall" i.e. the parts of the wall in disrepair and mostly not continuous due to being broken by natural barriers are actually popular tourist sites so you can see this yourself.

>>2321679

Like I said, I'm just telling you what I read. I'm no expert on the topic.

Since the other guy asked as well, let me ask you too: Have any good recommendations? I would love to learn more.

>>2321730
I can read Chinese so I usually go for Chinese versions, but I believe the Records of the Grand Historian and some of the other Imperial records are translated for primary sources.
There is [China: A New Cultural History] by Cho-yun Hsu, Columbia University, and F. Mote's [Imperial China], Harvard University Press, which covers I believe Song through pre-Victorian Qing. Also [A Concise History of China] by J. Roberts, also from Harvard University Press.
These are the main well-written survey histories I've found for Chinese history, there's more on specific people or time periods like [Zhou Enlai] by Wenqian Gao (this is a Chinese person, translated from the original source. Well balanced treatment, isn't overly critical nor overly supportive) and http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft1000031p&brand=ucpress.

>>2321784

You're a good man. Bless.

>>2318346
BECAUSE THEY'RE BEATING US AT TRADE!

Can anybody recommend between China: A New History by John King Fairbank and China: A History by John Keay? The latter is cheaper but is the former better?

>>2322102
I never read the first. The second is perfectly decent, but it lacks focus on the past few hundred years as it prefers to focus on ancient China before, say, 1600, and stops right after Red China in 1949. J. Spence's [The Search for Modern China] is a good follow up imo, these two together plus F. Mote's [Imperial China] is a good general introduction.
That being said, John Keay can be kind of...rude sounding? I remember him calling the buddha a vagrant and the 'alleged' great wall a bunch of times. He's definitely not unbiased in his tone if he uses sources generally pretty well.
It is extremely useful to know some of the language, even just a basic amount, when reading about Chinese history, if only because there's so much implication in some of the titles that is rarely covered. Emperor in Chinese has divine, august, primal, etc. etc. overtones, and not in the Roman sense either, and so on.

>>2322102

>China: A History by John Keay

I thought that one was very nice. By the time I was halfway in I actually knew where each province was without having to look at the map, because he made me remember them, and I could name the dynasties in order.

>>2322280
>not being able to do so already

>>2322297
Where is Gansu?

>>2322300
...am I meant to draw a map right now for you or something? Between Sha'anxi and Qinghai

If you want the gist of Chinese history, a few central themes sum up (for me personally) the thousands of years they have:

They believed in dynastic cycles of unity and unrest, acknowledging the periodic cycle of things (of course the Commie government is trying to usurp this tradition.)
天下大势、分久必合、合久必分
"When it comes to the world under heaven, things long united will be divided and things long divided will reunite once again."

Peasants throughout Chinese history see not the grand scale of dynastic cycles but rather their inevitable enslavement to the emperor and ultimate resignation.
兴、百姓苦、亡、百姓苦
"During prosperity, the hundred surnames (the people) will suffer and during decline, the hundred surnames will suffer also. "

Despite the divine rule of the mandate of heaven and the resignation of the peasantry, certain standards are expected to meet; if the pressing emperor fails to meet basic needs, the people will revolt. Chinese peasantry has a long history of revolting documented as far back as Chen Sheng and Wu Guang's Revolt at the turn of AD.
水能载舟,亦能覆舟
"Water can float a boat but water can also sink a boat."

>>2322311
It's more like the divine rule of the mandate of heaven literally means that if you fuck up the peasantry are allowed to remove you
The entire point is that the Emperor is just a heavenly bureacrat in charge of All Under Heaven. If he fucks up his territory, in other words if he fails at doing his job, then he should be removed.

>>2322307
Ok, it checks out.

>>2322325
Well, it's not necessarily legalizing the revolts but rather arguing that the presiding government is ineffective and the current emperor is at risk of losing the mandate of heaven. Sure, it basically implies the emperor gonna get his ads raided if he pulls such poor choices but on paper, it's not a direct affirmation that people can waltz into the throne room, pick up the emperor and throw him outside. Take case in Chen Sheng and Wu Guang; although their revolts captured the zeitgeist of angry peasants under the rule of Qin, they were ultimately offed by the draconian Qin troops. Incidentally, Chen Sheng has a great quote that reflects another aspect of Chinese history.
王侯将相宁有种乎
"Are kings and nobles given their high status by birth?"

>>2322359
>it's not a direct affirmation that people can waltz into the throne room, pick up the emperor and throw him outside
It's not a direct affirmation because that's pretty retarded to pull but the original explicit concept of the Mandate comes from Zhou, who had...just overthrown the Yin and were desperately looking for legitimacy to not be called peasant rabble.

>王侯将相宁有种乎
True, probably one of the most special aspects of chinese history is to think that people might not be special just from birth but that doesn't mean everyone is born equal.

>>2322372
Battle of Muye, right? My Pre-Qin Chinese history a shit. It's basically composed of Xia, which probably is made up, Shang, which probably is factual and Zhou, which was long winded.

>>2322390
Xia isn't really made up, the people seem to have existed in roughly the right areas and there are some archeological evidences, but speaking about dynasties before honestly even Qin is kind of missing the point. The real glue that held Chinese people together started with the Spring and Autumn and the Qin dynasty. There was certainly an identity of Shang and Zhou but nowhere near as powerful as post-Qin. The whole concept of Chinese dynasties is that despite the fact that the state repeatedly just fucking exploded, the conceptual, idealized state and the apsect of All Under Heaven was more or less the same, and this was not strongly the case before the Spring and Autumn / Warring States era.

>>2322297

You realize I went into it knowing absolutely nothing. I didn't even know if the Yellow river was above or below the Yangzi.

>>2318346
Because there is a lack of demand to translate these texts as a result of the Euro-centrist view of history academia has been put under until very recently. If you take the time to fucking use google you will find that there is a Chinese historian tradition stretching back past Sima Qian to the Zuo Zhuan.
I swear to god /his/ is simultaneously the most pretentious and ignorant board on this website.

>>2322426
>Yangzi
Just a tip, the Yangzi river, in Chinese sources, does not mean literally the entire Yangtze - it only refers to the lower Yangtze river.

>>2322440

Talk to me more about the waters. And that isn't sarcastic. I wasn't even able to find a decent map of the rivers.

How exactly are they named and what are the main branches? And do they have any particular importance?

Also is there any Wiki that focuses on Chinese history to look this up? Wikipedia is pretty dogshit.

>>2322437
>I swear to god /his/ is simultaneously the most pretentious and ignorant board on this website.
/ck/ beats us

>>2322454
>tell me about the waters
What do you mean? I mean all the rivers are important, they have cultural implications (Mountain and Water never refers to literally the ocean, it is always the river), there's a ton of poetic -> cultural identity surrounding them, places like Ningxia grew filthy fucking rich from the river bends making the soil relatively fertile, and of course the Yellow river in particular has special importance and features in so many poems and lamentations it's not even funny for its propensity to basically go overdrive and kill everything.

>a decent map of the rivers
Can't you just get a plain old geographical map of China?

>>2322475

>Ningxia grew filthy fucking rich from the river bends making the soil relatively fertile

See, I mean stuff like that. Or just ordinary trivia. I'm just requesting you waste time dumping info about the waters if you have the patience, I guess. Or a good source to read this stuff.

>Can't you just get a plain old geographical map of China?

I guess, but they're often detailed and hard to follow, and other ones only take in certain parts of the waters and omit others. I just Googled this instant and there were two that represented the same stuff, but one had way more stuff depicted than the other.

>>2322489
You'll probably want to look for a survey map of some sort, those focus entirely on geography.

>if you have the patience
I have the patience but not the time because I promised oneechan I'd go out with her today so yeah sorry, maybe if thread is still here when I get back

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>>2318346
T H E Y ' R E

W R I T T E N

I N

C H I N E S E

R E T A R D

>>2320873
See >>2321784, >>2322102, >>2322241

You don't see the bananas translating chinese histories into english because
SURPRISE! they are actually banana and don't cared about being chinese

Also, unlike eternal EURO, chinese actually cared about their history. Any *chink* writer with decent chinese historical knowledge who tries to write a book on chinese histories will always do it in chinese and get decent audience rather than write an english book and see it get ignored by euro-centric whit pig

This sort of thing is increasingly a problem even concerning European sources.

The knowledge of Latin and Greek is remarkably poor these days and most people are content to discuss only translated works which are of varying quality and represent a paltry subset of sources. The rest is read only by specialists. Note that this includes not just primary sources but also earlier scholarship.

>>2322528
thanks
I'm a lazy fuck

OP posted a blatantly NSFW pic and /his/ actually stays focused on the topic and provides in-depth discussion.

Truly the greatest board.

>>2323308
The answer to OP's question was pretty simple though. "It's all in Chinese".

>>2321636
[Citation needed]

Also, it was European Chinaboos that made this claim first and started convincing pop culture Chinese that it was true.

>>2321391
Just admit it's because you're mad about how rotk represented your ancestor.

>>2324732

Why would a citation be needed when I already stated I have no legitimate knowledge of the topic and was only conveying what I've read?

Unless you're saying that you want a citation from the book because you think I'm misrepresenting Keay.

"The mummies had become heavily politicised, and the Chinese authorities found themselves suspected of wilfully neglecting the conservation of mummy sites, obstructing research, suppressing its findings and concealing such evidence, including the mummies themselves, as was already available."

Like I said, though, he isn't trying to paint a picture of a falsified history on the part of the Chinese. He goes on to say:

"Feelings ran high, though they may now be subsiding. The Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who have been settled in Xinjiang since no earlier than c. AD 600, and who then adopted Islam, can scarcely claim to have much in common with Chalcolithic Europoids of the second and first millennia BC who spoke an Indo-European language and of whose beliefs next to nothing is known. Uighur ancestors could have intermarried with later Tocharian-speakers; equally they could have obliterated them. Moreover, the People’s Republic of China is not postulated on the basis of there being a single Chinese race or a historically defined territory. The Uighurs, like the Tibetans and other minority groups, may have good reason to resent ‘Han’ supremacism, but history can be an unreliable ally."

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>>2318346

>>2320778
>Libraries full of historical and foreign texts were destroyed; books were burned. Temples, churches, mosques, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed down and sometimes converted to other uses, looted, and destroyed.[42] Marxist propaganda depicted Buddhism as superstition, and religion was looked upon as a means of hostile foreign infiltration, as well as an instrument of the 'ruling class'.[43] Clergy were arrested and sent to camps; many Tibetan Buddhists were forced to participate in the destruction of their monasteries at gunpoint.[43]

>shouldn't even stand up to a basic wikipedia run over of the Cultural Revolution

>Libraries full of historical and foreign texts were destroyed; books were burned

>shouldn't even stand up to a basic wikipedia run over of the Cultural Revolution


it's sad and hilarious when you own yourself anon

incoming accusations that wikipedia is a porky pie even though you just defended it

>>2325157
A bit misrepresented
Legalism and Confucianism were on extremely poor terms even before Ying Zheng was born and had been for decades, so when Qin took over the land and especially the middle plains with his court full of legalists confucians basically rioted
Qin for his part was not doing himself any favors because even though he was a legalist he didn't have to become the literal antithesis of Confucian ideals

>>2325171
Not him but everything but 'historical...books' has nothing to do with historical Chinese culture

>churches, mosques, monasteries, cementaries
Foreign shit. They did however destroy some of the ancestral temples / ancestral graves which IS part of Chinese culture.

>buddhism
Buddhism has gotten favor and disfavor alternately through the centuries anyway in China, so this is pretty par for the course.

>foreign texts / religion
Yeah, foreign stuff. Chinese native religion didn't particularly have anything you could stirctly attack after all since it was so nebulous

>>2325243
>Historical documents from China have nothing to do with Chinese culture

Stopped reading there!

also >seriously justifying the senseless destruction of cultural heritage on /his/ of all places

I want the fucking socialists from /leftypol/ and & humanities to go now.

>>2325258
>I literally can't fucking read
>everything BUT historical books has nothing to do with historical Chinese culture

>>2320778
Don't let your bias get in the way of fact, triggered commie.

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>>2325171
Not him either, but this is so much nitpicking

Just because the Communists went full retard for a brief period during the cultural revolution doesn't mean that nowadays Chinese people don't read books of their own history or don't spend time investigating their heritage.

I mean, consider that in the past 30 years there have been like three separate television series about the Three Kingdoms period. Is there any Western parallel interest in something which happened so far in the past?

Consider that they have this massive (and I mean "city-sized") historical set built and owned by the government which any filmmaker can rent out and use to make historical movies. Hollywood either uses green-screens or tears down and scraps every set they build. "Red Cliff" is one of the highest grossing movies in the history of Chinese cinema. The Chinese government actually pays filmmakers to make historic and patriotic films.

>>2325258
>I want the fucking socialists from /leftypol/ and & humanities to go now.
Jesus Christ, you fucking Trumpanzees can't go a single discussion without flinging feces everywhere because somebody said something that triggered you.

>>2325275
>Topic is about WHY THERE ARE SO FEW BOOKS ON CHINESE HISTORY

>HURR DURR UR JUST NITPICKING ABOUT THE TOPIC CENTERING AROUND WHY THERE ARE SO FEW RECORDS OF CHINESE HISTORY

>WHY WOULD COMMUNISTS DESTROYING CHINESE HISTORY HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT

This is easily the stupidest board on 4chan l m a o

none of you even read the threads before commenting

>>2325277
>WHY THERE ARE SO FEW RECORDS OF CHINESE HISTORY
Or maybe
Like just maybe
They're written in motherfucking Chinese

>>2325275
>and I mean "city-sized"
Why the fuck can't China do anything normally
Like okay I get historically they had huge population and huge power so everything is fucking huge
But why even today is everything they do three times the size of everyone else

>>2325277
>>Topic is about WHY THERE ARE SO FEW BOOKS ON CHINESE HISTORY
And as people have been hammering into the skulls of dense motherfuckers like you

...

wait for it

...

They're written in Mandarin.

That's why you're not going to see them in your local Barnes and Noble.

Literally your entire premise is retarded. There are tons of books on Chinese history. You're just sperging out because nobody's translating them into English and delivering them to your doorstep.

>This is easily the stupidest board on 4chan l m a o
everybody say it with me now

>/pol/ pls go

nobody likes you, and you don't like anyone, so why are you wasting your time and our time pitching bitchfits over nothingburgers?

>>2325287
>Why the fuck can't China do anything normally
It's a huge historical set that lets Chinese filmmakers cheaply and affordably make historical period pieces. They consider it a public work which pays dividends to the people in the form of movies based around Chinese identity. We don't have that in the United States because Republicans decided back in the 1960's that investing in the arts was a waste of tax dollars.

>almost all were written by westerners

The most basic google search would prove you wrong. China has many volumes worth of history contained in the Standard Histories, which have been written for some 2000 years now. On top of that, there are a wealth of Chinese histories in Mandarin.

The reason why the majority of Chinese histories have been written by westerners in your experience is because you're a westerner (and also a retard.)

>>2325275
>I mean, consider that in the past 30 years there have been like three separate television series about the Three Kingdoms period. Is there any Western parallel interest in something which happened so far in the past?
West can still be pretty Romaboo.

>>2325497
HBO's Rome got cancelled and I will never be not salty

>The starting point for understanding the problem is to recognize that China is not just another nation-state in the family of nations. China is a civilization pretending to be a state.

>The story of modern China could be described as the effort by both Chinese and foreigners to squeeze a civilization into the arbitrary, constraining framework of the modern state, an institutional invention that came out of the fragmentation of the West's own civilization.

>Viewed from another perspective, the miracle of China has been its astonishing unity. In Western terms the China of today is as if the Europe of the Roman Empire and of Charlemagne had lasted until this day and were now trying to function as a single nation-state.

>The fact that the Chinese state was founded on one of the world's great civilizations has given inordinate strength and durability to its political culture. The overpowering obligation felt by Chinese rulers to preserve the unity of their civilization has meant that there could be no compromises in Chinese cultural attitudes about power and authority.

>>2325504
I'd say it's more accurate to think of it as a civilization with a state, but not a civilization that is a state.
China historically has HAD a state, but the nation (or really civilization) itself existed entirely independent of the state. In contrast to Rome whose civilization fundamentally stemmed out of the state, despite the reach of its cultural influence, China's state is merely a result of its civilization, which is why every time the state collapsed it reformed itself because the civilization that underlay it was not destroyed.

>>2325527
The quote works better if you replace "state" with "nation-state".

>>2325576
Well "nation" is something else entirely and a foreign concept to China in the first place now innit

Because日本 and 한국 history are more interesting

>>2325608
>most of their historical records literally written with Chinese

>>2325501

It never got cancelled. It was supposed to only have one season at the start. They only decided not to do more because they went full retard on the expenses. Which is insane, when you consider the fact that that show barely even had any battles.

The only HBO shows that truly got fucked and cancelled outright were Deadwood and Carnivale.

>>2321507
Yeah fuck patriotism and all that un-communist bullshit.

Oh wait that's what Maoism was founded on.

>>2325774
It was actually Deng who used nationalism as the booster

>>2318346
>Why are there so few books on Chinese history, and why are almost all of them written by Westerners?

First premise is false, there are a literal fuckton of books on Chinese history. They're just written in Chinese.

>Is this just a case of the Chinese hating their own country and trying to remain willfully ignorant of its history, or what?

Have you been hanging out with diaspora fourth-generation Chinese who only know a few words in Cantonese? Jesus Christ, the ignorance in this post is astounding.

>>2325911
Not OP but he fucked up
Basically half the thread has been shitting on him over and over

>>2325911
>Have you been hanging out with diaspora fourth-generation Chinese who only know a few words in Cantonese?
Diaspora fourth-generation Chinese who knows a few words of Hokkien and some intermediate Mandarin here. Speaking from personal experience it's possible to be proud of Chinese civilization and history while hating the current government that holds stewardship over the civilization.

>>2325916

And yet the actual intention of the OP was clarified above in detail. I'm not sure what kind of retard you would have to be to think that I'd legitimately question whether or not a country with more than one billion people has historians when even places like Iceland do.

>>2325929
>proud of Chinese civilization and history
Actual person from the PRC here
I've literally never seen a dispora past 2nd generation who was anything but a banana or a wannabe who doesn't actually know shit about Chinese culture

>>2325988

>Actual person from the PRC here

Did your Dota servers go down or something?

>>2326001
>everyone from the PRC plays dota
I'm pretty sure Overwatch is supposed to be the new hotness.

>>2326004

Since you're actually Chinese I have a question: how do the Chinese see the Mongol invasions? I mean you guys have always struggled with horse-fuckers, so is there anything particularly good/bad about them? Are they treated as just another threat from the steppes, or are they taken as wholly different due to the damage they exacted?

>>2325988
Have you only been speaking to American diasporas? We got third and fourth generation and beyond in Malaysia who are as far from banana as it gets. Chinese community here is fiercely ethnocentric and has resisted assimilation by the Malays for decades, there's an entire Chinese-language education system that runs parallel to the national Malay-language system including both government-funded and independent schools that teach according to a syllabus modeled on the ones used in China and Taiwan.

>>2326036
The mongols are basically the one time when the (mongol) steppefags actually got their shit together and pushed it down our throats
They're generally not looked upon highly (besides Kublai) because they refused to assimilate to any real extent, unlike the Qing who also didn't assimilate but did so slightly more than the Mongols.

>>2326037
European and American mostly, I guess SEA is different.

>>2326037

That's a pretty bad example, because it's so close to home. There's plenty of Hungarians that left for America and are basically just normal whites now (unless they were Jews). But the Hungarians we have in Romania still have a rather community where they speak their own language, and are nationalistic in a retarded way that embarrasses actual Hungarians. Like they'll go around painting benches in their national colors and refuse to speak Romanian... except with each other, since most of them know Romanian way better than fucking Hungarian.

This might not be entirely the same but I think it's similar.

>>2326060
Dunno about Malaysia but I know vietnam has a lot of chinks
they don't assimilate because let's be honest, we were basically wannabe chinks for hundreds of years to begin with even if we were at war for a long time

>>2326052

Is there any kind of judgment in Chinese society based on how you look? Like, your looks leading people to think you're drawn from one genetic lot rather than another. I mean Europeans love to go crazy over this shit and judge noses and foreheads and shit like that, saying they're Gemanic when they live in fucking Greece, or calling themselves Slavs when they're in Scotland - so I'm wondering if there's anything even remotely similar.

I'm also sorry for using you as a personalized Google.

>>2326069
>judgement
Well you can tell if someone is Uyghur, Tibetian, and sometimes Hui just by looking at them
Well travelled people can sometimes spot people from different locations by how they look
I'm not sure what you mean though. Claiming something you're not based on how you look? No I've never really seen that happen. Hell most people still have family records going back to Qing at least, some of them (like me) even have ancestral shrines and records going back way further (mine ends at Tang). You really can't claim you're something you aren't when things like that exist.

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>>2326060
>That's a pretty bad example, because it's so close to home.
From another perspective, it's a good example because SEA has numerically the most diaspora Chinese.

>>2326052
Yeah, my experience with a handful of British born Chinese is similar.

>>2326091
What is even the population of Thailand and Malaysia?

>>2326085

>Hell most people still have family records going back to Qing at least, some of them (like me) even have ancestral shrines and records going back way further (mine ends at Tang)

That's so cool, blud. The most I have is my great -grandfather's gradebook from like 1914.

But what I meant was if there's anything you'd put down as "racism" going by how people look. In eastern Europe there's quite a few people that look at least a little Mongol, but nobody gives the slightest fuck or even acknowledges it unless they're into history and genetics.

>>2326110
Maybe against Uyghurs but I don't think it's too harsh at least in the cities.
The Uyghur thing is more because le islamic meme state and turkey claiming the area or something like that
If meme islamics fuck off they'll be accepted again real fast, and they're not even that unaccepted anyway
China was never about how you looked, it cares more about how you act
A white or turkish or black person who cares to act like a Chinese person, or at least shows he's willing to learn, will get more respect and better treatment than a banana. Uyghurs might be somewhat distinct but they're still passably Chinese and their culture is honestly not that much more distinct from everyone else's so it's more fear of radical islam that they have any grind towards them

>>2326124

>China was never about how you looked, it cares more about how you act
A white or turkish or black person who cares to act like a Chinese person, or at least shows he's willing to learn, will get more respect and better treatment than a banana.

Funny, considering that's what religious apologists in the West say is uniquely beneficial about religions as opposed to the oppressive and nationalistic state.

>>2326124

>China was never about how you looked, it cares more about how you act
A white or turkish or black person who cares to act like a Chinese person, or at least shows he's willing to learn, will get more respect and better treatment than a banana.

Funny, considering that's what religious apologists in the West say is uniquely beneficial about religions as opposed to the oppressive and nationalistic state.

There's one international European site where they regularly call each other "niggers" because they happen to have brown eyes.

>>2326148
>Funny, considering that's what religious apologists in the West say is uniquely beneficial about religions as opposed to the oppressive and nationalistic state.
I'm not sure what this means
I mean the thing is >>2325527 and >>2325504. China didn't have a concept of ethnicity really because when it comes down to it even Han is not really a single ethnicity.
It had a concept of culture and civilized vs. civilizing vs. uncivilized. A person who is civilized is fully chinese, part of the best and only club in the world. A person who is uncivilized is unforuntately not in automatically by birth but if they want to apply they can join up, condition being they act Chinese and adopt the culture, then they're in the process of being civilized, but will for the most part never be truly civilzed because they lack roots, family, background, ancestors who were civilzed. Their children will be fully civilized, because they have 'roots' within Chinese culture (that is to say, their parents).
So basically ethnicity never came into the equation, the words for foreigners generally were just generic words for 'not Chinese'.

>>2326106
Thailand's population is about 67 million, so the Chinese are around 14%.

Malaysia's population is just under 30 million, and the Chinese are around 22-23% of the population. This proportion has been slowly declining from the >40% they made up at the time the country was founded, probably from a combination of the Malays breeding like rabbits and a brain drain of educated Chinese to places like Singapore, Australia, and the UK where they don't have affirmative action laws that give free shit to the actual majority racial group.

>>2326176
>Thailand's population is about 67 million, so the Chinese are around 14%.
>Malaysia's population is just under 30 million, and the Chinese are around 22-23% of the population
fucking kek

>>2326173
This, the southern Chinese who today are considered "Han Chinese" were originally viewed by the northerners as disgusting barbarians until they became assimilated into civilization.

>>2326173

>So basically ethnicity never came into the equation, the words for foreigners generally were just generic words for 'not Chinese'.

Well, that was more or less how the Greeks saw it too as far as I know, what with the word "barbarian."

But I'm just surprised that's how things work there. I mean I'm sure the narrative spun by most Europeans is that this is how it is here too: it doesn't matter what you look like, only that you act in accordance to Western values.

But only someone that hasn't lived in Europe for very long or only glides around in very liberal-minded circles is deluded enough to believe that. In reality, Europeans on average are INCREDIBLY xenophobic (Slavs and Scandies especially). But it just so happens that decades of media trying to turn them around on that has made unwilling to share their views with anyone apart from the "in" crowd.

In eastern Europe gypsies never properly assimilated because they're such little shits. At the same time, all the ones who did assimilate, are white enough to blend in.

>>2318539
Yeah, i've seen several news sites saying that the great wall is 21000km long, how true is this?

>>2326180
Put another way, the Chinese make up almost twice as large a percentage of the population of Malaysia as black people do a percentage of the population of the USA

But unlike black Americans, the Chinese are on average wealthier and better educated than the Malays in spite of decades of racial discrimination laws designed to give free shit to Malays.

>>2326207
Ah I see
Well again I think it's the difference between having a civilization based on the nation-state, and having a state (and hamfisted nation) based on the civilization.
I mean just think about it. "German Civilization" is epitomized by the German nation-state plus [maybe] a few orbiting satellites that never got assimilated into the actual state in time, depending on who you believe. This means that if you're not part of the German nation, then you can't REALLY be part of the German civilization, even if you're accepted by the state and assimilate the culture.
But in Chinese customs it's the other way around. If you assimilate the culture then you're part of the Chinese civilization, and the state is just a formality on top of that, and since the nation aspect is completely hamfisted anyway nobody gives a shit about it as long as your parents are part of the civilization - in other words as long as you have a place to call home within that civilization. So it also works in reverse - someone who abandons Chinese values loses the 'pass' for his kids, because while he has somewhere to go back to, his kids have no roots, and no place, within the civilization - and therefore, within the state.

Or at least that's how I see it.

>>2326176

I had a Malay Muslim girlfriend once, and all she ever did was bitch about how racist the Chinese were back home.

>>2318366
It's because the "great" chinese history is a hoax.

>>2326247
Aren't Malay muslims basically eating the country from inside out

>>2326247
Can confirm that all mum does is bitch about how the lazy Malays are being given a free ride on Chinese taxes, how they keep voting for uber corrupt Malay supremacist party like sheep, how retarded Islam is and how the Malays are dumb for making Islam a part of their national identity

>>2326272

I don't know. We broke up because I told her I would never convert to Islam even if my life were in danger. I think she ended up marrying a Swedish guy and actually made him convert.

>>2326297
Epic

>>2326278

>and how the Malays are dumb for making Islam a part of their national identity

I will never, EVER, understand how some Asian countries submitted to Christianity and Islam on such a mass scale.

I understand why it would happen to tribal people ln Africa, but cultures that have centuries of history to back their earlier religion? Mind-blowing.

>>2326247
>>2326278
Also would like to add that basically everyone in Malaysia is casually racist against each other, which is probably the product of the country's politics being defined along racial lines since the country's founding. Thank the British Empire for giving political and military domination to the Malays and economic domination to the Chinese.

>>2326316
>Christianity
Are there even Asian countries that are Christian?

>>2326339
The Philippines for one, South Korea another.

>>2326320

But would the Malays still have problems against the Chinese if they converted to Islam? Can't tell if this is a racial/cultural thing or strictly retarded Muslims as per usual.

>>2326339

Are you fucking serious, lad?

>>2326344
>>2326348
I thought those nations were basically Christian in name only not actually devout

>>2326346
It's because the Chinese are filthy rich despite Malays getting ridiculous amounts of welfare.

>>2326316
The christian phenoma is pretty easy to explain.

You have some asian elites with ties to European countries. Europeans give special preference to people of same religion than of foreign religions.

US/France for example supported the Christian regime of South Vietnam during the Vietnam war. US also supports the Christian elites of South Korea and China.

>>2326346
I'm not an expert in Malay nationalism, but I believe it's racial rather than religious, fuelled by fears of being marginalized in their own land, that has its roots in the colonial period at the end of which the Chinese held the vast majority of the wealth of the country. Though being Muslim is part of the Malay identity (it's even written into the Constitution), and Islamic pride is mixed in to nationalist diatribe whenever the politicians feel like deflecting accusations of corruption into claiming "the Chinese pigs are trying to take over", I think on balance it's more about race than religion.

>>2326368

Trust me, they're very devout. You wouldn't think eastern Europeans are very devout either if you watched them act on a day to day basis. But try to tell them Orthodoxy is wrong or that there isn't a God, and you've just guaranteed and ass-beating for yourself.

>>2326346
Islam in Malaysia is a far cry from literal sharia law shitholes in the ME, the a courts there are constitutionally heavily restricted in power and only apply to Muslims while the primary law of the land is secular and applied by secular courts.

>>2326426
*the sharia courts there are constitutionally heavily restricted

Also IIRC the brand of Islam practiced in SEA is technically a heresy because it has some SEA pagan shit mixed in

>>2326426

How is it in Indonesia?

>>2326124
>A white or turkish or black person who cares to act like a Chinese person, or at least shows he's willing to learn, will get more respect and better treatment than a banana. Uyghurs might be somewhat distinct but they're still passably Chinese and their culture is honestly not that much more distinct from everyone else's so it's more fear of radical islam that they have any grind towards them


In theory yes in practice no.

>>2326646
Are you talking about Uyghurs anon because they're treated just fine.

>>2326453
Dunno about how it is culturally but legally Indonesia has only one province where Sharia law is fully applied, whereas in the others it's restricted to family law and shit.

>>2326052
>European and American mostly, I guess SEA is different.
SEA is pretty different indeed, probably related to geographic proximity and the size of the community.