#1 - Origins: The Mythical Origins of the Middle Kingdom
originally published in 2013, updated in 2016
China: It is a name, a place, an idea almost synonymous with ancientness itself. Even the Chinese themselves boast of having more than 5,000 years of culture. No matter how you slice it, it is a grand, epic story spanning almost the whole of recorded human history and impacting cultures and kingdoms across the world in ways both big and small.
Yet for all that import it far too often, and for far too many, remains shrouded in mystery⦠and to many of us in the West due in no small part to its sheer immensity. How could anyone think to go delving into a story that's 5000 years long. It's surely an act of insanity. Well that's where I come in⦠and I'll leave the question of my sanity up to you to ultimately decide.
Over the past three years I've been plunging my time into this immense tale and trying to make it something more relatable approachable and well interesting for the rest of us. Because it is a story worth knowing. And China is a culture and a country worth understanding, even if you never plan to visit⦠because it surely visits you almost every day. Look around you. Go ahead and check how many items do you use every day that come from this country half a world away. My guess is quite a few. In this day and age especially as China has gone from undeveloped backwater to global economic power in the span of four short decades it is now more vital than ever for everyone to have a better idea of what China and its people are how they see the world in themselves and not to foolishly lump them altogether into some undifferentiated mass of other. And in order to understand where China is today and how it got there, we must start with where they came from.
That is the goal of this show to take us from the beginning of the Chinese story up to the 20th century. It is a long road but never a boring one. And I hope you'll join me in this journey of romance, power, war, betrayal, and revolution.
In the spirit of the show from which I took inspiration to make this one Mike Duncan's excellent The History of Rome podcast, The History of China procedes chronologically for the most part⦠though we will from time to time have to take multiple accounts of the same time period from different perspectives, which does involve some time hopping. I've broken this chronology further down into rough chapters which roughly align with your respective dynastic orders and power during that era, or during the periods that China breaks into warring states, by the common names of those eras of chaos. I do not have a set number of episodes per dynastic chapter, but rest assured as we move ever forward in time and sources of information become ever more plentiful, chapter length will expand as well. I want to take the time to paint you as much of the story as I think is necessary and helpful towards understanding and I don't wish to be constrained by an arbitrary length of chapter.
One final note before launching in this is the first episode of the show's rebooted beginning. I started the show some three years ago with little more than a rather boorish sense of sarcasm and a default computer microphone next to a loudly whirring fan. My oh my how things have changed. I now have actual sources an actual microphone and a much better sense of how I want the show to proceed and sound and so I want the opening episodes which is after all where most listeners do begin to reflect my current standard of quality. This is however a side project within a side project so I'll not be getting what I imagine will be a good two dozen shows rebooted all at onceβ¦ or very quickly at all for that matter. So, going forward you will hit a point where the quality suddenly drops way off and then gradually improves once again. So just be forewarned. So let's launch right in, shall weβ¦
It's enough to say that humanity did not begin in China, though at one point not too terribly long ago, that was indeed thought to be the case. Much as we know today about the origins of humanity in Eastern Africa before paleo-archaeology began to unearth humans and proto-humans in places like Ethiopia, Asia was widely considered the origin point of homo sapiens. What we do know for certain is that humans as a species like to wander. We see a horizon and inevitably begin to wonder what might lie beyond. And ultimately that wanderlust is what has driven us to colonize the entire planet, & even - however briefly - our sister satellite as well. It was that same wanderlust that drove bands of humans out of Africa and across the isthmus of Suez into Asia Minor⦠& then to everywhere else. That first trek across the vastness that is Central Asia is of course undocumented, and so we must speculate. Undoubtedly it took generations at the least to complete, and yet at some point roughly ten or fifteen thousand years ago, the region surrounding the body of water that would come to be known as the Huang He, or the Yellow River came to be settled by any number of small tribes, family bands, and eventually small permanent communities. And it is here in the middle reaches of the Yellow River Valley that the history and the mythology of China begin.
The Yellow River is at the very heart of China both geographically as it cuts through the center of Chinese heartland and culturally as well. It has shaped the people, just as it has shaped the land, and it has often been an exceedingly cruel teacher. It is the birthplace of China, yes. Yet it is frequently called βChina's sorrowβ and βthe scourge of the sons of Han.β For as we will see again and again, it has a frequent and devastating tendency to flood, which has killed millions, with tens of millions more dying of the resultant famines across time.
There is evidence of seed cultivation dating back as far as ten thousand years ago in both the north and the south of China. Millet would have been the crop of choice in the north. While evidence of rice cultivation has been found in the south and both processing tools like mortars and pistols have been excavated from regions like southern Hubei specifically at a site called Nanjing tall here as well. Dogs and pigs were eventually domesticated though there is widespread evidence that hunting was still a hugely important aspect of these prehistoric cultures with many bones and shells of animals like cranes wolves deer turtles clams and snails dispersed throughout the settlement sites. There is also evidence of a deep and sophisticated culture having formed quite early on at Nanzhan, where archaeologists have excavated objects like a seven-holed bone flute inscribed with symbols. Likewise, rock and cave paintings totaling more than eight thousand individual symbols and characters remain intact.