We have a saying in China, you don't play harp to ox or A summer bug won't understand what winter is.
It does appear that it might appear that my posts are casting pearls before swine, in the sense of an English metaphor.
But then life here is somewhat like that with propaganda being churned out as facts by some who are in a state of denial and in megalomaniac inventions.
As I tried many times, my logic and knowledge just won't cross the border of your hard shell brain. so I better give up before it gets lengthy and unproductive.
Logic and knowledge?
Good one that!
I daresay, woolly woolly tripe or snake oil anecdotes will even penetrate the softest of craniums.
On your giving up, it would not be incorrect to believe that you normally give up when your figments of imagination is repudiated by scholarly tomes with links. Contrived ideas and propaganda fashioned by conditioned minds cannot stand the power of truth and facts. That is the Gospel of existence.
You know nothing about China and Chinese history, the very statements are wrong to the core, Han as a Dynasty's name is generated from founder of Han Dynasty Liu Bang's fedral, Hanzhong, which is to the west of China, and Liu Bang himself is a native of Jiangsu, to the south east of China,
Let us have a look at China.
It is true that I do not know the Chinese history reinvented by the Communist and fashioned into conditioned minds of the Chinese. And anyway, Chinese history is of myths, half truths and sheer fairy tales that massages the Han cultural arrogance of being the centre of the world and the ideal civilisation!
To with the magnum opus of Sima Qian, the Grand Historian of China is attributed to the belief that the author critically used
stories passed on from antiquity as part of his sources. Therefore, they are myths and stories that the Chinese believe as the Gospel to suit their convenience. The authenticity of fact passed on as history by word of mouth and then compiled cannot be guaranteed as real events.
The Han Dynasty was the successor of the Qin Dynasty. The Qin State was so structured so as to be a defensive buffer against nomadic armies of the Rong, Qiang, and Di peoples.
In 2 CE, this was the Han areas
Now has a close look before you take off like a Scud missile. Is that what China is today?
Chinese history is one of territorial expansion, imperial pursuits and colonialisation of non Chinese people. It is a historical fact that even Sima Qian, the Grand Historian of China has noted. Hence, your flippant comments of Chinese history are rendered bogus.
Likewise the China Govt's statistics that 93% of the people living in China are Han! Apart from the above mentioned facts, it is the usual Chinese propaganda that all Chinese are Han since such a large mass cannot have one type of people inhabiting the land mass. China is no exception, but it suited the Chinese Han and followed by the successor regimes to mould the conquered people into one homogenous mass, through various means including cultural, linguistic and custom 'genocide', so that their originality was wiped out and any secessionist tendency or asserting themselves were lost to posterity.
This type of 'genocide' is being practiced even now in Tibet and Xinjaing. The attempt to vilify the Dalai Lama is but to destroy the rallying focal point of Tibetan identity and embracing the amorphous, ubiquitous Han identity so as to ensure that the desire for seeking one's own identity is destroyed forever.
Take this example of what they are doing even now in Tibet and Xinjiang.
The Han did the same to the Xiongnu people from the steppes who raided Chinese territory causing enormous instability in frontier regions. Lest you forget, the founder of the Han dynasty had lost his army, his throne, and his life under the Xiongnu siege.
The Han emperors were initially forced to acknowledge the rival Xiongnu Chanyus as their equals, yet in reality the Han was an inferior partner in a tributary and royal marriage alliance known as heqin. This agreement was broken when Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 BCE) launched a series of military campaigns which eventually caused the fissure of the Xiongnu Federation and redefined the borders of China. The Han realm was expanded into the Hexi Corridor of modern Gansu province, theTarim Basin of modern Xinjiang, modern Yunnan and Hainan, modern northern Vietnam, modern North Korea, and southern Outer Mongolia
Now, is that not expansionist, imperialistic and colonialistic and why blame the Qin?
You write of Liu Bang. He was a minor official in the Qin Dynasty.
He declared, "At last the whole world is mine," as he claimed the imperial throne in 202 B.C., the first of 27 Lius to reign. What was his world beyond what he had?
Here is a quote of this so called chap who spread beyond his little area under him to whole of China:
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."
Han Dynasty @ National Geographic Magazine
So, take it for what it is worth.
Before Han Dynasty , there is no Han ethnic, how come you claim Hans are from north China? Han was founded in 2 century BC, Confucius lived in 6-5 century BC.
The history of the Han is not so easy so simplistic.
China's first imperial dynasty was the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC). The Qin unified the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their empire became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Within four years, the dynasty's authority had collapsed in the face of rebellion. Two former rebel leaders, Xiang Yu (d. 202 BC) of Chu and Liu Bang (d. 195 BC) of Han, engaged in a war to decide who would become hegemon of China, which had fissured into 18 kingdoms, each claiming allegiance to either Xiang Yu or Liu Bang. Although Xiang Yu proved to be a capable commander, Liu Bang defeated him at the Battle of Gaixia, in modern-day Anhui. Liu Bang assumed the title "emperor" (huangdi) at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu (r. 202–195 BC). Chang'an was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han.
Xiang Wu was from the royal family of Chu.
Now, who are the Chu?
Han?
They were called Man and called themselves Man, a word that scholars have tried to link with the Miao-Yao speakers of today. Miao and Yao are Han?
Historically, the term "Miao" had been applied inconsistently to a variety of non-Han peoples.
By the late Warring States period, they were already speaking a Sinitic language. The question is did they adopt it or was it their original speech? The Central Plains people considered them as non-"Chinese" and called them Man. These people never got on the "Chinese" bandwagon till they were forced!
Check DEFINING CHU: IMAGE AND REALITY IN ANCIENT CHINA. Edited by Constance A. Cook and John S. Major. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999.
This edited volume is the first Western language book-length study to focus on a single ancient Chinese state. Tracing the evolution of Chu from a vassal state in the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 B.C.E.), through its rise and fall as a leading political power in the Warring States (475-221 B.C.E.), to its subsequent resurgence in the early Han (206 B.C.E.-8 C.E.), Defining Chu addresses the historical geography, archaeological history, artistic achievements, and socio-political characteristics of Chu.
The authors in turn attempt to separate the mythologized Chu, revolving principally around the image of Chu as an alternative, slightly barbarous (shamanic) culture, from a "historically real" Chu especially evident in recent archaeological discoveries.
That much for China being one homogenous Han people!
If one takes each
barbarian peoples of early China today being passed off as Han, then the reality will be so evident that they aren't and which you Chinese want to hide.
Those researching Chinese religion will find John S. Major's article on later Chu religion especially worthy of attention. Here Major discusses issues of regionalism, spatial orientation and religious cosmography, monsters and gods, snakes and animal motifs, hunting motifs, shamanism and spirit-possession, "farflight" or spirit journeys, Huang-Lao Daoism and Chu influence on Han culture, and four specific cases of Chu cultural influence (cosmographs, calendars, mirrors, and the mother goddess). With so much academic conjecture centering on the connection between the state of Chu (China's "shamanic substratum") and Warring States "Daoism," specifically the possible Chu origins of classical Daoism, one would have appreciated greater attention to this issue, either in some of the volume's contributions or as a separate article. The book also lacks a glossary of Chinese characters. Defining Chu is for scholars of early China, especially those focusing on the Warring States period, as well as for anyone thinking through issues of mythologization (essentialist definitions of culture based on a constructed past). Recommended for research libraries and historians of early China.
The Han Empire was divided into areas directly controlled by the central government, known as commanderies, and a number of semi-autonomous kingdoms. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following theRebellion of the Seven States.
and Han is not the first unified China, Qin ( Chin, some say China got the name from this dynasty which is questionable) already founded a nation covers a territory south to the nothern part of current Vietnam in 210 BC.
I recall you are the one who taught me Chinese tones I have to gave up my fruitless argue with somebody who has such a faith in his self-correctness.
So please drop your ignorance and learn. I hate educating stubborn people.[/QUOTE]
I did not teach you of Chinese tonal differential.
It is a fact that you wish to deny given your conditioned mindset.
Do you disbelief the links I appended?
See this Youtube
Here it is again for the Chinese character 'Ma'
Note the tones and the different meanings of the same character, 'Ma'
Pinyin Chinese Character Meaning Sound Clip
mÄ åª½ mother audio
má 麻 hemp audio
mǎ 馬 horse audio
mà 罵 scold audio
http://mandarin.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/tones.htm
Mandarin Chinese has four pitched tones and a "toneless" tone. The reason for having these tones is probably that the Chinese language has very few possible syllables -- approximately 400 -- while English has about 12,000. For this reason, there may be more homophonic words , words with the same sound expressing different meanings, in Chinese than in most other languages. Apparently tones help the relatively small number of syllables to multiply and thereby alleviate but not completely solve the problem. Learning Chinese in context, therefore, is very important.
Now you can understand how the Chinese use only one syllable "da" and yet can tell the difference between" to hang over something" ( da1 ), "to answer" (da2), "to hit" (da3), and "big" (da4). Yes, the secret lies in the tones.
The tone of a syllable may change in some situations. For example, these are the characters for "mother" (妈妈). As separate characters each is pronounced as "ma," but when put together, the second "ma" becomes toneless: . Rules like this are, however, very few and very easy to remember.
This is how you express chinese tone:
1st tone: HIGH LEVEL TONE
2nd tone: HIGH RISING TONE
3rd tone: LOW FALLING RISING TONE
4th tone: HIGH FALLING TONE
It is unfortunate that either you are unlettered or simply a blind jingo or a Chinese paid propagandist attempting follow the Communist line to fool all and come out smelling of roses as civilised and modern and in one step ahead of the rest of the world!