Multicultural China in History
12 September 2024
What is Culture?
• Culture: learned sets of ideas and behaviors that are
acquired by people as members of society
• Characteristics of culture
• Learned, shared, patterned, adaptive and symbolic
• Cultural uniformity?
• Racism
• Nationalism
• Orientalism
Guns, Germs and Steel:
The Fate of Human Societies (Diamond 1998)
• Why Eurasian civilizations have survived and conquered
others?
• Geography (Agriculture)
• Stories of Zheng He and Christopher Columbus
• “China has been Chinese, almost from the beginnings of its
recorded history. We take this seeming unity of China so much
for granted that we forget how astonishing it is…”
• “Those potentially harmful effects of unity have flared up again
in modern China, notably during the madness of the Cultural
Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s…”
• Chinese antiquity (Dikotter 2015):
• Cultural universalism (i.e., race as culture)
• Monolithic and indivisible
Tang Dynasty (Abramson 2003)
• Emperor Taizong
• Since antiquity, all have honored the Hua and despised the barbarians; only I have loved
them both as one.
Imaginations
• Non-Han physiognomy
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“deep eyes and high nose”
Beard, colors of beard and eyes, skin color (Kunlun slaves)
Physiognomy (xiang) (lookism), and li (cf. bestial)
Discerning power, animalistic power, cosmic power
Exoticization?
• Realities
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Ethnic tolerance
Hair style (futou): political allegiance, not ethnic assimilation
Clothing: wearing hufu
Nudity: “Sprinkling the Barbarian with Water as He Begs in the Cold”
Multicutlural Tang (Lewis 2021)
Song Dynasty (Leung 2003)
Imaginations
• China: civilizing, poetry loving, and war-hating literati
• Xuanhe huapu (宣和畫譜); Emperor Huizong
• Reclassifications of Fanzu paintings
• Tribute bearers vs. fan tribes
• Drawn by Qidan people (Hu Gui, Hu Qian, and Li Zanhua)
Realities:
• An active agent in the production of war and conquest
• “oath letters” (e.g. Treaty of Shanyuan) 澶淵之盟
• Aligning with the Jin to defeat the Liao
• Liao: multiethnic, multilingual, part-Chinese and part-Qidan
empire
Qing Dynasty (Lei 2003)
Imaginations
• Wang Zhaojun (王昭君) (Han Dynasty)
• Ma Zhiyuan’s Hangong qiu (漢宮秋)
• Shuangfeng qiyuan (雙鳳奇緣)
• Zhaojun hefan (昭君和番)
• Symbols of water
• Su Wu (蘇武) and Xingxing zhuizhou (猩猩追舟)
Realities
• Self-strengthening Movement
• Cultural mix
• “learning about the strengths of the barbarians in order to control
barbarians”
• Race as nation (Dikotter 2015)
• Yellow Emperor and Beijing Man
Conclusion
• Imaginations and realities
• Historical authority (authenticity?)
• Interpretation of history
• China
• Cultural uniformity? Cultural universalism?
• Race as culture? Race as nation?
• Monolithic China  fluid boundaries
• Everyday Life: Interculturality
References
Abramson, Marc Samuel. 2003. “Deep Eyes and High Noses: Physiognomy and the Depiction of
Barbarians in Tang China.” In Nicola di Cosmo and Don J. Wyatt, eds. Political Frontiers, Ethnic
Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History, pp.119-159. New York: Routledge.
Diamond, Jared. 1998. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton.
Dikotter, Frank. 2015. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lei, Daphne Pi-wei. 2003. “Envisioning New Borders for the old China in Late Qing Fiction and Local
Drama.” In Nicola di Cosmo and Don J. Wyatt, eds. Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries, and Human
Geographies in Chinese History, pp.373-397. New York: Routledge.
Lewis, Mark Edward. 2021. China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Leung, Irene S. 2003. “‘Felt Yurts Neatly Arrayed, Large Tents Huddle Close’: Visualizing the Frontier in the
Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).” In Nicola di Cosmo and Don J. Wyatt, eds. Political Frontiers,
Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History, pp.192-219. New York: Routledge.