Seeing Chinese History
Through Chinese Eyes
Lessons for World History courses
in California secondary schools
 Is the dragon a mean and dangerous creature?
(6th grade lesson)
 Zheng He: Peaceful ambassador or Imperial
aggressor? (7th grade lesson)
 China: The Struggle for Modernization (10th
grade unit)
Written by Pete Hammer for the
Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching
Program, 2010-2011
chinesehistorythruchineseeyes.pbworks.com
Acknowledgements
This curriculum was created as a Capstone Project during my participation in the
Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching Program in 2011 in Singapore, where I
enjoyed the assistance and support of a number of people, including Dr. Lo Yuet
Keung, Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore,
who read the final drafts of the lessons; and Dr. Yeo Hweejoo, Deputy Principal at Hwa
Chong Institution (High School Division); Fong Yeow Wah, Assistant Director,
Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education; Dr. Neo Peng
Fu, Lecturer, Asian Languages and Cultures, National Institute of Education; and Kwek
Boon Liang, Academy of Singapore Teachers, Ministry of Education, all of whom
provided valuable ideas and recommended useful resources for this project. I would like
to thank them and all the teachers with whom I worked at Hwa Chong Institution for
making my experience there rewarding and pleasurable.
Why see Chinese history through Chinese eyes?
Since visiting China with the Fulbright-Hays Summer Travel Seminars in 2000 and
returning to study Chinese at Beijing Normal University during the 2001-2002 school
year, I have been struck by how conversations on the same topic with people in China
and people in the United States turn out to be very different from each other. When I
have asked about the one-child policy in China, for example, the most frequent
responses have been to shrug it off with a laugh (especially when I was speaking to a
parent who had more than one child) or something along the lines of “there are too
many people here already.” Yet in the United States the one-child policy is universally
seen as another way in which the Chinese government violates human rights. Based on
such experiences I have come to assume that the news media in the United States
have filtered information from China in ways that narrow our perspectives of many
Chinese realities.
I think a similar process affects the history of China that we teach in our schools.
Sensibly enough, most secondary school history curriculum is informed by the research
of academic historians in universities in the United States. We are fortunate to have a
CHINSES HISTORY THROUGH CHINESE EYES — Introduction
1
long history of excellent research on Chinese history, but I my sense is that that tradition
suffered somewhat with the founding of the People’s Republic in China in 1949, after
which contacts between China and the United States diminished for some thirty or forty
years. Although the current influx of Chinese students in graduate history programs in
United States universities and the trend toward westernization of historical methodology
within Chinese universities suggest that a convergence of historical perspectives is on
the horizon, I think our presentation of Chinese history in secondary world history
programs would benefit at this point from a closer look at what Chinese historians of
China are writing about Chinese history.
I conceived this project to test that hypothesis, and I think the lessons that have
resulted demonstrate the merit of this approach. Interestingly, in my limited sample, I
found the gap between Chinese and American academic perspectives to be wider the
further back in history the topic is located. Regarding the lesson on dragons that I
created for ancient world history students, a recent American academic source (from
the field of literature, not history, I should note) included dragons from East Asian
cultures but accorded them considerably less attention than dragons from Western
traditions and never reached what I consider an obvious conclusion, that dragons in the
two traditions have almost nothing in common but the name “dragon.” I suspect that the
completely distinct world view that ancient and classical Chinese literature represents
makes it harder for American researchers to penetrate than more recent Chinese
sources that reflect China’s hybridization of traditional and Western ideas. On the other
hand, it was not difficult for me to find an English-language source from a contemporary
Chinese scholar that bridged the gap between Chinese and Western dragons and made
it possible for me to present a cross-cultural comparison of dragons that I hope 6th
grade students will find interesting and entertaining.
The 7th grade lesson on Zheng He, the 15th century admiral who led seven large
fleets of Chinese ships through Southeast Asia and into the Indian Ocean as far west as
Africa, demonstrates both the benefits of consulting Chinese sources and my good
fortune to have conducted this research in Singapore. In China and Singapore the
recent 600th anniversary of Zheng He’s first voyage in 1405 generated academic and
popular interest in the topic. Popular appraisals in China portray Zheng He as a
CHINSES HISTORY THROUGH CHINESE EYES — Introduction
2
peaceful ambassador who brought stability and prosperity to the regions through which
he traveled, a view also reflected in the newly established Cheng Ho Cultural Museum
in Melaka, Malaysia, a short trip north from Singapore. Historian Geoff Wade of the
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore countered
this view with an academic article that described Zheng He’s voyages as “protocolonialist” efforts by the Chinese government to establish military and economic
hegemony in the regions they visited. This provoked a rebuttal from Singaporean
historian Tan Ta Sen, who defended the peaceful nature of the Chinese voyages and
their benefits to people in the regions. (Excerpts from their articles and the primary
sources on which the argument is based can be found in the Zheng He lesson in this
collection.) At the heart of this dispute is how one interprets the Chinese tributary
system that governed relations among rulers in the region at the time. The traditional
Chinese view, reflected in Tan’s position, sees in the tributary system a proper
Confucian ordering of relationships between the more powerful and the less powerful
that benefited both parties. A Western view of geopolitics, reflected in Wade’s position,
focuses on the advantages that accrue to the more powerful party. Their conflicting
views offer an opportunity for 7th grade students to understand how cultural traditions
shape interpretations of historical documents, an opportunity that might not have
surfaced had I not been seeking the perspectives of Chinese historians on Chinese
history.
The differences I found between Chinese historians of China’s modern history
and their American counterparts are less dramatic. The unit “China: The Struggle for
Modernization,” designed for 10th grade Modern World History students, begins by
asking students to compare a recent Chinese government outline of what Chinese
students should learn on this topic with the content of the American students’ textbook.
Although the Chinese document emphasizes distinctions between economic and
political factors (consistent with the distinction that the Chinese Communist Party makes
between its goals during the Mao years and since the 1978 reforms) and uses classrelated vocabulary like “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat” not found in the American
textbook I consulted, the two sources have more in common than not in terms of the
events they highlight and their interpretations of those events. In this case, the benefit of
CHINSES HISTORY THROUGH CHINESE EYES — Introduction
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consulting Chinese sources involves the vitality that they bring to the lessons. Former
Vice Premier Li Lanqing’s description of buying a new shirt in Beijing in the 1970s
illustrates the goals of the 1978 reforms more memorably than most historians’
accounts could. That brings us to the issue of primary sources, which is the second way
in which this curriculum helps students see Chinese history through Chinese eyes, as
explained in the following section.
The design and format of the lessons
The Reading Like a Historian model
The lessons in this project attempt to follow the “Reading Like a Historian” model
developed by the Stanford History Education Group, a model that presents students
with carefully selected primary source documents and asks them to analyze the
documents to answer authentic historical questions. All of the primary source
documents included in in this project (except the stories that present Western dragons
in the dragon lesson) are from Chinese sources. I have deliberately avoided the outside
perspectives that are often included in such compilations, usually, I suspect, because
they are conveniently available in English or because they make a point about China
that the compiler valued but couldn’t find in Chinese sources. My goal, on the contrary,
has been to remove that extra filter and let the Chinese voices speak for themselves.
According to teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District with whom I
have worked, a key factor in the success of the Reading Like a Historian methodology
involves the four skills that students learn to analyze the primary sources: sourcing,
contextualizing, close reading, and corroborating. Teachers who use the following
lessons on Chinese history should consult the Stanford History Education Group’s Web
site for explanations of the skills and recommendations on how to teach them
(sheg.stanford.edu/?q=node/45). The worksheets in these Chinese history lessons are
designed to lead students through the application of the four skills, so an understanding
of that vocabulary is essential for both teachers and students.
Most existing “Reading Like a Historian” curriculum is designed for 11th grade
United States history students. The lessons in this project are designed for younger
students, and the four skills are adjusted accordingly. Teachers using these lessons
CHINSES HISTORY THROUGH CHINESE EYES — Introduction
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should not expect their students to master the four skills during the course of one
lesson, as even among upper level high school students it can take a semester or more
of practice to internalize the skills and begin to truly read like a historian. It is hoped that
as more world history curriculum is developed using the Reading Like a Historian
model, enough material will be available to provide world history students with the
sustained practice using the pedagogy that its mastery requires.
Another key to the success of the Reading Like a Historian pedagogy is the
modification of primary source documents to make them understandable to students.
This is especially important for younger students analyzing older documents in ancient
and medieval world history courses. Therefore the lessons in this project provide both
original documents and, as necessary, modified documents. The distinction is stated
boldly in the document title. Since the documents included in these lessons are all
translations into English of Chinese originals, some additional clarifications between
original and modified documents are in order.
Original documents
 Are excerpts from previously published English translations.
 Indicate omissions with ellipses.
 If necessary, change the spelling of proper names from the Wade-Giles
romanization system (traditionally used in academic work in the United
States) to pinyin romanization (the system used in China since the 1950s).
Modified documents
 Are also excerpts in which the romanization may have been changed from
the original translation.
 Do not use ellipses to indicate omissions, on the assumption that many
students find ellipses confusing or distracting.
 Include the substitution of simpler wording and phrasing for wording and
phrasing in the original translations which students may find confusing or
difficult to understand. Every effort is made to preserve the original meaning
and tone, of course.
Two exceptions to the conversion of Wade-Giles romanization are the names Sun Yatsen and Chiang Kai-shek. The Wade-Giles spellings are so common in the United
CHINSES HISTORY THROUGH CHINESE EYES — Introduction
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States (and Taiwan) that the pinyin romanizations (Sun Zhongshan or Sun Yixian and
Jiang Jieshi) are likely to cause confusion.
Background notes for teachers
Each lesson includes a short essay on the historical content of the lesson. These
essays are not intended as literature reviews, which were beyond my capacity, due both
to time restrictions and my inability to read Chinese. In addition, my experiences
working with secondary school teachers have led me to believe that they do not find
literature reviews especially useful in teaching a topic. Teachers prefer scholarly
information that will help them answer students’ questions, which is substantially
different from a review of all the scholarly literature. Therefore I have summarized a few
sources that I think teachers will find useful rather than attempted to catalog all available
scholarly sources
A final thought
I have concluded from this project that seeing Chinese history through Chinese eyes
requires more than identifying questions that Chinese historians find important or
providing primary documents from Chinese sources, which is all that I have been able to
accomplish in these lessons. Chinese and Western historical traditions reflect
fundamentally different views of the world, of human existence, and of the nature of
history. I have begun to understand that the study of Chinese views of Chinese history,
even in this period when Chinese historians have increasingly adopted Western
academic methods, requires an understanding of Chinese classical scholarship. In
Zhang Yimou’s film Hero, when the would-be assassin Broken Sword reveals why he
changed his mind about killing the king who would become the first emperor of a unified
China, he writes two enormous characters in the sand: 天下, which is translated into
English as “All under heaven.” Anyone not familiar with classical Chinese thought will
miss the epiphany those characters provide and much else that informs both the
questions and the sources in Chinese history. In these lessons I have only scratched
the surface in the quest for that deeper understanding.
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