Lecture 1: Introduction to China's History

This isn't really the official start of class, but I just thought I wanted to start with this new like big game that just dropped and it's like making waves I guess in video game communities across the world. And this game for the if you haven't heard of it, that's totally fine. The main character is Sumuku Kong and the game is based loosely on this great Chinese novel of the 16th century Journey to the West Cog. Yeah. And the thing is uh so have you heard of the Monkey King or Sumukong? Some of you have heard of him. Some of you may have not have heard of him. That's okay. He's like a real iconic figure in Chinese culture. You could say literature. uh he's not a historical character although the journey to the west is a historical journey uh taken during the Tong dynasty to India to retrieve Buddhist sutras and all of that um but starting in like the southern song dynasty don't worry you'll know all of these dynasties pretty soon we cover all of them this semester starting in about like I'd say the 11th century this figure of a monkey uh as kind of the the sort of accompany the the accompany of this main t uh you know monk character came to the foreground and his character evolved over the centuries and I think one of the reasons why he's so beloved in China is he's like this fearless person right he's he laughs in the face of danger because he's like a monkey right so it makes him very beloved and makes him like sort of very interesting um he's also kind of a force of chaos in a sense uh is that he literally makes a mess of heaven even uh he gets in trouble with the Jade Emperor all of these really great stories, but in that sort of his sort of causing chaos where he goes, he forces truth to come to the surface. He's got the power to see evil where evil is sort of latently present. Uh so you can see here, I just thought I'd say a few words about him. There's a big debate in Chinese history about where monkey comes from. where the character of Sumukong comes from. Hooser, the great early 20th century intellectual. You don't have to know him exactly, but he's a big name. He actually envisioned that monkey may have come from the Ramayana, from the character of Hanuman, the sort of protector of King Rama. Uh, and there are there is a serious theory that is actually the origin of his character. Lucin disagreed with that theory. Actually the other big 20th century great writer of Chinese history had another theory. You can see over the centuries this is from a very early edition of the novel. This is from the uh summer palace in Beijing. Right? So the literally depictions from the novel like sused you know uh big you know artistic uh scenes in late imperial China. Uh this is from a temple in Vietnam and you can see here this is monkey and shrines right. So he enters religion, popular religion and of course big opera, right? Opera for performances of Journey of the West, the character of Monkey and all of that. So I thought that I would just say just really if you've been thinking about this video game or you want to go check out this video game at the beginning here, he's been beloved across generations. Every era sort of reinvisions him. You know, this is Princess Iron Fan. This is a story from Journey of the West. Incredible. This is China's first animated film, 1941, made in Shanghai during World War II. And it's kind of like Monkey at that time. You think about the War of Resistance against Japan, right? All of the symbolism with that. Somebody mentioned that they saw the 1986. Oh, where's my 1986? There's my 1986. Journey to the West. This a big TV series. You can get it all on YouTube for free. Really fun. This actor who plays Monkey is really incredible. Like he's comes from like an oporatic tradition. He really carries that forth. Late editions of Monkey, recent editions of Monkey have kind of shown him to be like hyper masculine and muscular and everything like that. It's actually not necessarily how he's been portrayed historically, but again, it tells us something about how his character evolves over time. All right, that is the sort of prelude. Now, let's actually get into dynastic China. This is probably how you thought I would begin the class, which makes total sense, right? Forbidden City. Some of you went to Beijing this summer. Some of you have been to Beijing, I'm sure. This is like, you know, the tragedy with the Forbidden City is once you see this palace, you can't go visit any other palace. They all just look so silly in comparison to this Versailles. I mean, forget about it. It looks like a house. I mean, seriously, this I mean, it's the largest palace structure in the world. It's I've been I've visited probably five times over my lifetime, and every time it's different. When you go in the summer, there's not a lot of shade. You get killed by the sun in the crowds. I went on an academic

sort of with an academic delegation this summer. So, we went to all these like secret places and that was really, really fun. But this is a place you absolutely have to visit. There's so much of Chinese history in this palace in the center of Beijing. And I'll just say actually one funny thing about it is this palace was so nice that when the Mans invaded China in the 17th century, they said, "We'll keep the palace. " They moved right in. How often does that happen when somebody invades say we'll keep the White House? No, I we could do better than the White House. They kept this one. Okay. So, this is actually a Ming Dynasty palace that was used right up until the early 20th century. Today, a museum. Okay. All right. I thought I was thinking about like how do you even introduce this subject? Right. This is like it's I love this subject. I'm sure you got that from my email. Okay. Uh I I'm so excited to share about this subject with you. And I realize there's never a good way to get into this subject because it's so big. It's so much to cover. But I'll just say, let's look at a map right here. Okay, this is, as you could imagine, Beijing, right? This is the Forbidden City. This is the palace. I think this map is from about the 1950s or something like that. And there's these three quote unquote high to the left, right, to the western side of the Forbidden City, right? Anybody know what those three high are? with those three lakes. Anybody have you anybody visited? Have you been to Bay High Park? It's okay. Let me just tell you there are three lakes there. Okay. The top lake is the northern lake. Okay. That was an imperial garden and that is today a public park. You can access that one. The second one and the last one are the middle lake in the southern lake. That's Jong Nan High. Have you ever heard of Jong Nan High? That's where the head of the communist party is. That's basically where the nominally the Cinping lives and everything like it's kind of like the White House and the Kremlin together. Okay. Very big place. Those two lakes are not open to the public. That area is like the compound of the I think you know the center of the party's power structure basically. So there's so much right just in this little how many kilometers of space. Okay. China history from th hundreds of years ago all the way up to history going on today. Right? So the thing I love about this term is that the word high means sea, ocean or lake. In Mongol actually this distinction you can imagine why is not really made between ocean and a big body of water. And sort of some Chinese dialects over the centuries adopted that or also had that. So you can kind of see here I think and I know this might be sort of a little corny to say but I want to just say it here at the very beginning and I'll just say it once. It's like Chinese history is like a sea or an ocean. Okay. That's it's big. It's how do I say it? It's vast. It's beautiful and it's difficult. It can be dangerous. Right? Of course I'll talk about how history can be dangerous in just a second but it's not like perhaps other kinds of history you've studied thus far. Um, I'll just say that, you know, I started studying it however many like almost 20 years ago. I will be a student of it for the rest of my life. I'll never be able to master this, right? It's not something you master. It's just too much stuff. Okay? But that's the thing. This class, what I can do is I'll take you to the ocean and I'll say in that first time you see the ocean, right? Think about that. Think about where you were, especially if you didn't grow up near the sea, right? The first time you saw the ocean, you say, "Wow, that's a beautiful site. " Or, "Wow, that's so interesting. Look at the waves. Whatever. Whatever. That's what this class can do. It's like we're I'm going to show you across time, okay? From the Joe dynasty, from the origins of writing in China, which is Chong Dynasty, but whatever. Han dynasty, the medieval period, all the way up to the early modern era. I'll show you something about every era that I think is interesting, okay? That I think you'll appreciate. And then it's up to you to go from there, okay? So, so I'll take you to the sea. You can swim however you want to you however far you want to swim. I'm still swimming. Okay. So that's what we're going to do. This is okay. Dynastic China 2024. Okay. So let me say something at the outset here. What I'll do today is I'll introduce Chinese history in the broadest possible terms. How do we think about it? Some key terms. We'll go over the syllabus, the requirements for the class, and then I'll talk we'll I'll give you a geographical tour of China, which is really fun. Actually, it's really fun just to go talk about food and here's this province and here's this province. The rest of the class won't be like that, but you do need to know the geography of China. There will be a quiz in a couple of weeks. Okay, this is the forbidden city that we were just talking about. And you can see here, this is I think the largest single hall within the palace complex. This Taiuen, the hall of supreme harmony. Okay, this a Ming dynasty structure. That's don't get overwhelmed. Uh that's like let's

say a 15th century structure. Okay. Uh, and this is basically where the emperor had major audiences. Weddings were held here. Enthronements were held here. And you can see it's right here. It's right, it's kind of like in the almost looks like the center. It's like right in that central access. Okay, that's where it is. There's another place and it's not like a famous place. The place of everlasting spring. This chun. Okay, it's in the back. It's right over there. I highlighted it right there. I bring out these two sort of parts of the palace to you because in a way they kind of represent two tides of Chinese history or two ways of thinking about Chinese history. Okay, there's junction, right? Official history. What is official history? Now, when you think about history in China, don't just think, oh, I'm sitting down. I'm thinking about history. Oh, that's so fun. No sh refers to a k a kind of writing. It's a genre of writing. There are officially 24 official histories across China, Chinese history. The dynasty that follows the previous dynasty writes the official history of its predecessor. Okay. Ironically, we do not yet have an official history of theQing dynasty, the last dynasty. That's an ongoing big football project of a game of, you know, tension within China today. Okay. How to write that history of the last dynasty. but quoteunquote we have 24 um that's this official history you know emperors dynasties battles natural disasters recorded by state authorities okay but then there's something else okay that's not all we look at talk about there's also this kind of idea in Chinese of yes wild history that's outside things that happened in the past that are not in those official histories but are still worthy of talking about that remembering. Okay. And that's like folklore, families, women, popular tales not recorded by state authorities. And you know, so you one way you can think about Chinese history is that it's the tension between these two things. Okay? It's like also going back to the sea metaphor, high tide and low tide, whatever you want to say. Okay? There's the stuff that's officially recorded. On this day, the emperor said this, but then there's all this unofficial stuff that we piece together and say what was really going on. Okay, this what is so great about Chinese history is that you actually don't need a textbook. There are so many sources. There's art, there's so much writing, there's private writing, there's writing by scholars, there's debates, there's so much you can look into. But take a look at again that sort of palace. What I said is that looking at itself at the palace, it kind of tells you a story about Chinese history. This is that sort of like juncture type of place. The things that happened in the hall of supreme harmony are recorded in official type of histories. But the stuff that happens in the rear of the palace, this is the hogong. That's where the imperial family lived. Okay? That's actually where they lived. They didn't live in the front of the palace. This is a that's an expression in Chinese. Hogong, the back of the palace. That's the imperial family. That's where they actually lived. And that's where all of By the way, if you watch Chinese dramas, family dramas, they're all about that. Okay? Nobody really cares about this, but they're all about that, right? What's going on? the romance, right? All this stuff, you know? Yeah, sure. Wild history has a lot more to it than just that, okay? I'm not endorsing any drama, by the way. Uh but but it's a way to think about it. This is an incredible hall. We will return to it in the last class of the semester because in this palace of everlasting spring and the rear of the palace, on its walls are depicted murals of the probably the greatest novel of Chinese history, Hong Mong, A Dream of the Red Chamber. images from that novel uh were painted on the walls of this kind of residential complex for the imperial family uh you know one of the consorts in the 19th century that sort of uh p that those scenes or that novel is all about a family in decline right so it's actually I've always thought it's extremely moving and thoughtprovoking to think that the emperor that the imperial family has these images on that wall okay all right So let's talk about why would you even take this class? Okay, why talk about dynastic history? Why get into it? Well, the answer could be because like China's a really important place today, right? I think it's going to have the largest economy in the world, whatever. It has the second largest population. It's an important place. There's a lot of interesting technological developments going on with that, you know, all of that stuff. My favorite of which are these like robots that I'm sure if you've been to China recently, I'm sure you've encountered these. If you stay in a hotel and you get takeout, somebody brings it to the hotel front desk and then this Gichi red this robot sends it to your room so you don't have to actually talk to any human

beings. Okay, this was a thing that came in during COVID, I think, and now it's just like standard across the country. So, I mean, you could set you get medicine, you get all this stuff like that, but it was like my first night in China this summer. I was I arrived at like 1:00 a. m. for a conference and then this like I got a phone call and this it was like a robotic voice and it said, "I'm here. " And I'm like, "What's going on? " And then, "Please open the door. " And I open the door. It's one of these. And they go, "Please press this button. " And I press the button and then it's like and then there was this like rice and like all this food, right? And it's like they're walking all over these hotels, right? And they even say like, "Please excuse me. I need to get to the elevator. " So, it's I don't know why we don't have them yet, right? And and if any budding anthropologists in the room, there's so much to study about these robots, right? About how humans interact with them and such like that. But yes. Okay. So, I understand the current scene of China is worth paying attention to is is relevant, is important. Okay. But then we get back to this question, why study dynastic China? One reason, okay, is that if you spend time in China and you talk to people in China, people in China talk about their history all the time. Okay, from the top leadership all the way down to everyday people, people driving cabs that you'll meet, you know, just in day-to-day life. Okay, history really matters in this place. Okay, it's the way that people talk about issues in the present. Um, it also is really contentious, right? I just mentioned to you this kind of like question of the official Ching history. There's been an ongoing project to write the official Ching history in theory since the days of like Mao and Joe and Lie. It started and then it stopped because of the cultural revolution and then it got started again in recent years and now it's kind of again controversial. How do you officially record that history? That should tell you something. There's all of these debates. There's all these tensions that go on within China about how to understand what happened in dynastic China. Okay, we don't pay attention to Well, the Wall Street Journal did a cover of it. Okay, but that kind of signals its importance, right? So, I do not think in any way that this class, Dynastic China, is less relevant or less practical than modern China. I'd say if you had to pick, take this one. Forget about modern China. Okay. the 20th century. It's a tough century. This we cover a lot more centuries here. Okay. So, you get more bang for your buck. Okay. But they're both good. I mean, they're, you know, take it in 2026. Yeah. Okay. Um, so now let me tell you another reason kind of building on what I was just talking about is that people in China like to talk about their history. They have a long there's a long recorded history in China. So, that means there's a lot to talk about. debate and there's a lot to analyze. I'm sure many of you may be familiar with this opening sentence. Has anybody read Sanguani, Romance of the Three Kingdoms? I think m Professor Dung has a class on Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Some of you might be taking it or want to take it. You should take it. It's an interesting This is another one of those two those great novels. Okay, we talked about Journey to the West a little bit earlier. This is Romance of the Three Kingdoms and there's a this opening lines of it right this writes there's a saying in our country that you know long divided it must unite long united it must divide think about that for just a second and then let me show you this quote okay by Mark Elvin 1973 the Chinese empire is the major exception in the preodern world to what would appear to be the rule that units of territorial and demographic extent comparable to China are not stable entities over long periods of time. So one of the things where you say why look at it, why study it? Why think about it is because actually this kind of does seem to happen, okay, that there are periods of division where everything falls apart, okay, and it looks like, okay, this is going to be Italy and France Switzerland and then all of a sudden it comes back. Rome comes back. Okay, Rome comes back and it keeps coming back and you're like, why? Right? What's going on? Right? And people, you know, across the centuries noticed this, right? It was like a thing they noticed and talked about it or even anticipated. That's not to overstate continuity in Chinese history. I don't want you to think, oh yeah, 20,000 years ago that was China and China today it's like the it's not the same. It's very different. Tons of things happen. Tons of things change. But this conversation that we're talking about right here is very old, right? So I think Chinese history is good for training your mind about how to think about big difficult questions. You have a ton of data. information. You can think on different scales. When people do

climate history, what's the first place they look to? They look to China, right? Because China wrote about its climate for people in China wrote about climate for like thousand at least 2,000 plus years, right? All sort of meteorological phenomenon, comets, etc. All of these records are in those histories that I was talking about, you know? So, it's really, really great to think about history, right? If you haven't taken another history course here before, this is a great introduction. Even if you don't want to continue with China, right? You want to go and do England, take this class and then go think about India. Okay? You can do all of that stuff. Okay? History is ancient, but it's an ongoing conversation and really uh filled with nearly endless perspectives. And here's the key point. this class about eavesdropping into that conversation. This goes back to that image that I was given to you. I take you to the ocean, you swim. Okay, you eavesdrop into the conversation. This is a huge conversation. Lots of people are going to say stuff. Lots of You're going to have dowists. Buddhists. You're going to have Confucians. You're going to have Confucians who hate other Confucians. Uh you're going to have terrible emperors. You're gonna have some decent emperors, but really bad emperors, too, right? You know, you'd have everything, right? And the it all comes together as people over the centuries try to make sense of it right and that's that ongoing conversation that conversation continues in China to today. So you get a little in this class you get to eaves drop on it right think about it a little bit okay so here are the class goals and aspirations okay first of all let me tell you what the game plan is and it's like a really intimidating slide so just buckle up okay there you go so basically that's the game plan okay not this part okay so not this part's modern China okay so that's the thing I take two classes one does this and then one does this okay so uh look what I can tell you is I'm a historian primarily of this era, right? The Ming andQing dynasties, the last two imperial dynasties. That's my specialty. That's what I love. But the thing is that because this is the class you're taking at MIT that is dynastic Chinese history. I feel I have to give every era its due. So, I really try I really go out of my way even though I'm not like the biggest fan of the Han dynasty, you know, like I'm I don't I love the Tong Dynasty as a sort of like a historian who works on another period, but I will give you what I think is the essentials to know about that era. Every period that we cover, I try to get you, you know, that those kernels, right, that say, "Oh, wow, that's really interesting. I didn't know that before. " So that when you look at this by the end of the semester, you'll say, "I know what happened pretty much across this whole time span, right? I know something. I can say something about it. " Okay? And then that way you go off in your winter holiday and you can have great conversations with your parents, right? Or friends or you can travel and you can visit places and say, "I know what that is. I know when that was built. I know what I know what's going on here. " Okay. All right. So class, goals and aspirations, learn something about China. 20% of humanity. This is a good aspiration. We should learn something about China, right? Especially in the United States, right? I mean, it's credible. I have to say it. Okay. Learn something about history. Okay. So there's two things here. This is a class about China. It's also a class about history. Okay? Of course, these things can overlap, right? But history is a discipline. It's a way of thinking. Okay? We have certain ideas in history. primary sources. Secondary sources. Okay, this is a secondary source. These are not primary sources. Primary sources referring to the original sources that were written in the original language by people at the time. Okay? Those are the premiums in history. Okay? But of course, we as historians, we write textbooks. We write books, right? So just realize history is not in a textbook. Okay? Textbooks are like the least. We historians look down on textbooks, okay? We don't like textbooks, right? Because with textbooks, you have to edit, you have to take out, you have to do that. Go back to the originals. Make your own textbook, right? That's what we're going to do in this class. Okay? So, that's what I want you to think about history. I don't want to turn you into a walk encyclopedia. Sort of I do actually. Uh that would be nice, but to equip you to approach related issues. One of the things I say, and I'll just tell you right up here, yeah, it's a contentheavy class, right? Because I sort of I don't know if it's oldfashioned or what, but like I think you just need to know it, right? I think you need to know it. You need to leave this class in command of knowledge. Okay? And one of the things that you will realize, you might think, oh, this is a lot. I, you know, why do we have to know all this stuff? When you go to China, you will realize that people that you encounter in everyday life know so

much about history. Okay? They blow they will blow away the average American about what they can say about history that happened 2,000 years ago. Even if it's wrong, okay? Even if it's just like kind of like romanticized or whatever, but they talk about it. They know it. So, you got to know it. Okay? That's the thing, okay? And it's not, and let me just emphasize here why you should take it, why I think you should take this class, why I think maybe this weekend you should convince your friends to take this class, okay? Is that it's not something you can just pick up like with a book. Like so many people think with history, oh yeah, I'll over the summer I'll read a book and catch up. No, no, no, no, no. You don't. With computer science, with physics, you don't just read a book over the weekend and become an expert. Okay, Chinese history is one of those fields where you got to take a class in it. You actually you got to drill it. You got to know think about it from all these different angles and then you can say you know something about it. Okay, it's not actually something that you just pick up with osmosis. Okay. Or what you can pick up by osmosis by reading Wikipedia and sort of bad history, right? But that's what we're going to try. We're going to try to do something better than that in this class. Yeah. Okay. And this knowledge will stay with you. I always say that. I always say that, right? 50 years from now, let's say 30, you graduate from MIT, you're talking to your relatives or your children or whatever it is. What are you going to talk to them about? You're about this class. You're going to say, "Hey, you know, the three kingdoms, I know something about that because this is the type of thing that people want to talk about, not whatever Python or whatever, right? Like, you know, it's like it's not a table of conversation, right? This is I guarantee you a holiday break of great conversations after this class. " a minimum. Okay. So, why do I like Chinese history? Oh, wow. Where to begin? Okay. Well, I went to China for the first time in like right around the right before the Beijing Olympics. And that was me many years ago. You can say I changed a little bit, maybe a little bit. That's me in Taiwan. I think I'm in a Yonga Dawang, which is like a breakfast place. And I love it. Right. I go like you get the dojang, the the soy, it's soy beans, sort of a milk substance with yo, this fried doughnut. It's like heaven. You know what I mean? It costs like $2, right? And it's just like it's incredible. Huge lines, right? Um, so that was me. And then, okay, food. So, it's not just about the food, but we can talk about food. I don't think I have to convince most of you. China's got really good food, right? It's got a ton of different types of food. Okay. Uh, the US Chinese food has gotten better in my lifetime, but it's still it's that's right. It's was starting at zero. So I mean so the thing is that it is better but it good Chinese food in the US tends to be expensive in China you just get so much right you have so many options everything like that we can talk about food I have another class called nature and environment in China we do a whole week on food so if you really want to talk about food maybe consider that class but we'll do a little bit of food here okay uh and then this is me playing ma jang right so what I'm trying to say is that you get in right when you go to a place and Maybe it won't be China for you. It could be Japan or it could be Mongolia. It could be Russia. It could be Italy. You know, something's going to grab you. It might not be the coliseum. It might be just like everyday life, you know, drinking espresso, you know, in a Florentine afternoon. And you go, I just love this. I really love this. And then you go, I want to learn the language, and I want to I want to understand what happened here. And here in the 19th century. 2,000 years ago. Okay, I want this to happen to you. It doesn't have to be China. It can be, right? It could be Mexico. It could be any place, but someplace that you weren't born in and then you go there and you go, "Wow, I really want to understand this place. " That's a wonderful part of the human experience. I hope you all have it. Okay? But that kind of happened to me in China. Okay? And it wasn't one moment, right? It was many meals. It was many gambling sessions. It was it was this is me on the many years ago probably going to Tibet. I can't remember, but it was on one of those sleeper trains, you know, back in the day. I have to say I have become like a middle-aged Chinese person in the sense of because I've been in China now for the like the past 20 years and I've seen all this change. So, I remember like, oh, the green trains that went super slow and like you had to stay on them for like overnight. Like the train I took the train from Beijing to Shanghai. The first time I took it, it was like I was standing. It was I was eating instant noodles praying that they wouldn't like tip over in a very crowded car because we didn't even have there weren't even tickets left for a bed, right? I mean, and now it's like, oh, it's business class highspeed rail all the way, right? I mean, it takes four what five hours? Five hours, right? Five hours now, right? It's totally changed, right? But there were a lot of fun experiences on Chinese trains back

in the day. you talk to Chinese parents or you talk to people of a certain generation, they will have stories for you about taking long, long train rides in China. Uh, and the whole generation who grew up in the culture revolution have these especially. Yeah. Uh, and then I've gone back. Oh yeah, I wrote a book. I was there this summer talking about my book. Right. And then, oh yeah, the last thing I want to say. So, I got into it. I continue to go back. I can't tell you the number of times I've been there. I probably live there, you know, for a few years overall, but it's like more every year I go for a few months. This summer I went for, you know, a month and a half or something like that. The one thing that I say that really has struck me in terms of changes when I first went to China, hey, how you doing? you know, the coffee was terrible. Uh, and it and for somebody addicted to caffeine, uh, it was brutal. And I had to drink a ton of tea to make up for it, right? And it's just like too much tea. You know what I'm saying? Uh, but I love tea, don't get me wrong. Coffee is now way better. Okay, coffee I and I actually tweeted about this like when I got back. Coffee in China is now better than coffee in the United States. I come back here and I'm like, this I'm just so disappointed. The thing is that what China has actually accidentally perfected and I say is in you can also find this in Thailand. You also find this now in Korean cafes is nondairy espresso drinks. And it's just it it's a world that like Starbucks is just out to lunch. They're not getting this. You take espresso, you create an Americano with sparkling water and you add lemon. Incredible. Grapefruit. Incredible. Liy, whatever. like all of these they call Chongi Cafe, right? trying me cafe like creative Americanos and I say like why don't you take this global you know this is the next thing I mean bubble tea for sure but it's like I think that there's an interesting thing of like they feel like oh but maybe it's we're not doing it right like the Italians enough with the cappuccinos we got to go to the next phase it's all these milky drinks it tires you out right this is like the absolute pickup low calorie too. Love it. So, check out coffee in China next time you're there. Okay, that's been an interesting change. All right, let's talk about syllabus. All right, so I just have like a bunch of I usually I used to do a printout syllabus, but then MIT students told me that like nobody does that anymore. So, then I felt like a historian, but in a bad way. So, I said like, okay, let's just put it all online, right? So, uh no prerequisites. You're all welcome to enroll. You can bring guests. Just let me know. You can bring your parents. Some people bring their parents, right? If they're visiting, right? They want to, you know, again, what are you going to bring your computer science classes? Come on. Right? You want to bring them here, right? Okay, that's fine. Just let me know that they're coming. Okay? Uh it's Chinese. Chinese is not a prerequisite. Some of you are doing a Chinese minor. Okay? That's fine. And for all of the primary sources that I give you this semester, I'll try to give you the Chinese original if you want to look at it. If you're learning Chinese, take challenge yourself. Take a look at it. Right? You don't have to look at it, but you can. So that's an option. If you want to do the minor for this class, you should be looking at those. Okay. Um, so that looks good. Study guides. Okay. So the thing is that when I first taught this class, it was like essays and then I was like, I'm done with essays. I had a historical evolution at MIT and I realized if you teach the class on Chinese history, you got to offer an exam. For those of you who know about Chinese history, you know how important exams are in Chinese history. you'll realize, yeah, you need an exam. So, I just do midterm. We're going to have a final. Don't worry. The average of the midterm last year, it about every year tends to be about a 90. Most of the students who take the class, let's just be frank here, modern China, we get 40 or 50 maybe. Mo many people get A's, A minuses, A pluses, whatever. Uh some people will get B's, the occasional C. If you get below a B, you're trying. Okay. uh you if you get in the B range uh it's you know what I mean to say here is if you put the work in you put the effort in there shouldn't be a huge issue okay with getting the grade that you want okay uh it is a challenge you do have to study all right and some people will bomb the midterm some people and everything like that and that's okay it's not the end of the world we'll figure it out I'll show you the group here's the grading rubric we'll talk about this okay so first things attendance let's say let to say something about attendance right up at the front. There are two excused absences over the course of the semester. You come in, you scan the QR code. That's how we know that you're in class. Okay? You have two excused absences. Just let us know. Okay? I realize some of you want to take this class and you have a conflict with another class. That's a partial conflict. Not a complete conflict, but a partial conflict. If you have a partial conflict and you can come to 50% of

these classes, then the Linda, the TA and I will make an arrangement for you. You can come. We will not take you down if you have a class conflict that you show us your schedule and you show us I have this conflict at this time and we'll give you two extra writing assignments over the course of the semester. And that way we just take the question off the table. So you can but if you want that arrangement, you got to let us know in the next week or so, okay? Because we need to know that. All right. So, we're happy if to accommodate, but otherwise we're really hoping everybody will be here, you know, most of the time. Okay. Um, so there's so in terms of writing, the major writing that you will do over the course of the semester is your discussion responses. I'll tell you about what I expect from those discussion responses in just a second. There are 10 of them. Each of them is worth two points. If you do a decent job on them that you get the two points, right? That's as simple as that. You can do it late. It's worth one point if it's late. Okay, that's just it's just we every time like in every semester somebody comes and says I'm didn't do any of them. I didn't know that, you know, they were required or something like that. Okay, just letting you know we will accept it late. That's what it's worth if it's late. Okay, there's a geography quiz. All of the quizzes and the tests with the exception of the final, okay, there will be a retake and it's open to everybody. Okay. So, what that means is you come in, you do the geography quiz. If it didn't go well, you can take it again and I'll just take the highest score. If you can't make it the day of the geography quiz because you have to take an absence or you have one of those conflicts that I just mentioned, that's fine. There will be one retake. Okay? Same with the classical text quiz, right? Where I quiz you on with Confucious and the Dowist and all that. One retake offered midterm. We do one retake offer for the midterm, too. Okay? And it's like a totally it's a new exam. Some people like literally take everything twice because they just like the challenge. I've had that. MIT students are incredible. Okay. It's like you took this midterm, you got a 95. I want to take it again. All right. We're going for that five points, right? I get I got it. Okay. All right. Uh so there is a timeline uh project. It's not bad. You just propose a topic. This is where you can kind of follow your own interests. If you want to do the history of a certain type of fashion in China, Chinese certain type of Chinese food, you can follow that over time. You just create a timeline. I give you all the sort of way. How do you create the timeline? That's it's not bad. And the final exam and then that's the final grade. One thing that we do, and I just want to say we're really uh excited this semester, we have a TA from the HAS program, Linda Rinsswan, uh who's wonderful to join us. Anthrop anth historian his history a historian of nuclear energy. So really excited to have Linda and Linda does had does know Chinese history fairly well. So definitely co correspond with me, correspond with Linda during the semester as I try to do in all my classes. We'll do one sort of it's like a required office hour mid semester. So you come to my office, Linda and I will greet you and we talk for 10 minutes about whatever you want to talk about typically about what confuses you in Chinese history or questions about the midterm or questions about whatever. Right? So everybody does that and that's also part of the grade. Okay? So you you do have to do that once you're happy to answer questions at any time. Okay? But that's uh that's what we do expect. Okay. All right. So let me just say something final point about the discussion posts. Okay. So, discussion posts. Um, yes, I'll do I I've changed this. I'll do Wednesday. I'll give it to you Wednesday before 3:30. I'll give you a little bit extra time than Tuesday. So, get them in before that time, the Wednesday class. Okay? Basically, what you have to do is you have to look at the readings uh and you have to answer a question. I'll give you an example uh for next week's discussion post just a second. You write two paragraphs. Okay? Uh and the the two paragraphs, right? I'll tell you exactly how we want the structure of these paragraphs to look like. You have some agency and creativity in it. Don't worry. But I'll tell you about what we're looking for. Okay. Um so the thing I want to just remind you all the facts, inferences, uh judgments and opinions, right? How you sort of separate out those things, right? facts, things that we know to be true based on evidence. Bees make honey. Inferences, statements of the unknown, based on the known, derived from reason, right? Judgments, and then all the way to opinions, like I like whatever ice cream. Okay? When you write a post, I don't want just opinion, right? I hate Confucious, so congratulations. Okay? But that's not a post. Okay? I we want a combo, right? You can give me the opinion at the end in the second paragraph. The first paragraph, we want you to focus on facts and inferences

based on the primary sources of that week's reading. So you look at the question, you try to answer based on the primary sources, and then in the second paragraph, you can expand into judgments and opinion. Okay? So that way you know what we expect. You know how to do it. All right? So laid it out, I think really just clearly and nicely for you there. Let's take a look at what we're doing next week. I have to tell you this is just give you an example for next week. So next week on Monday you come in I'm going to like rush you through the rise of agriculture the origins of state formation in China and we end up on next Monday with I think one of my favorite lectures of the whole semester the rise of writing in China and writing is super fascinating is it's a technology and China was a very early place to have it so what is writing what counts as writing right one of the questions I think we have are emojis writing right what counts as it you can answer that question if you'd like next week. Right? So, this is what we're kind of doing, right? So, you look at it, you'll notice up here every week, you'll see, wow, it looks like there's a lot of reading. There's not that much reading. You just have to break it down. The primary sources are what you really need to focus on. That is the original, right? Translation of oracle bone inscriptions, something like that. Translations of Joe Bronzes, right? You'll see those are primary sources. That's what you focus on. But if you're like, I don't really understand what this is, then you go to secondary source, which for the beginning part of this class will be Leong's Early China. Very nice book. I've given you sort of selections from it. I've uploaded them. Right. This is like a pretty like sophisticated book of early Chinese history, right? It's like really good. It's fairly comprehensive. Yeah. And then if you're like, I took a look at this and I still don't know what's going on. We have the textbook big picture. Okay, so this is the optional textbook. Okay, I provide you with three different ways to break down sort of an era's writing or an era's sources. The primary sources, secondary sources, and a textbook. The secondary sources in the textbook are optional for you. Okay? If you want to read it, you can read it. If you feel you need it, some errors you might feel, I know three kingdoms, I don't need it. Right? I know Tong Dynasty, I don't need it this week. I'll just do primary. But some errors you might be like, oh, you know, North South Division, I want to read the textbook. Right? So, it's there if you need it. Right? So, it's not as much as it looks. Okay? And I got the uh dynasty China geography quiz study guide. I put up all the study guides. Don't worry. Okay. Questions? How's it sound? Interesting. Yeah. How do you compare to your other classes? Yeah. Pretty good, right? Yeah. Like, let me know. You know what I mean? You know, like, all right. So, let's talk about how we talk about Chinese history. Periodization. All right. There are ways. This is just getting you into like foot in the door. Remember that long sort of like list, that chronology I gave you of all those reigns, dynasties, whatever. Here's how we break it down. First, preodern China. This is like it's a loaded word. When does modernity begin? It's like it's kind of a useless phrase, okay? Because like 50 years from now, it's like they'll be like, "Was the 20th century modern? It looks pretty old to us, right? " But for the sake of conversation, dialogue, you should know that in China officially in Chinese textbooks in China today, modernity begins with a very actually western centric notion of the opium wars. Okay? Middle of the 19th century. Okay. Basically, so you have like modern history, preodern history coming back. Ah, good. Thank you. Okay. I said to the computer, thank you. Okay. So, so preodern. Sometimes we could also say traditional. Okay. Uh, so this is just like I'm not endorsing these terms. I'm just letting you know these are the terms you may encounter. Okay. Uh, so when we say imperial China, that has a very fixed beginning and end date. That is not like open to interpretation. Imperial China begins in 221 B. CEE or or BC, whatever have you. Okay, it begins when Chin Shaong proclaims himself to be the first emperor. He was the first person to do it. Realize writing was invented in China approximately in 1200 BC.

China's got a thousand years of recorded history before there were any emperors. Before there were any. So this is the amazing thing about thinking about scale in terms of Chinese history. When Confucious was alive, he was already thinking about the deep past in antiquity. We think of Confucious and we go, "Wow, that guy lived a long time ago. " He was thinking of other people thinking living a long time ago, 600 years ago, right? So this is just imperial China begins with the proclamation of the first emperor, which was a new form of sort of royal kingship. you know that sort of like superseded everything that came before it. That imperial system remains basically the primary form of governance in China until 1912. Well, this is another thing of like when does it end? 1911. The Shinhai Revolution, many of you been familiar with it, might have heard of it, broke out in 1911. The emperor abdicated in early 1912. So, as a historian of late imperial China, I insist on 1912. Okay? But you will sometimes see 1911. It's not okay. What are we talking? We're talking about a couple months here. Okay? It's I won't mock you down if you say 1911. Okay? Uh it's when China had an emperor. Okay? That's what we're talking about. All right? We also sort of have a few periods periodizations that we can say. Now, think about sort of like history that you might have encountered in AP world. I haven't taken AP World in like a million years. So I don't know like and I heard now it's starting like 1500. Is that right? — 1300. Still way too late. What a tragedy. Okay. But it's a it's it's it whatever it is. So you basically start in like the late medieval period or medieval. Okay. We have early China. Okay. This is again really good book on early China. What is early China? Early China basically means the origin of whatever we can talk about when it happened to basically the end of the Han dynasty about 200 common era 200 AD okay approximately like that okay appro roughly then we enter we can talk about another era called the middle period or medieval China and that's from that end of the Han that's a great way I know everybody will here. Well, this is a better way to think about it. The three kingdoms period, right? Okay. The three kingdoms period is like the end of early China. You can think about we're entering a new era at that point. Okay. So, you can say that's approximately medieval China, which you go when does quote unquote medieval or middle period China end? I mean, you some people say, do you put it before the Mongols? after the Mongols? Is it about a thousand? Okay. I'm just doing really traditional rain dates here. I founding of the Ming dynasty. You don't have to it's approximate. Okay. And then the last two dynasties are something like late imperial China. Sometimes you'll also hear this like early modern China. It all depends on what type of historian you're talking to. If you're talking to a European historian, you might say early modern because that's how they talk. Okay. Late imperial China is how like if we if the Chinese historians are together in a in a bus that's how we go oh late imperial right because we all know what that means okay so either one is fine okay but just realize this is how you break it down this very long periods yeah of history all right usually should we look at this I don't know the computer answered the question well uh I always I mean let's just well take a peek Okay. This is like this really like Let's see. Is it going to go? Okay. H this like very forboding music. Oh, no. It then it just like it just All right. Let me try one more time. Okay. If it goes This is like a kind of fun sort of like It's going to go. Okay. I'm losing patience with it. Okay. Let's So basically that was a sort of like it's like a looking at the borders of Chinese uh reigns over time, right? I can show it to you. I'll put a link online. Okay. So we're going to get now maybe for the last half hour of class. I'm going to talk about sort of like a few more like big questions, big ways to think about Chinese history. And then we'll do a tour of China, which is like always again really fun. Uh so let's talk about a Chinese history hack. North and south, east and west, right? Okay, these are just cardinal directions, right? So, we have a western Joe and we have an eastern Joe, right? We have a western Han and we have an eastern Han. That basically means in the early period of China, in early China, basically we

have Western capitals and eastern capitals. Okay. Yeah. As time goes on, this changes. This shifts. Okay. the Tong dynasty in middle in medieval China 7th century 8th century 9th century approximately around here there's a still a western capital and still an eastern capital of Chongan Xian and Lyang but once you get to about the year 1000 this shifts and now we don't have western eastern capitals we have northern and southern capitals and that's that Beijing and Nanjing right you know Beijing northern capital Nanjing southern capital so what's going on well what you have to realize is that over a very long period of time the Chinese people migrated south okay there was a major migration of people okay from the north China plane okay to the south as the south is basically filled in with rice agriculture okay the south that area south of the Yangzi river don't worry I'll show you where the river is in just a second it was really swamp and marshland okay it population as early as the Han dynasty as early as around the year zero there were people moving down there. Okay, that picked up over the first thousand years of this era, right? So from the year zero to about the year 1000, the population moves south. And then by the time you get to that medieval era, sometime in the medieval era, most of the people, most of the population of China lives in the south. Okay? And the south actually ends up becoming rather wealthy, right? Because they grow rice, they have surpluses, they pay taxes. Okay? Where do they pay taxes to the north? Okay, so this is a very interesting dynamic, right? So basically, let me just phrase it to you this way. You look at over here that's Diana, big goose pagod. You'll recognize that in a few weeks from now. That's Shi, the capital of Shanchi province. This a very historic city. It's basically like a great number of the early imperial capitals are located there. Okay, this is uh this is kind of what you might think of South China looking like, right? mountainous, green, uh, water, humid, and rice. Okay. So, that's what that's South China in a nutshell. Okay. All right. So, then we go back to that's our map. Okay. Here's this is the Mongol Empire. Okay. Mongol Empire. The Mongols create once the sort of their capital their reign in China is established they start they move their capital to Dad the great capital which is Beijing they are kind of the ones who actually move it to Beijing right so the Beijing actually gets its start not as a Han Chinese capital okay it was actually the northern peoples right non-han peoples who started it so after the Mongol period you get that Nanjing in Beijing mix. That's in the late the last two dynasties, southern capital and northern capital. And what you can kind of say even to this day is that the economic heart of the country, the most basically profitable part of the country, highest incomes are in that greater Shanghai area also in Guangdong, Pearl River Delta area. Okay, those southern hubs, okay? Those are the economic engines of the country. The political center of the country is in the north. Okay. And that's basically a bit been that way for a few centuries actually go a number of centuries, right? And that's what the southern southerners end up paying for defense, right? The northerners handle frontier defense, right? When you see where Beijing is on a map and you see where historical Mongolia was, Beijing is almost not in China, right? That's why it has all those sandstorms. It's almost in what is it, the Gobi Desert or whatever it is. It's re it's really far up north actually. Um, so that's a sort of Chinese history hack. Think of north, south, east, west, right? That tells you a lot about what era you're in. the sort of geography and the in of power of the era. Okay, talk about north and south. Okay, some of you will, if you taken a class with me before, you might have seen this slide before. Let's talk about north and south. Okay, what is north China? What is South China? Okay, well, let me just pause here for a minute. What is the northern United States like? Is Maryland north? Is it south? It's north. Why do you say it's north? — Okay. Right. So, you've answered this question by referring to like a historical political geography. That's great because there is no real objective answer to this question, right? Aside from doing that, the same is true in China. Basically, in the 20th century, there was a line drawn and it was like, "Okay, this is the Chinland Mountains over here in the Hawaii, the

Hawaii River. Draw a line. If you're to the north, that's the north. south, that's the south. " And that the joke I've always made, right, is that in the I think 1950s, I think we went over this 1950s, Joan lie, uh, basically made it so that if you're above that line, you got free subsidized or free central heating from the state. And if you're below that line, you froze. uh because the south was generally warmer. But you know, this is the whole thing. It's one of those things where it's like, how do I describe it? I once did a new year f uh Chinese New Year spring festival in Guangyen, which is in the northern part of Sichuan province. You could imagine how frozen I was. That's pretty far north, but staying south, right? That's one of those border places, you know. I went to bed at night with like eight blankets over me. I shared a bed with like a 60- year old man and and for days and I and there were so many blankets over me I couldn't move. So when I woke up I was just like I'm up and then somebody came and took off the blank. I mean, it was just incredible that it was I don't want to say that's there are many warm parts of the south. Don't get me wrong. If you're in Guangdong or Hong Kong, that's warm. You know, that's a nice place to be in the winter, but just to know this is a very large area with a very diverse climate. Okay. So, that can be really cold. So, this is a Mason Dixon line. Okay. This is kind of like this kind of idea. Yeah. Uh but there are cultural, you know, traits that we associate with northerners. There are cultural traits we associate with southerners. Again, nothing is ever absolute, but we can talk about that when we get into more specific geographies. Okay, let's say political jurisdictions of the PRC today. I, you know, I realize this is a dynastic Chinese history class. Um, so you might be kind of like, why do we need to know this? And I think the reason you have to know this is because well you do need to know the geography of China today to appreciate where things are happening right to be able to have a conversation about it just realize there are 20 34 total units 23 provinces there also these autonomous regions Tibet is today recognized autonomous region Jang in Mongolia Ning Sha the Hoy autonomous region and Guangshi Dwang autonomous region so there's all the also special zones right Shanghai Chongqing and so forth Um, so you know, just you know, we can talk more about I have the whole geography quiz for you. Uh, and I have the study guide to tell you what exactly you need to know. Okay. One other sort of like way to think about Chinese geography is this line. This is called the Hu Tong Chong line. And it was so interesting this summer. I finally got a chance to visit Tong Chong. And you see, you might not find that impressive, but like actually Tong Chong is not a particularly famous place. The only reason why Chinese people across the country know about it is because of this line. But it's actually a great place. Uh, and it's a really fun part. It's in Yunan Province. I have some photos when we go through the tour here. Right. But the key is that basically this is 64% of the area of the country and in 1934 it had 4% of the population. Okay? And this is in 2015 it had 6% of the population. Okay? So this is actually something that hasn't changed all that much, right? Most Chinese people live in the red zone, right? They live in this area, right? This very high dense area like you know the big cities, you know, city with two million people doesn't count as anything in China, right? This is all that over here, Tibet, Sing Jang, lots of land, not so many people. Okay, so that's like a sort of big way to do it. All right, so I was going to do let me just say pronunciation. Should I say this? Let me do it really quickly so that you know I know many of you probably know Chinese. Uh many of you speak Chinese. Uh you know Chinese is tonal. That means that it's very hard to be a beginner in this language right because you're constantly asking for like you're constantly saying you know horse I miss you but it's really your mom right? You know, there's a there's all the it's tricky when you're getting into it, right? Because uh because the tone makes the difference, right? Just realize that uh ju maybe just going through a few things here. The Z in the Z, right? It's like Z is like a hard. Okay. But these are words that like I sort of encounter in the in in research, right? So, you know, oh, okay. X, right? You see X, okay? It's like uh it's like an sh, right? So, right something like this. Okay. So, just know like this is how the pronunciation works. Okay. All right. What do I got? All right. Let's start uh let's start talking about China's geography. We got like 20 minutes left. Cover the country. Okay. I'm going to start purely for no apparent reason in Sichuan province. Okay. It's just because this is what my PowerPoint told me to do. I opened it

up. I was like, "All right, let's we got to start somewhere. Let's start over there. " Okay. You have probably encountered Sichuan province before because it's actually a pretty famous province. It's got like compared to other Chinese provinces, it's got a lot of international cache in part because look at all the Sichuan restaurants all over the Cambridge Boston area, right? When Chinese food traveled, right? Sichuan high was a sort of kind of cuisine that just traveled. A lot of times the restaurants are not owned or operated by people from Sichuan, but they just created Sichuan restaurant. I don't know why, but it was like there it is. You will also sometimes see Sichuan. All right, that's again that older transliteration system. Same thing. It refers to that province. Okay, there it is. In western China, Sichuan is famous for spicy food. Okay, a lot of parts of China today have spicy food to be frank. It's also famous for hot pot, right? Sichuan is like where hot or chongqing. Now I again I'm sort of like biased here because I'm a historian of the imperial period. I sort of take Chongqing and Sichuan together. Culturally they are together. They all speak a very similar kind of Mandarin dialect. Okay. But Chongqing was se was siphoned off from Sichuan in the late in the 1990s. Okay. And it's now it's sort of its own sort of it's a separate political entity today. But you can see Chongqing and Sichuan culturally they're kind of in this. This is Chongqing right here. Okay. Right there. Okay. Uh it's also home to Oh, let me just say one thing about hot pot. The problem I feel about talking about Chinese food today is that now China has beencome so flattened and in a sense it's a good thing. It's part of the progress of the country. wealth of the country. But now every place has hot pot, right? It's not like, you know, you're going to go and you, oh, I got to go to Sichuan. try the hot pot. It's like, you're going to get hot pot in Kuning and Yunan. You're going to get, you're going to get hot pot in Beijing, whatever. They have I realize they have a Beijing hot pot. It's different. I get it. But the point is nowadays, if you're in a provincial capital, you can pretty much get the food of all the other parts of China. It might not be good, but they will have it. Okay? So, it's like it's kind of like Mexican in the US, right? Massachusetts has it, right? Like, if you want to eat it, they have it, right? Is it as good as Arizona? I don't know. But like, you get what I'm saying. All right. So, uh it's also home. The panda, right? Sichuan's most famous export besides the peppercorns. Okay. Uh right. And and the panda, right? We talk a lot about the panda. The Just realize something about the panda. Just realize it is not important in Chinese history. Okay? I don't I'm not breaking any hearts here. It's a very lovable vegetarian bear. It fits so well with so many of the aesthetics of modernity in so many ways, right? Like it is sort of friendly vegetarian and a bear. How do you get that combination, right? I mean, it's like evolution, right? I mean, okay, it is actually a bear. Okay, so it is like related to like the Russian brown bear and all of that stuff. How did this happen? Well, I don't know how many years ago a bear moved to Sichuan and said, "I like it. " And then just said, "I'm just going to eat bamboo all the time. " Right? And so, like, so basically, you ended up with that. Okay. uh the panda became a symbol in actually really the communist era because the panda was not associated with imperial symbols, right? The dragon is an imperial symbol. The tiger is a very ancient symbol. The elephant even is an ancient symbol. All of these things like are fair game. You can see them in imperial history. ancient history. The nobody talked about the panda. Nobody was impressed by the panda. Okay. But then that's why perfect. We're having a communist revolution. We're throwing out all the old. We got a new animal right here. It's the panda. And it worked. You just got to say it worked. It was incredible marketing. And now it it's on the World Wildlife Foundations. Like it's their emblem, you know? I mean, this is like it's the most famous bear in the world. Let's face it. Um, and then the other thing is with Sichuan, you get this great culture of tea houses that go back to the 20th century. Sichuan also had a great number of mafias. It's like we could talk about mafias in China. The south was loaded with them and they would hang out in the tea houses and there was so many interesting things that happened there. It's got a great lifestyle. The way that people talk about life in Sichuan, they say it's right. It's like easygoing, easy life. There's even this expression when you're young, don't go to Sichuan. When you're old, don't leave it. Okay? There's expressions in China for like everything that kind of give you advice. And this is one of those advices, right? So I didn't listen to

this expression. I went and you know you can see what am I doing now right? So uh so it continued. Um one interesting thing about Sichuan is that it is a basin. It is a geological basin. What that means is that it is surrounded on basically all mo all sides. To get into Sichuan is difficult. To get out, there is one really easy way to get out, which is through the Yangzi River, but it only flows in one direction. So is you can send rice out of Sichuan. You can send people out of Sichuan, but getting into Sichuan is rather difficult. That is actually why across Chinese history, it's been a place to flee to. So during the Tong Dynasty, we're going to have a really, really big rebellion called the Anlan Rebellion. It's one of the most famous devastating civil wars, rebellions of Chinese history. The emperor will go from Xian, he will go from Chan. Don't worry, you will memorize all these places. You will know what I'm talking about. And he will flee into Sichuan. And actually, this actually happened in the 20th century as well. Some of you will know this, right? Jang Kaishek's government, Jangu's government when Japan invaded from the east, right? in Nanjing fell the government basically had to move to the west and it moved to Chongqing which is again basically the Sichuan region okay so that's where they held out for the war more or less so just realize this is a big part of the sort of geography uh of Sichuan that gives it its interesting flavor there's another expression that I love here when China has yet to fall into chaos Sichuan is the first to fall when China has yet to been pacified Sichuan again because it's hard to get too, right? So, that gives it a unique culture in a way, you know, really interesting. Okay, now we continue on with our tour and let's go. We're going to go from Sichuan. You can see where Sichuan is right here. Okay, that's Chongqing. Now, we're going to go to the northeast. Shyenshi province. Okay, now Shy Province is if you love history and you take this class, this is the province you really got to go to. It's loaded with history. You basically cross the Chin Mountains down here in the southern part of the province and you get right up here. the it's called the Guanjong region. Don't worry about it. But Xian, right, Western Peace, literally or Chong An was its older medieval name. That's the capital of the province. That tower that you see right there, that was built a very long time ago. That was built in the medieval period. It is not very common across China to see towers that are that old. It's an incredibly impressive piece of architecture. You probably know this place because, of course, the Terracotta Warriors are here. All right. more or less there. This is where you would go if you're going to go see them and that's certainly something to go see. We of course will cover them in probably a few weeks. Okay, so we will cover all of this. Let's talk a little bit about local food, right? Again, the caveat being nowadays in Xian you can get whatever fish you want. You can get hot pot, whatever. So again, you know, it's all flattened, but there are still local tastes and specialties. Northerners in general eat wheat. They eat uh you know not as riceheavy. So that it's a noodle eating culture. Okay. Most of North China eats noodles. And she is famous for it all different types of noodles and noodle type dishes. This is a salamian a chishan salamyan. Right. So salamian is it's from a county. It's like a sort of it's a very nice it's got like a vinegar taste. It's a little spicy. It's a noodle dish. This is Does anybody know what this is? Yeah. Palo Yro palmo, right? This is a lamb sort of. You take a like it looks like a naan bread and you you you destroy your hands by cutting it up into a million little pieces and then they pour like a soup in it with lamb. It's delicious. It's super heavy. So like when you eat this like you don't eat anything else for the rest of the day. Okay. Uh so it's it's fun. It's it's really good. Now, let me just tell you, when you're learning Chinese history for the first time, you're learning Chinese geography for this first time, you will say, "How is this true? This is totally not fair. " The province right next to Shanshi Province is called Shansi Province. Are you kidding me? Right? Like you say, couldn't they put it in another place? Yeah. Listen, you just got to learn it. In English, this will be transliterated. Okay? the one that I was talking about, the ancient capital with the terracotta warriors and all that stuff. Two A's. Okay, there will always be two A's. Shi, it's in the third tone. Okay, it's another tone. If you come over to this one, you go east, it's the first tone, one A, right? Shi. Okay, so for a Chinese person, these don't sound alike. But when you're in the US and you're like, okay, what's going on? You're like, seriously, I have

to learn this. Yes, you have to learn it. So not the same. Okay, it actually will make it easy for the geography quiz because you'll know that approximately in this area there's a place and you it's approximately spelled the same way. Okay, Shaji province really great place. Lots of interesting stuff, lots of great dowist temples, old temples to visit. Also noodles, right? Dawian I believe is from here. This is like a knife cut noodle is famous from this region, you know, hanging the hanging temples over there. This really fun. Okay, continue on. Let's go. I think our next one. Let's go. It's coming. Okay, Beijing. Okay, the imperial capital Beijing. So, if you look over here, we went from Sichuan and we're going to the northeast. Okay, we went through Shanshi. We went through Shanchi. I sort of cut through HB. Okay, and then now we're here in Beijing. How many of you have been to Beijing? You've been there. You've been there. How was it? What do you remember? It was kind of smoggy. — Okay. — Yeah, the palace is incredible. Yeah. What else do I remember? The weather is terrible. Look, you just got to say the [snorts] weather. It's like hot and then all of a sudden it rains and it's like it's not a nice rain. It's like a killer rain and it's like I don't have an umbrella big enough to handle this. And then there's tons of traffic. I realized just being there this summer, even though like all the cars, many cars are now electric and there's great public transit everywhere, the traffic in Beijing is still really bad. So, it's like whenever we were like, "Oh, I'll be there in a half hour. " It's like, "No, just say an hour. " Okay. It was It's really But it's loaded with historical sites. It's an incredible place. I've been there, you know, probably a dozen times in my life, you know, over the years. And I've You don't see everything, right? You could always go back and see something new there. So, it's really fun. Of course, many people who go to see the Great Wall will go to Beijing to see it. You actually don't need to be in Beijing to see it. There's Great Wall in Gansu Province out west. other provinces, but Beijing has the most famous ones. Like the panda, just realized that this quote unquote Great Wall was oftentimes not very important. It was a little bit more important than the panda. Okay, it was mainly it was important in certain periods of time in history and other periods of time just nobody cared. Okay, it just depended who was like controlling Beijing at the time. Okay, we'll get into all of this. Okay, but just realize I I'll say one thing here. I was going to say I have a little video here I'll show you about Dongbe. Has anybody ever been to Dongbe? You've been to Dongay? Why did you go to Dongbe? This is northeast China, Manuria. Where did you go? Because I was born there. — Oh, no way. You were born in Gil Province. Fantastic. Where else you went there? — Uh skiing. — You went skiing? Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah, you went to like Halongja. — Yeah. — Nice. I was in Leoning this summer. I had a very nice time. Great historical place. Uh I was going to say so Dong is definitely unique. Uh it's unique in a number of ways. So you will see if you go up to uh Haleyongjang, one of the provinces, you go to Harbin, it's like almost in Russia and it does have some old sort of Russian architecture that's around. It's very interesting to kind of see. Uh Manuria is very important in the 20th century. You realize that like during World War II, it's a big sight of contention. Japan sort of sets up a puppet government in Manuria. I guess I would say what would I say about it? Just realize that first of all and I this is again one of those things I notice over the years that people in China today associate people with from Dongbe with being very funny with being humorous. Okay. And there's all of these folks I'll just see if my video plays. You could you can watch these shows on Chinese TV. It's like a humorous talk show. So, so she's like from Dongbe. She's got a Dombbe accent — and and there's this like there's like this kind of humor and I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it's like people just think Dome people are funny. I don't I I don't know what is there a scientific basis of this. I don't know, but just realize that like that's what people will say. Okay. So, do you think it's true? — Yeah. — They're a little bit funnier. Like, you know, I don't know. Like, are there parts of America where you'd say like, "Okay, people from that state are just funny. " Do we have that? — Where are people funny? I don't think Massachusetts people are that funny. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm from here. Where are people funny? — I feel like it's more that we know where people are. Excuse like jerks. — Okay. See, I see. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We know where people have attitude. Yeah. Attitude for sure. Yeah. Uh Yeah. you know

humor. It's kind of an interesting question, right? Like who's funny, who's not, right? But like this is one thing just to kind of throw in there, right? All right. So, continuing on, we don't have a ton of time left. I want to take if you go south from Dong Bay, from northeastern China in that area all around Beijing, basically the south of Beijing ma mainly, you get to this north China plane and it's flat. This is a very old area. Okay, what I mean by that is people have been farming here for thousands of years. Very early Chinese history starts, you know, is around here in a big way. And this is a fascinating place because on the one hand, it's so important. It's near at least the capital in the later eras. It's also where the Yellow River sort of it gets to the North China plane. And this is where the Yellow River gets really violent because the North China plane is flat. So the Yellow River every few hundred years changes course across the North China plane and you can it's devastating floods, crop failures and there's chaos. That's in a way one of the things you could say this is again a generalization. Northerners have a sort of like let's say the state has been more interventionist in the north, right? The state kind of originates around in some ways the control of the yellow river because you have to control it is the south very far away right it's less control more lass fair more like oh you know tanga right heaven's high the emperor is far away right it's a different relationship you know that's what's this it's sort of this is one of the ways that you could think a little bit about south north yeah uh confucious is from the north China plane right he's from Shandong province we'll encounter him in a bit a number of the big early confusion philosophers ers are from this area. Okay. So, it's got like an association, you could say, with um with Confucianism and with ancient learning and with, you know, again, the area around the late imperial capitals as I mentioned, but it's also a place you could say of in sometimes like lawlessness, okay, in rebellions, right, that threaten the state. One of those big Chinese novels, right? Water margin. This is the we've already went over. My god, just one class. We went over three of the big novels today. Yeah. Uh, this takes place, you could say, in this area. It's like outlaws, right? So, there's it's a very interesting location. place. All right, two minutes left. I use it. By the way, I always use like all of class time. Okay. I just like I just keep talking. You know what I mean? Like, I just can't shut up about this stuff. I apologize, but like I just love it. Okay. One really, really, really fascinating thing that's important in dynastic Chinese history is this thing. North to south the Grand Canal. This was like the superighway of dynastic China. It is constructed, believe it or not, you won't believe this, but it's like when I tell you this, it's like, well, where is it? Go back. Go back, please. Here we go. Where's my date? No, it doesn't. There. Okay, whatever. I'll just tell you. The origins of the Grand Canal go back to the seventh century. Okay, so you got me. This is one of those things in China where you're like, "What? Really? What do you mean? You mean like a canal was constructed in the seventh century and then remained being used until like a 100 years ago? Yes. Basically, yes. Uh it doesn't it didn't flow in exactly the same area. The origins of the Grand Canal were actually this southern this one that you see here. It connected the Tong Dynasty capital of Lyang with the south. Okay. Then in later years it got expanded and eventually in the late in the later period it basically connects Beijing and the South. that goes all the way down. You could say like to Nanjing, Hjo, that area all the way from north. It's like you get on there and you can go north south. It's like you can transport grain. The emperor can travel it if he's going to the south, right? It's a super important way that the empire was connected. Today there's highspeed rail. At that time there was the Grand Canal. Okay, I realize we're out of time. So go home, tell your friends. Tell your friends, enjoy the weekend. I'll see you on Monday. We'll finish up our tour of China and continue onward.