The Chinese Slant: Rising To - Dominate

By William Tang

China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will move the world," said Napoleon Bonaparte.

Now that China has

• Language: English
• Publisher: History Publishing Company LLC
• Release date: Jul 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781951008628

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Chinese Myths on Creation

盘古开天

Pan Gu and the Creation of the Universe.

Pan Gu – the God Creator

In the beginning, the universe was a gigantic celestial egg. Inside, all things were in pitch blackness. There was neither heaven nor earth, and no up or down. Pan Gu, the celestial being, slumbered within the egg for eighteen thousand years then he awakened. He opened his eyes, and he could see nothing in the darkness. He felt hot and had difficulty breathing. He tried to move but his body was tightly constricted by the surrounding nothingness. He couldn’t even stretch his limbs. However, he felt the handle of an axe in his palm. The grip on the weapon engendered power and will. The entrapped hero gathered all his strength and swung his great axe with all of his might and, with a thundering boom, the eggshell cracked open. Lighter matters inside the egg floated up and became the sky while the heavier contents sank to the bottom and became earth.

With the thus acquired slight elbowroom, Pan Gu struggled to his feet and pushed with his head and arms against the newly formed sky while his feet shoved down on the recently massed earth to prevent the two parts from closing back up onto itself; and in that effort, he strived and shoved. Each day, he increased ten feet in size and the sky rose ten feet higher while the earth grew ten feet thicker. For eighteen thousand years, Pan Gu shoved the heaven higher and he grew to ninety thousand lis (each li is equivalent to approximately half a kilometer) in height. Finally, the world stabilized in its expansion and no longer was able to collapse back onto Pan Gu. But by then, Pana Gu the Creator was spent. He had used up all his energy. He collapsed onto the ground and disintegrated.

In death, Pan Gu continued to transform the world. His left eye became the bright red sun that hung in the sky and his right eye the golden moon that shone at night. His last breath formed the wind and the clouds, and his final death gasp resonated as thunder in the sky. His hair and beard fluttered into the sky to form stars in the heaven, his head and limbs transformed into tall mountains, while his blood created rivers, lakes, and oceans. His flesh fertilized the earth, his skin and follicles grew into plants and trees, his teeth and bones transformed into metallic ores and precious gems. Finally, his sweat became rain and dew, thus the universe came into existence.

Ironically, even though Pan Gu was the God Creator, he never acquired the renown merited a deity of significance in Chinese mythology. There were but a few temples dedicated to honor him and no organized religious sect paid homage to Pan Gu — the Mythical God Creator of the world.

Fu Xi and Nu Wa – the Adam and Eve of Chinese Mythology

Fu Xi and Nu Wa, creators of life, holding tools of creation – the compass and the square.Archeological artifact unearthed in Xinjiang, China.

Eons after Pan Gu had accomplished his task, Fu Xi and Nu Wa appeared onto the world. They were the Adam and Eve of the Chinese mythology. They were brothers and sisters, most commonly depicted with human heads and serpentine bodies.

Nu Wa felt the barrenness of the land and decided to have companions in her world. She worked and created countless species of life. She started with the agrarian needs. On the first day, she kneaded mud into chickens and other fowls; on the second day, she made dogs then goats on the third day and pigs on the fourth day; she created oxen on the fifth day then horses on the day after before she made men and women into her own image on the seventh day.

Molding people individually by hand became tedious. After some thought, Nu Wa took a long vine and swung it at the mud she had been using to create living beings. Wherever the splattering mud landed a man or woman popped into existence. Nu Wa gathered the people and established the rules for marriages – with the women minding the homes while the men providing for their livelihood. Chinese especially revered Nu Wa for giving guidance to the people; they often depicted her holding a compass, signifying her role as the rule giver.

At the time, the world was shaped like a house, with the Heaven as its roof supported by tall mountains at each of the four corners. In the Heaven above the world that humans resided, lived the Jade Emperor who ruled the celestial realm with his entourage of minor deities in attendance. One day, Gong Gong the God of Water got drunk at a banquet given by the Jade Emperor and had an argument with Zhu Rong the God of Fire. The altercation led to violence and the inebriated God of Water lost the ensuing fight. In a fit of shameful rage, the sore loser rammed his head against the mountain that held up the western corner of the Heaven. The tall mountain cracked and split then crumbled. The calamitous event created a gaping hole in the western part of the Heaven and a great chasm in the earth below it. Fire erupted from underground and ignited the forests, animals fled from the woods into the farm fields and devoured crops and people. At the same time, water from the giant hole in the western Heaven inundated the earth like a great flood. Earth became a purgatory filled with the dead and the dying.

Faced with the horrible disaster, Nu Wa canvassed the world and gathered thirty-six thousand five hundred and one—five-colored stones and smelted them into paste then use it to patch the hole in the western sky. It took four years to patch the broken ceiling in the heaven. She used up all except one piece of the stone, which to this date sits atop the Tian-Tai Mountain by the shore of the Eastern Ocean.

After repairing the sky, she cut a foot off of the Great Tortoise of the ocean and used it to replace the broken mountain pillar at the western corner of the world. However, the tortoise leg was a might shorter than the giant mountain post it had replaced, therefore the western heaven ended up lower than the other parts of the world and that was the reason that the sun, the moon, and the stars slid westward each day and night. The rainbows that appeared after a rainfall were reflections from Nu Wa’s colored stone patchwork of the sky.

She next gathered great quantities of reeds and burnt them into ashes then used the ashes to sop up and dam the flood water into lakes. But she left two great canals to drain the flood water eastward into the ocean. The remnants of the waterways became the Yellow and the Yangtze rivers.

Through her strenuous efforts, the people survived the disaster. She made reed pipes from leftover reeds and taught people to create music from the instruments and celebrated their survival from the great disaster. They were known as the first musical instruments of the land - Sheng.

To this date, Chinese revere Nu Wa as one of the earliest and most important goddess of all deities.

Silk screen of Fu Xi wearing leave-woven clothing and holding an octogram – the Bagua.

While Nu Wa made the people, Fu Xi created the Bagua octogram to teach them the oneness of man with nature and the Heaven which is the genesis of Chinese culture. He showed the people how to fish, hunt and farm. From him, the people also learned animal husbandry. He joined Nu Wa in establishing the marriage customs for the people. He developed the writing system to record major events. Finally, Fu Xi helped Nu Wa in the introduction of music and musical instruments into people’s lives.

The Three Sovereign Rulers and the Five Sage Kings

Chinese mythology credited the Three Sovereign Rulers (San Huang 三皇) and Five Sage Kings (Wu Di 五帝) for introducing civilization to the people. However, the identities of the sovereign rulers varied depending on the source of the information. The commonly acknowledged Three Sovereign Rulers are Sui Ren, Fu Xi, and Shen Nong. Sui Ren, the first of the sovereign ruler, is the Chinese version of the Greek God Prometheus who gave fire to the people. Fu Xi’s contributions were mentioned earlier. Shen Nong, the third sovereign ruler, introduced agriculture, tool making, and more importantly the knowledge of herbal medicine to protect and heal people. Nu Wa’s achievement elevated her status to that of a goddess, above that of the sovereign rulers; however, some people regarded her as one of the sovereign rulers, displacing the junior ranked Sui Ren. The name Shen Nong literally translates to the God of Agriculture. He was also known as King Yan of the Yan tribe.

With the passing of time, three major tribes rose to dominate ancient civilizations along the banks of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. The three tribes were King Yan’s tribe, and those of Ji Xuan-Yuan, and Chi You. King Yan and Ji Xuan-Yuan were half-brothers, while Chi You was the most powerful of the three tribes, but Ji Xuan-Yuan was cleverer. When King Yan grew old and weak, Ji Xuan-Yuan forced Yan’s tribe to unite with his then used the combined might of the two tribes to defeat Chi You at the Battle of Zhuo-Lu. It was the first recorded major battle of Chinese history.

During the campaign, Ji Xuan-Yuan developed the south pointing needle (compass) to fight in heavy fogs and defeated Chi You. Ji Xuan-Yuan became known as the Yellow King (Huang Di 黄帝), and the unified tribes of Ji Xuan-Yuan and Yan became the acknowledged ancestors of the Chinese people. It was the first time that the people were united under one tribe, and the reason that Chinese people proclaimed themselves as Yan Huang Zi Sun (炎黄子孙) – descendants of Yan and Yellow Kings. Because Ji Xuan-Yuan was known as the Yellow King, the color yellow became the hue of the royalty, thus to Don the yellow robe is the Chinese equivalent to Wear the purple, in the western societies.

Wall mural of the Yellow King, from the Wu Family Maosoleum of late Han dynasty, Jining City, Shangdong Province, China.

The two kings were responsible for advancing Chinese civilization. King Yan taught the people tool making and agriculture. The Yellow King introduced home building, ship construction, medicine, acupuncture, clothing, music, and numerous other skills. His wife Lei Zhu discovered silk weaving, his courtier Chang Jie developed the Chinese writing system and another courtier Li Shou invented mathematics. Credits for various inventions and innovation were often reiterated among different early leaders. Interestingly, some people even elevated Ji Xuan-Yuan to be one of the three sovereign rulers.

Ji Xuan-Yuan, the Yellow King, was usually regarded as the first of the five sage kings, he was followed by King Zhuanxu, King Ku, King Yao, and King Shun. Ji Xuan-Yuan ruled for 100 years then ascended into the Heaven on a golden dragon.

The Golden Dragon that ferried the Yellow King into the Heaven.

King Zhuanxu, a grandson of the Yellow King, ascended to the throne. He was followed by King Ku, King Yao, and King Shun. King Yao, the fourth sage king was a benign ruler, he abdicated after one hundred years of rule and passed the throne to a righteous and compassionate man – Shun. The abdication of the throne by a ruler to an able and moral successor was considered the supreme ideal act of a benevolent ruler. Shun was the last of the five sovereigns. At the age of 100, Shun followed Yao’s example and abdicated after a 48-year reign, passing the throne to Yu, an able tribal leader who had toiled ceaselessly for thirteen years to tame the great flood by dredging and channeling water from the Yellow River into the Eastern Ocean.

Yu the Great, Song dynasty Depiction, National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.

King Yu was known as Yu the Great (Da Yu) for his taming of the great flood. He became the first ruler of the Xia dynasty (circa 2070 - 1600 BC). Prior to Yu’s reign, kings were chosen by their predecessors for their reputation in morals, piety to the gods, as well as contributions to the people. Yu decided to pass the throne to his son. He officially declared passing the throne to Bo Yi, his able assistant in the conquest of the great flood. But he laid the groundwork for his son Qi by establishing close alliances with the great lords of the realm. When Yu died, the powerful ministers of the court refused to carry out Yu’s decree, they forced Bo Yi to flee and handed the throne to Qi, thus ended the tradition of moral abdication. And the Xia became the first hereditary dynasty of ancient China. It was also around that time when myths, fables and legends subsided and blended into one with history.

It is interesting to note that Chinese myths on creation mirrors portions of the Bible, i.e., Adam and Eve, the long life and reign of the rulers, and the Great Flood (albeit without the Ark).

CHAPTER TWO

Ancient Chinese History – the Pre-Imperial Era

China boasts the oldest continuous recorded history in the world. The name ‘China’ originated from the Imperial Ch’in ( 秦 AKA: Qin) dynasty (221-207 BC) which was translated as ‘Cin’ by the Persians who passed the name on to the rest of the world via the Silk Road. The ancient Greeks and the Romans knew China as ‘Seres,’ the land where silk came from.

Marco Polo, the famous explorer who introduced China to Europe in the 13th century referred to the land (China) as ‘Cathay.’ The name ‘China’ did not appear in print in the west until 1516 AD in the travel journals of Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa (circa 1480-1521 AD) who mentioned China in his travel narrations of the Far East. To the Chinese, their homeland is Zhong Guo (中国)— the Middle Kingdom or the nation at the center of the world.

The Yellow River Valley is the ‘Cradle of Chinese Civilization.’ People started building communities there well before 5000 BC. Archaeologists uncovered sites of many early villages and farming communes in Henan province. Under thick layers of silt deposits from the Yellow River, they found skeletons, altars, village squares, potteries, and stone and jade utensils.

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Xia dynasty

From small tribal farming villages grew organized societies. Early communities formed tribal alliances for mutual protection and defense. The alliance leader evolved into the king, with tribal leaders as his vassals. Yu the Great was the first king of the Xia dynasty, which was considered for many years to be more myth than fact until excavations in the 1960’s and 1970’s uncovered sites which gave evidence to its existence. Bronze works and tombs pointed to an evolutionary period of development from disparate Stone Age villages to a recognizable cohesive civilization.

The ruling class and the elite lived in urban clusters while the rest of the peasant populace were largely agrarian, lived in rural areas. Xia dynasty established the Jing Tian Zhi (井田制) feudal system where the land was divided into a Jing (井) tic-tac-toe like game board. Each square of the Jing was one hundred mu (16.47 acres) in size. Serfs lived and worked the eight border squares and contributed labor to work the center square which belonged to the local lord. Serfs were not permitted to migrate from their lands out of the lord’s fief without his permission.

Shang dynasty

The extravagances of Jie, the last Xia king, and the ensuing popular discontent led to an uprising. Lord Tang of the Shang state led the rebellion that defeated Jie at the Battle of Mingtiao. The victorious Tang established the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BC). He lowered taxes and ruled with wisdom and efficacy. Calligraphy was developed under the Shang dynasty as well as bronze metallurgy, architecture, and the religion of ancestral worship. Chinaware also came into existence during that era.

Prior to the Shang, the people worshipped many gods; the Jade Emperor (Yu Huang Da Di) was the ruler of all gods, much like Zeus of the Greek mythology. The Jade Emperor presided over war, agriculture, weather and good governance. A king on mortal earth served as chief officiate and mediator between the gods, the living, and the dead; the king’s rule was considered ordained by The Divine Heaven. Although the ritual Mandate of Heaven was developed later by the Zhou (周) dynasty (1046-226 BC), the idea of linking a just ruler with divine will had its roots in the beliefs of the earlier Shang dynasty. During the Shang dynasty people started communicating with the gods by carving prayers on bones or turtle shells then burnt them in the fire pits. The seer read the cracked lines of the burnt bones or shells to interpret the will of the gods. Artifacts of such burnt oracle bones and shells became valuable sources of information for later archeologists to learn about the Shang and preceding dynasties.

Zhou dynasty

In 1046 BC, Lord Wu of the Zhou state, rebelled against the despotic King Zhou (纣) of Shang and defeated the last ruler of the Shang dynasty at the Battle of Muye, thus established the Zhou dynasty (1046-226 BC). (Note: King Zhou’s (纣) name and the Zhou (周) dynasty that replaced him have the same phonetic pronunciation but are of two different written characters with disparate meanings.)

The Zhou dynasty was divided into two periods; 1046-771 BC was marked as the Western Zhou Period while 770-226 BC designated as the Eastern Zhou Period. The division of the Zhou dynasty was the result of a king’s folly. King You lit a signal fire at the watchtower to summon his vassals’ armies. The smoke signal was the established system to alert the lords of an invasion by the western nomads. However, the king decided to use the warning system to entertain his queen Bao Si. The ploy worked and the normally taciturn queen laughed with glee at the parade of galloping war chariots that arrived in answer to the king’s smoke alarm. Then in 771 BC, the barbarian Quan Rong tribe invaded the Zhou kingdom. The raiders besieged Gao-Jing, the Capital. King You lit the smoke signal to summon help. Unfortunately for the king, his vassal lords thought it was yet another practical joke from their sovereign ruler and took their time to respond to the call to arms. The barbarians sacked the city and killed King You before the loyalist force finally arrived and drove the invaders away. King Ping, the son of King You, ascended to the throne and moved the Capital east to Wang-Cheng because the Capital city of Gao-Jing had suffered too much damage, and was too close to the barbarian Quan Rong people. The transfer of the Capital eastward was designated as the beginning of the Eastern Zhou Period.

It was a watershed moment in Chinese history. For his significant contribution in the eviction of the Quan Rong raiders, and escorting the new king to the new Capital, King Ping elevated Lord Xiang’s rank to that of a duke and granted to Duke Xiang all the land occupied by the Quan Rong