What Is China?: Territory, Ethnicity, Culture, and History by Ge Zhaoguang

Author:Ge Zhaoguang
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: History, Asia, China, Historiography, Social Science, Developing & Emerging Countries, Regional Studies
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2018-03-26T01:09:22.504000+00:00

The Mixed, Multilayered State of Chinese Culture: The Song-Dynasty Transition

I have previously written about the emergence of a “China sensibility” in the Song dynasty and argued that the open attitudes toward race, culture, and religion that originally were found in ancient China (all of which overlapped with one another) underwent an important transformation during the Song dynasty. Han Chinese culture, which had been overlaid with many aspects of foreign cultures in the Middle Ages, was reconstructed, reordered, and stabilized once again, forming the Chinese cultural tradition that carries influence down to the present day. This tradition, of course, is both old and new.45

I noted earlier that, in the middle of the eighth century, non-Han national groups such as Turkic peoples, Persians, Sogdians, Huihe, Turfan, and Shatuo peoples arrived in great numbers because of wars in other places. Down through the middle of the tenth century (the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period), many different foreign groups made their way into central China. These migrations resulted in both ethnic and religious problems and presented a substantial threat to the Han civilization of central China. Although the Song began as a unified state, the non-Han political powers to the north, which included the Liao (Khitan), the Xia (Tangut), the Jin (Jurchen), and, later on, Mongolia, all posed a serious threat to Han political power. As the Japanese scholar Nishijima Sadao said:

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