In "Dream of the Red Chamber", Lin Daiyu's sentence "There is no hunger in the prosperous world, why do you have to cultivate and weave busy" Although it is suspected of flattery, the Taiping scene she describes is indeed what the Chinese people have longed for from ancient times to the present. The famous prosperous times in history include the HanWu Shengshi, the Zhenguan Zhizhi, the Kaiyuan Shengshi, the Yongle Shengshi, the Kangqian Shengshi, etc., and the earliest recorded shengshi is the "Chengkang Zhizhi".
King Wu of Zhou destroyed the Shang Dynasty and conquered many small surrounding states, and in order to effectively control a large area of land, he implemented a system of sub-feudalism, allowing the clan relatives to establish large and small princely states to protect Zhou. However, King Wu of Zhou's heart was still unstable, and he felt that the place where Ho Jing was located was too far away from the newly conquered place, so he began to consider building a new capital to manage the remnants of Yin Shang.
According to King Wu of Zhou's vision, this place should be selected in the area of present-day Luoyang, Henan, to fix the Central Plains, and facilitate the management of a large area of the East. However, King Wu of Zhou died before he could carry out this plan. His son King Cheng ascended the throne, and King Cheng, assisted by his uncle Duke Zhou, continued to consolidate the stability of the Zhou Dynasty, and the Zhou metric system of ritual music, the Eastern Crusade to quell the Wu Geng rebellion, the improvement of the feudal system and the patriarchal system, and the inheritance system of the eldest son were also formally established during this period.
During the reign of King Cheng of Zhou and his son King Kang of Zhou, there was a "reign of Cheng Kang", and the history books record that during this period, "the world was peaceful, and the punishment was not used for more than forty years". The reign of Cheng Kang was the most powerful stage in the entire Western Zhou Dynasty, and it was also a historical period later praised by Confucian scholars, which formed a very domineering national name, which has been passed down to this day, and even Korea, Japan, Vietnam and other countries have borrowed it.
Ancient Chinese dynasties all had "national names", such as Han, Tang, Ming, and Qing, and the national names mentioned today are not national names in this sense, but are more cultural. For more than 3,000 years, the use of the pronoun "China" has never been broken, and the formation of this national name is inextricably linked to the Taiping Dynasty in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty.
As mentioned earlier, King Wu of Zhou had plans to build the eastern capital, and after King Cheng of Zhou succeeded to the throne, the Duke of Zhou personally surveyed the terrain and Bu Gua, and obtained a great auspicious omen, built Xinyi on the shore of Luoshui, and built the two cities of "WangCheng" and "Chengzhou". Luoyi, living in the middle of the world, "China" at that time had the meaning of the Central Plains, referring to the suzerainty, and the Zhou Li recorded that "the scenery of the solstice is five inches in the ruler, which is said to be in the land, where the heavens and the earth are together, where the four hours are intersected, where the wind and rain meet, and where the yin and yang are also harmonious... It is to build a kingdom and seal the trees of its thousands of miles. ”
The "Commentary on the Collected Histories" also says that "the emperors are all in the middle, so it is called China", "China" in that period refers to the core area of Western Zhou rule, the Baoji Bronze Museum collection of national first-class cultural relics, the Western Zhou Sect Chamber sacrifice vessel "He Zun" inscription said "King Wu ke Dayi Shang, then the court told the heavens, 'Yu Qi's residence in China, from the Zi Zi people'", this thing as the actual archaeological evidence, strongly proves that the "China" theory originated from the Zhou Dynasty.
The meaning of the term "China" later slowly evolved into the region where the Huaxia people were located, different from the surrounding "barbarians", the Chu state was once regarded as a barbarian land because it was located in the south; and this word symbolized not only the geographical region, but also symbolized the most advanced and brilliant culture in East Asia at that time, representing the status of the world, very domineering, for this reason, deeply influenced by ancient Chinese culture in the history of the East Asian countries have used to call themselves this word.
The "History of Great Japan" records that a certain courtier played the song: "Northern Di Ezo, Xi Rong Falcon customs, wolf nature is chaotic, ambition is difficult to tame; in ancient times, China has a holy rule and then obeys, and if the court changes, it will rebel first." When the Vietnamese monarch Of the Later Lê Dynasty, Lê Sung-jong, went out on a campaign, he said that "since ancient Times, Yi Di has been plagued by China", and Choe Wan-ri, a scholar of the Lee Dynasty of Korea, once strongly opposed the abandonment of Chinese characters to create the Korean language, believing that it would be far away from Chinese civilization and belong to the state of Yi Di.
Cui Wanli said that "since ancient Kyushu, although the terroir is different, there are no people who are different from the written language because of dialects", which actually reflects the traditional psychology of the "Little China" culture and tradition of the East Asian countries: noble China and lowly Yidi. Today, the cultural meaning of the word "China" has been integrated with politics, there is only one China in the world, and these two words have the formal meaning of the country, and no one can replace or misappropriate them.