The mainland has now stood in the forefront of the international community, so that every country in the world can firmly remember the name of China and the great and excellent ethnic group of the Chinese nation. Nowadays, more and more foreigners are beginning to learn Chinese, precisely because of China's strength.
In the long river of history, the ancient dynasties of the mainland have their own names, such as Qin, Han, Tang and other dynasties. So at that time, the mainland did not have a unified country name, so under such circumstances, how did foreigners outside the territory of the mainland at that time call China?
Changes in ancient Chinese names
Let's first look at the fact that the chinese word first came from the Ming Dynasty. After Zhu Yuanzhang unified the Central Plains, the territory of the Ming Dynasty was further expanded. The prosperity of the Ming Dynasty attracted the attention of other countries, so some foreigners came to visit the Ming Dynasty.
Foreigners came to visit, and the Ming Dynasty wanted to show its strong strength. When the foreigner asked for the name of the country, after the emperor's instructions, the minister told the foreigner that this was China, and it was now the Ming Dynasty.
Why did the emperor say the word China, everything originated from the Western Zhou Dynasty. At that time, the Henan region was the very center of the territory, influenced by the idea of moderation, and the emperor at that time believed that the position in the middle was the land of Longxing, and if a country was established here, it would surely prosper.
Then there is this saying of the Central Plains, and those who have seen the historical changes know that the princes of each era want to compete for the land of the Central Plains. Because of the ancient imperial feudal superstitions, it began to flourish in the Central Plains.
With the development of time, the Central Plains have also become the place with the largest population gathering and the most advanced modern civilization, while other places have become barbaric places. In the Han Dynasty or other dynasties, we have heard of countries such as the Southern Barbarians and the Eastern Yi.
These countries are some of the tribal clans that have spread around the Central Plains. These places are basically some wild places, the degree of civilization is not as high as the central plains, similar to the barbarians, the Central Plains people at that time mocked these foreign tribes.
Therefore, the meaning of China is the country in the middle at the beginning, and there is no special meaning. Beginning with the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty also used the Chinese name when signing agreements with some foreign countries, which continues to this day.
Ancient Russian and Eastern European names for the continent
As information becomes more and more developed, more and more countries and countries have established friendships. As early as the Tang and Song dynasties, people in the areas of present-day Russia had a fixed name for the mainland, and this title lasted for a long time.
At that time, it was not the Tang Dynasty nor the Song Dynasty that bordered Russia, but the Liao State. During the Tang Dynasty, the Liao state was only a small tribe, and the Khitan people who lived here all year round were the Khitans.
The Khitan leaders were belligerent, and the tribes had always been militaristic, so they began to gradually annex the nearby tribes. Slowly, the Khitan territory grew larger and larger, and even almost unified the entire north, and it was at this time that the Khitans established the Great Liao State.
The Khitans once attacked the Song Dynasty and fought all the way to the Song Dynasty, but the Khitan people's development of the Central Plains was not suitable for their survival, so they turned around and left. It was at this time that the Russians came to the Liao State.
At that time, the Central Asians thought that the Liao State was the land of the Central Plains, so they collectively called the Central Plains the Khitans. But they also did not expect that after the Liao State was the Central Plains, so for a long time, central Asia until later Russians called China Khitan .
Eastern Europe is even simpler to call the land of the Central Plains, that is, the Silk Country. During the Han Dynasty, there were merchants on the mainland who went to the western region and wanted to do business with the people there. After a long trek, merchants brought the silk of the mainland to the western region, which is now the eastern European countries.
At that time, in a country bordering Eastern Europe and the mainland, there was a nobleman who bought the first silks, and when he attended the party, the nobleman dressed in silk dress.
When the others saw it, they asked the nobles what this material was, and the nobles replied that it was silk. When these people asked which country they bought it from, because there was no silk in Eastern Europe at that time, and the nobles did not know what the name of the continent was at that time, they said that it was a silk country.
After hearing this, the crowd immediately understood, because the meaning of silk country is the country that produces silk. With the development of the silk trade, the name silk country on the mainland spread in Eastern Europe.
India's designation for the mainland has been distorted by Japan
In ancient society, India can be said to be the country with the most contact with the mainland and the longest contact time. From the Tang Dynasty onwards, the mainland began to establish relations with India to spread Buddhist ideas.
With the development of Buddhism, a number of other trades were also carried out. The king of India also knew of the existence of China, and it was said that it was still a very large country. The curious king called the monk who had been to the Tang Dynasty and asked what country it was.
In Buddhist exchanges, he called the Tang Dynasty Mokotchina, and then translated it again through the words of the Indians, becoming the great Indochina. As can be seen from here, this branch is an honorific title.
But when the word Indochina spread to Japan, it was relatively late for Japan to believe in Buddhism, and after Buddhism was introduced to Japan, they also used indochina to call us, and at that time, the name of this indochina did not change its meaning.
By the time of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Japan began to drift away from the East and learn western culture. With the passage of time. Japan learned advanced Western culture and then further applied it to China, and Japan's strength became stronger and stronger.
During the Qing Dynasty, for various reasons, the mainland was weak in the late Qing Dynasty. Some European countries, led by Britain and France, launched colonization activities on the mainland, and due to their backward weapons, the mainland signed some treaties that humiliated the country after its defeat, and ceded some coastal cities to foreigners as colonies.
At this time, Japan saw that the Qing Dynasty was bullied by European countries, and Japan began to fall into the well and wanted to share a piece of the pie. The Sino-Japanese War was launched, and after the victory, Japan's momentum became very arrogant, and the meaning of the word Indochina changed from this time.
To say that in the beginning, Japan only followed India, but now when Japan calls China, the tone is full of disdain and contempt, as if the strong are teaching the weak. At that time, the colonial treaties clearly wrote the title of China, and the Japanese still called the mainland China Indochina.
Japan's term for the mainland was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the continent was the object of partition by other countries. Remember the Lugou Bridge Incident? In the japanese historical records, they called this the Indochina Incident. The war of aggression against China is also recorded as a colonial war in China.
When New China was founded, Japan did not change its name for the mainland. However, a few years later, the mainland won the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. In the hearts of the Japanese, the United States is the country they most admire, and the mainland defeated the United States and changed the title when Japan began to look at us again.