After introducing the debate over the origins of mankind, let's talk about what a "Chinese" is, or it's easier to understand. Biological evolution and archaeological research excavations, we can not simply correspond to the current people of a certain nation, a certain country, they are likely not to have anything to do with each other. When talking about Chinese, especially when associating it with the nationalist concept of the "Chinese nation", the "Chinese" group is actually an ideological concept, not a scientific positivism concept.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" >, the ancient concept of "China"</h1>
The premise of Chinese is that "China" exists in an objective or subjectively imagined region. The reason why we speak of both objective and subjective imagination here is because historically, the concept of "China" itself has pointed to some objective geographical areas, but it is also imaginative. Therefore, we cannot take the current "Chinese" and reverse the "Chinese" of ancient times, which may not have such identity or consensus as "Chinese" and "Chinese nation", or even the ideology of political-cultural community identity.
As a word, "China" appeared together to become a specific direction, and now the study should have a history of more than 3,000 years. The earliest existing discoveries appear in the bronze "He Zun" inscription of the early Western Zhou Dynasty, "Yu Qi's residence in China, from which the people are expelled", which means that I am now stationed in "China" and govern the people under my jurisdiction. China here is not a state in the modern sense, but refers to a city, and the ancient state and GuoTong often refer to a city. However, some people believe that this "China" in He Zunzhong may refer to the area around luoyang in present,000, and it is not reliable, and the center of Western Zhou's rule was in the Guanzhong Plain, and it is more likely that the capital city in that area is said to be more likely.
Icon of Emperor Yao
Later China was often referred to as the seat of central power, nor did it refer specifically to the Central Plains, as some scholars have suggested. The bigger reason why some people think that "China" refers to the Central Plains is because in many ancient times, the center of China's rule happened to be in the Central Plains.
In the era of imperial power, "China" is actually more imaginative, the imperial power is the supreme power, it is taken for granted to be in the middle, and everyone else revolves around this center. The ancients imagined that the monarch should "serve the government with virtue, such as the North Star dwelling in its place and the stars together", and pushed this imagination into reality, believing that the city where the monarch lived was the center, that is, China. For example, the Book of Shang begins by saying that Yao, as a wise and holy Lord, must be lighted by four tables. The four tables are four different directions, and the four tables are opposite, and the place where Yao lives, although it is not said in the text, should obviously be "center" and "China". Later in the text, it is even more mentioned that Yao Ming Xihe, Xi Zhong, Xi Shu, and He Zhong, respectively, guarded the four directions of the east, west, south, and north, so that It is even more prominent that Yao is the monarch who lives in the "center" and "China".
At this stage, because the national model is different, the meaning of "country" and the country we now understand is very different. At the highest level of the political community, it is difficult to say that it should be called a "country", it is a "world" without borders. Great Zhou, Great Qin, Great Han, and Great Tang, if we insist on calling it "guo", may have been a big taboo at that time, lowering the specifications of these dynasties. At this time, the kingdom may refer to a city, or it may refer to a fiefdom of a prince, or a foreign vassal that has not yet been conquered, but feels that it should be part of the "world".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="18" >2, modern sovereign "China"</h1>
Modern China is a state in the sense of "sovereignty" and an unlimited "world under heaven" under the monarchy are two different things. Any "national history" is actually based on the inversion of the political-social identity of the modern state, and belongs to the reshaping of the ideological political-social community. When we talk about the history of the Chinese, the Chinese nation, and the Chinese nation, it is the same, based on the identity of the modern Chinese political-social community, and pushing back, asking who our ancestors really were, what they did, and what relationship they had with us. Explain the course of our civilization, describe its greatness and remoteness, even if those people in real history may not have anything to do with us, we will go back to it in this way.
This modern "China" is not the same thing as the Ancient China, which often appeared in ancient times, referring to the Central Plains and Gyeonggi China. It is a modern state with sovereign significance and clear borders. Many scholars believe that "China" in the modern sense was first used by the Kangxi Emperor when he signed the Treaty of Nebuchu with the Russians, which contains expressions such as "Great Holy Emperor of China", "Chinese Place", "Chinese Khan" and so on, which is the first time that China has signed a contract between sovereign states and is used as a synonym for our country. This may be an overestimation, or an underestimation of the Kangxi Emperor, saying that the overestimation is due to the era in which the Kangxi Emperor lived, and although the concept of sovereign state has been proposed, the Kangxi Emperor may not have known, let alone accepted. To say that it is underestimated, it is Kangxi who uses the title of "China", which should still be the king who exalts himself as the representative of "Heaven", and the relative Russia is only one of the "Four Yi", a subordinate foreign domain, and a condescending posture. Later, when the Qianlong Emperor received the British envoys, he still asked the other party to bow down to the courtesy of his subjects, which fully explained that until the decades after Kangxi's death, in fact, at the highest level of rule of the Qing Dynasty, there was still no concept of "sovereign" state, or the traditional concept of "tianxia" state.
Treaty of Nebuchadnezzar
The modern "China" has been abused countless times by Western colonialists, and the ancient concept borrowed by the Chinese nation from self-consciousness to self-consciousness refers to the country that laid the foundation of the Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China established modern sovereignty for the first time, and our current republic inherited its sovereignty. Therefore, when we describe China and the Chinese, we can see that the most authoritative "China" territory is tan Qijun's territory outlined according to China's anti-imperialist and anti-feudal historical narrative -- the territory of the Qing Dynasty at its peak, after the Treaty of Nebuchu between China and Russia, before 1840. Chinese, the evolution of the Chinese nation, and the narrative of Chinese history and civilization are all within the framework of this territory. But this territory is obviously not the same thing as the Zhou, Qin, Han, Tang, Song, Yuanming and other dynasties.
Modern "China" is a China constructed by nationalist movements, combined with historical imagination and the pattern of real forces, and dominated by nationalist-democratic republican ideologies. Its political system, social governance, and economic model are no longer the same thing as the traditional "tianxia" model of feudal dynasties. But in this land, there were these dynasties, their cultures, the reproduction and inheritance of their people, the various social wealth they created, most of which we have inherited. Similarly, we have traced our "national origins and associated them with these dynasties, providing a solid historical and cultural foundation for the nation-state construction of our country through the following and emergence of the common past of groups with different cultures in this land, and even recreating."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="19" > Third, the history of the Chinese nation is part of the ideological work of modern Chinese nation-state construction</h1>
With such an explanation, everyone should be able to understand that the creation of any Chinese national history is not a complete scientific traceability, but an ideological re-creation. This work was already done by Liang Qichao, the first great scholar to put forward the concept of the "Chinese nation." Liang Qichao is a key figure in the introduction of the concept of nationality and Western nationalism into China, but when he introduced the concept of nationality and observed the nationalist driving force behind the changes in the development of Western society, he keenly observed that "nation" is a social phenomenon that is prone to problems. In the course of his polemics with the revolutionaries represented by Sun Yat-sen and Zhang Taiyan, Liang Qichao held high the banner of "great nationalism" and resolutely opposed the revolutionaries' relatively narrow "Han nationalism" ideas. It is also in the process of such controversy that Liang Qichao gradually formed the concept system of the "Chinese nation", believing that in the process of transforming our country from a traditional country to a modern country, we should advocate the integration of the large national identity of various groups with large cultural differences in the territory, shape the new national spirit, resist colonialism-imperialist bullying with Chinese nationalism, and promote China's development and progress. "The most urgent person in China today... the issue of national nation-building (1902 "New People's Theory")," After observing and analyzing ethnic phenomena and walking through some tortuous roads, Liang Qichao realized that China's nationalism and nation-state building must take the road of big nationalism. The Han Chinese are also for other ethnic groups in the country. What about the great nationalists? The tribes of the subordinate departments of the domestic headquarters are also for the foreign tribes. It is proposed to "merge han, manchu, mongolian, Hui, Miao, and Tibet to form a major nation." (1903, "The Doctrine of Political Science Bern's Knowledge"). In order to clarify the historical origin of the unity of the various ethnic groups, the willingness and the inevitable unity, Liang Qichao successively wrote articles such as "Observations on the Chinese Nation in History" (1906) and "Studies on the Nationalities in Chinese History", and also particularly highlighted the orientation of the "Chinese nation" in his "Narrative of Chinese History". Liang Qichao's work, which is very obvious, is to reconstruct the historical narrative with practical needs, help strengthen the identity of the Chinese national community, and cultivate a new national identity, so as to strengthen the country.
Portrait of Liang Qichao
The anti-KangLiang revolutionaries held high the banner of "Han chauvinism" and mobilized the masses with the slogan of "expelling the Tartars and restoring China." It is proposed that "revolutionaries have the first purpose of going to the Manchus and the second purpose of going to tyranny." "As far as this (Liang's words of the Hezu clans) were concerned before the restoration, it was saved as a country that was not mine, but the strength of other tribes", "Killing all the Manchus, the natural Han people are strong, and it is not too late to try to establish a constitution (Kang Liang baohuang constitution)...". However, after the vigorous revolution, after the provinces declared independence one after another and the Qing Dynasty collapsed, Sun Yat-sen called on everyone to gather and build a new state, but the frontier areas occupied by the "Tartars" were reluctant. Dr. Sun Yat-sen chose the Republic of China as the national name, the five-color flag as the national flag, and vigorously advocated the republic of the five ethnic groups, and finally returned to the theory of Liang Qichao, which he refuted most fiercely.
Portrait of Dr. Sun Yat-sen
After the establishment of the Republic of China, the Chinese nation really moved towards self-realization, and many people continued Liang Qichao's work at this stage and wrote the history of the Chinese nation. The discussion of theory, the reconstruction of the historical narrative, and of course, more importantly, the actual anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary struggle, and the various social constructions under the guidance of the modern state, have jointly promoted the Chinese national identity to penetrate the hearts of the people.
A hundred years ago, the seniors of the academic circles repaired the history of the Chinese nation and advocated a new national spirit in the abyss of national suffering. This work is very difficult, and it is inevitable that there will be some conceptual and data deficiencies. When I talk about the history of the Chinese nation here, I do not deny their achievements, but in fact, I hope to introduce the results of their work in a way that is more acceptable to people now. With their own modest efforts, we will help to cast a solid sense of the Chinese national community.