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Notes on video lecture:
The Beginnings of Written Chinese History
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on December 2, 2014 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
travel, Nanjing, important, Xia, Yangtze, Giles, cautious, leaders, mainland, fighting, defense, dynastic, Mandarin, mythical, Latin, shamanism, animal, Yellow, intuitive, Erlitou, dominate, Shun, archeology, myths, writing, academic, Yangshao, Yao, linguists, creation, Agriculture, exchanges, rule, evil, Romanization, heads, floods, state, Sage, Millet, quirks, human, Warring, aspiration
•
when dealing with Chinese material, you have to deal with the                          problem
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Wade-Giles
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when you see "Dao" spelled "Tao", that's the Wade-           system
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D sound = T
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T sound = T'
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                     is symbolized by the apostrophe
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this makes sense to                    but is not immediately clear to others
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given completed form with Herbert Giles's Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892
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a romanization system for                  Chinese
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replaced the               -based romanization systems that had been common until late in the 19th century
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pinyin
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used since the 80s
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the official phonetic system for transcribing the Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese characters into the            alphabet
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has become the standard in most places where Chinese is spoken
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People's Republic of China
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Taiwan (although with variations)
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Singapore
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more                    to non-linguists
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there are three main              with pinyin romanization script
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Q = [ch]
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Qin [chin] Dynasty
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qi [chee]
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Zh = [j]
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Zhou [joh] Dynasty
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X = [sh]
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Xia [shah] Dynasty
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very early china
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what is China?
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currently
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there are parts of non-                 China that many people think should be part of China
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there are other parts of mainland China which many people think should not be part of China
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Ancient China
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mainly              River Valley
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e.g. Qin dynasty 210 BC
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also                River Valley
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to lesser extent
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three models to how Chinese culture developed
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1. nuclear
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more traditional
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Chinese culture arose in the Yellow River valley and spread out to other parts of China
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the Central Plain is the most                    part
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multiple origins
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more recent model
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many different cultures that were trading, learning, and                  with one another
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modified version, popular now
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nuclear version but acknowledges that there were                   
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the Central Plains culture was the dominant culture
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ahead of the other regions
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more complex
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tended to innovate earlier than the other regions
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tended to                  the other regions
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5000-3000 BCE:                 
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Central Plain area and further down Yellow River
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1921: first village of this culture discovered
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dry millet, villages forming
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decent sized organized around clans
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no writing
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probably                   
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focused on individuals who mediate between spirit and human worlds
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shamans can communicate with spirits
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           world is just one world
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there is another world of spirits and mystical creatures
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can control natures spirits, rivers
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believed that shamans can              to these other realms
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certain finds e.g. skeletons of people buried with representations of their              companions
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no evidence that anyone else was buried in this rich a wealthy way
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those buried with shamanistic symbolism seemed to be the most important graves
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this suggests that the shamans were probably both the political and religious                of their society
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3000-2000 BCE: complex, large-scale society emerges
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large, walled towns
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elaborate burials of leaders
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specializations in terms of professions
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artisans
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farmers
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how                      matches up with legend
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in some cases there are legends of what happened in history or philosophy which diverges from our best                  knowledge that we have today
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we alternate between traditional and archeological accounts
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we want to know the tradition accounts because even if they are just           , it matters because everyone we are going to be reading in the                States period believed in these myths and you have to get inside their            and see the world from their point of view to understand their writing
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traditional legend period starts 3000-2000 BCE
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two main figures        and Shun
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early cultural heroes
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referred to as emperors or sage kings
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their dates are completely made up
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around 2200-2300 BCE
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founded figures of civilization
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passed down power from one to another
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first Yao to Shun and then onward down the line
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according to the legend
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Yao became the ruler at 20 and died at 119 when he passed his throne to          the Great, to whom he had given his two daughters in marriage
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Hou Ji ("Lord             ")
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supposedly Minister of                        under Shun
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credited with "inventing agriculture" or "inventing millet"
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progenitor of what became the Zhou [joh] royal line
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the Zhou dynasty looked back to Hou Ji as their distant ancestor
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Xia [shah] Dynasty (2205-1555 BCE)
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                 China begins
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you have a king that is now passing down          to his sons
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scholars in the West tend to view the Xia as                 
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however there has been much research in the                culture
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1950s archeologists started excavating on the Yellow River
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found major sites earlier than the Shang dynasty
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major city sites
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lack of                mechanisms suggest they were part of a unified possible state of some kind
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Chinese archeologists tend to believe they found the Xia dynasty of the legends
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Western archeologists have been more                 
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e.g. no                has been found
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but we can be quite certain that there was a major           -level culture before the Shang Dynasty
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Xia Legend
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2205 - 1555 BCE
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founded by the Sage-king Yu
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        -King Yu (2205-2197 BCE)
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dates have no archeological basis
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supposed founder of       
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credited with taming              of Yellow River with a series of dikes and irrigation channels thereby making "the World" (i.e. the Yellow River Valley) habitable for the Chinese people
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Yellow river is very difficult: low banks, changes course, overflows
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this was seen as the seminal act of                 
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this metaphor of flooding as chaos and controlling water as civilization becomes a major theme in Chinese history and philosophy
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arguably this has a lot to do why the contemporary Chinese government was so eager to tame the Yangtze River with the Three Gorges project which from an economic and scientific perspective looked a little crazy, but within Chinese thinking, there is something about controlling water that shows that you're controlling the world and making it safe for civilization.
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King Jie (1600 BCE)
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supposedly the          last king of the Xia dynasty
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a tyrant
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known to have lived a lavish lifestyle with slaves and treated his people with extreme cruelty
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defeated by Tang of Shang

Vocabulary:

incontrovertible, adj. not able to be denied or disputed ⇒ "Scholars in the West tend to view the Xia dynasty as mythical, we don't have any incontrovertible evidence of the Xia dynasty."

Spelling Corrections:

archealogy ⇒ archeology
intuative ⇒ intuitive
refered ⇒ referred

Ideas and Concepts:

Three quirks of pinyin pronunciation, via tonight's Ancient Chinese Thought course:

"If you've ever wondered why the word "Dao" is sometimes spelled "Dao" and sometimes "Tao", it's because the Wade-Giles romanization system, which was developed in the 19th century and used until the second half 20th century, spells a [d] sound with a T and a [t] sound with a T', the apostrophe mark indicating an aspiration sound, the only difference between these two sounds, and hence this old spelling of Dao is "Tao". But for many reasons including the fact that the aspiration sound difference between consonant pairs is not readily understood by non-linguists, the Wade-Giles system was replaced by the pinyin system in the late 20th century, which made spelling much more straight-forward, e.g. a [d] sound is spelled with a "d", and a [t] sound is spelled with a "t", hence in pinyin the word is spelled "Dao", the most common spelling today. The ISO adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 and the United Nations adopted it in 1986. So if you are learning or reading Chinese in a romanized script today, you will probably be using the pinyin system. However, although most sounds are straight-forward in pinyin, there are three main exceptions you need to learn from the beginning:

1. "q" is pronounced [ch] as in the "Qin Dynasty" [chin]

2. "zh" is pronounced [j] as in the "Zhou Dynasty" [joh]

3. "x" is pronounced [sh] as in the "Xia Dynasty" [shya]"
On the importance of myths when studying history, via tonight's Ancient Chinese Thought course: "In some cases there are Chinese legends of what happened in their ancient history or in their record of philosophical though which diverges from our best academic knowledge that we have today. Nevertheless, in this course, we are going to be alternating between traditional and archeological accounts. We want to know the tradition accounts because even if they are just myths, it matters because everyone we are going to be reading in the Warring States period believed in these myths and you have to get inside their heads to see the world from their point of view in order to properly understand their writing."
On the power of myth throughout the ages, via tonight's Ancient Chinese Thought course: "According to legend, the first Chinese dynasty, the Xia Dynasty, was founded by the Sage-king Yu, purportedly living from 2205-2197 BCE. Although these dates have no archeological basis, Yu was credited with taming floods of Yellow River, a river notoriously difficult with its low banks, changing course, and frequent floods and overflows. The legend tells that King-Yu was able to build a series of dikes and irrigation channels thereby making the Yellow River Valley (or "The World") habitable for the Chinese people. Within Chinese thought and philosophy, this was thought of as the seminal act of creation for Chinese civilization, and with this, the metaphor of (1) flooding as chaos and (2) controlling of water as an act of building a civilization, become major themes in Chinese thought for millennia therefore, even up to the present day. Arguably this has a lot to do why the contemporary Chinese government was so eager to tame the Yangtze River with the Three Gorges project, which, from an economic and scientific perspective looked a little crazy, but within Chinese cultural thought, there is something powerfully symbolic about controlling water that shows you are controlling the world and making it safe for civilization."
The Definition of Religion
Mind/Body Dualism and Cognitive Control
Deontology, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics
Wu-Wei, Dao, Tien and De
The Shang Dynasty (1554-1045 BC)
The Beginnings of Written Chinese History
Eastern Holistic Thinking and the Paradox of Virtue
The Golden Age of the Western Zhou (1046–771 BCE)
Philosophical and Conceptual Innovations in Zhou Thought
Confucius and the Analects
Confucius: I Transmit, I Do Not Innovate
Confucius' Use of Ritual as a Tool
Confucius' View on Learning vs. The Enlightenment
Confucius and Holistic Education
Confucius and the Art of Self-Cultivation
At Home in Virtue
Non-Coercive Comportment, Virtue, and Charisma of the Zhou
The Transition to Becoming Sincere
The Primitivists in the Analects
Laozi and the Daodejing
Laozi: Stop the Journey and Return Home
Laozi and The Desires of the Eye
Laozi: He Who Speaks Does Not Know
The Concept of Reversion
Laozi on Shutting Down the Prefrontal Cortex
The Guodian Laozi
Mozi and Materialist State Consequentialism
Mozi's Idea of Ideological Unity
Mozi's Doctrine of Impartial Caring
Mozi's Anti-Confucian Chapters
Mozi's Religious Fundamentalism and Organized Activism
The Language Crisis in the Warring States Period
Yang Zhu and Mid-Warring States' Focus on the Body
The Guodian School of Confucianism
Qi and Self-Cultivation