Dear Meika,

Thanks for querrying the assumptions in my email and for raising some very good,
insightful and interesting points.

I happen to be interested in issues relating to nationalism, especially 'nation
and narration'. So I'll have another go but I'm not a historican so my statements
may not be as accurate as I would like them to be.

That 'When China was first united...' is a common and mostly 'accepted' statement,
as least in Chinese popular historgraphy, has to do with the myth of origin of
Chinese divilisation, although this does not necessarily makes it correct or
accurate. However, what we are dealing with here is 'perceiption'. The way
Chinese history has been written and taught has convinced many Chinese and other
people that China is a unified nation and that if they or their ancestors were
born there, they are Chinese. Furthermore, the emergence of the Chinese
nation-state has often been regarded as a process of 'unification'. That the first
emperor of China conqured all his neighbouring states and established 'China'.

I don't think this process is fundamentally different from the expansion of Roman
Empire. What makes China different is that its peoples have been told to believe,
and most of them do until today, that they are of one ethnicity (all are
descendants of the Yellow emperor) and that Chinese civilisation emerged along the
Yellow River in the land of Qin.

However, Chinese is not a single ethnic group - it has many different ethnic
groups within. The difference between their regional languages are sometimes
bigger than what makes many European languages separate. Some regions also worship
different gods and their belief systems are different as well. All the elements
that often make the nations break up into small nation states as what happened in
the 19th Century Europe, did not undermine the "singleness" of Chinese state.
However, because of the enormous difference at the regional level, many scholars,
especially scholars outside of China, argue that China should not be regarded as a
single nation state. Instead, China should be placed in the same category as
Australia, US, etc., as a 'multinational' state. On the other hand, there also
scholars insist China remains a nation state because the majority of Chinese (over
95%) identify themselves as Han Chinese, regardless where they live and what
languages they speak. This self-identification alone should be sufficient to make
China 'one' nation.

The best footnote in this case is the film directed by Chen Kaige , "The Emperor
and the Assasin". Some critics have been suggesting to keep Taiwan in mind when
watching the film, because China's current rhetoric of 'unifying' with Taiwan is
very similar to that of Qin Emperor. Some historians believe the Qin Emperor
killed those who spread other or competing myths of origin and burned the books
that recorded different stories. Indeed it is very hard to believe that such a
massive people shared a common beginning. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to
undo 2000 years' indoctrination. Even just to find a neutral and relatively
'innocent' language to talk about it. (Luky I'm writing on this topic in English.
I'll have to reinvent a lot of wheel if i'm writing in Chinese).

The importance of 'oneness' is essential for nationalistic aspirations or
mentality, for better or worse, whether they are Chinese, Australian or Romans.
The Roman empire broke up eventually, perhaps due to its failure at creating a
common myth of origin. The key word here is what Benedict Anderson calls 'the
imagined community'.



Yiyan

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Dr Yiyan Wang
Chinese Studies A18
University of Sydney NSW 2006
AUSTRALIA

tel+ 61 2 9351 4512 fax+ 61 2 9351 2319
email: [log in to unmask]
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