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4808019 No.4808019[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Does any culture have a richer history than China?

>> No.4808029
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4808029

>>4808019
Yes, Europe

>> No.4808037

>>4808019
Care to define historical "richness"?

>> No.4808040
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4808040

>>4808019
Define "country" and "richer"

"Europe" is a favourite of mine, but I would maybe pick the word "flabbergasting"

>> No.4808049

>>4808037
>>4808040
I think we also need definitions of "culture" and "China"

>> No.4808063

>>4808019
China used to have the richest history, but now Europe is so culturally enriched that it takes the top spot

>> No.4808213

>>4808063
oh lol. didnt see that coming

>> No.4808220

India

>> No.4809276

>>4808220
Old, but full of shit. Literally.

>> No.4809607
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4809607

>>4808019
YUERP

>> No.4809640

>>4809276
Fuck off

>>4808019
Iran/Persia , Japan , Korea ,Judea

>> No.4809658

>>4809640
Korea has a rich culture, but you can't see it because most architecture is pretty much burned down or destroyed during the war.

>> No.4809676

>>4808029
how come everything you say turns out to be utter crap?

>> No.4809685

>>4808049
You're probably being facetious, but I think China is the word in most need of definition.
China has spread, collapsed, been conquered, revolted, split up, reunited, and split again so many times over it's history; how do you draw a line around what is Chinese and what isn't? Look at how prickly the current government gets about the idea that Tibet was ever an independent nation.

>> No.4809691

>>4809685
>You're probably being facetious, but I think China is the word in most need of definition.
I'm not. I know an outline of Chinese history, and the very idea of China is politically, geographically and culturally contested. Han Chauvanism is the nationalism keeping the major Chinese capitalist state alive today. Chinese diaspora and assimilation internationally means that Chinese culture is (as it always was <cough>Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, etc.</cough>) a diaspora and an inter-state, inter-geographic phenomena.

Who and what are China is an open question. The Chinese Communist Party's nationalist Han chauvanist solution to the problem is unacceptable.

>> No.4809735

>China
>"nation"

>> No.4809741

america

>> No.4809744
File: 817 KB, 1054x1600, court-of-gayumars.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4809744

Iran.

Walked on by every Eurasian and Near-Eastern empire in the last two and half millennia (Macedon, Rome/Byzantium, Hepthalites, Gök-Türk, Rashidun/Umayyad/Abbasid Caliphates, Seljük Sultanate, Mongols, Timür, Ottomans, Russians, British...), but unbowed and only more distinctive because of it.

Fight me.

>Also, dat dere Sinicism in post-Ilkanid miniature painting...

And don't forget that the cobalt pigment that defines (post-)Ming Qingdai (blue-and-white) porcelain was 'hui-hui qing'; literally "Muslim blue", owing to its Iranian origin

>tfw no Iranologist gf to write you erotic poetry in Bactrian

;______;

>> No.4809751

Instead of asking history belong to a group of people, why not the history belonging to the land?

>> No.4809757
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4809757

>>4809744
>reading history of some group who conquers Iran
>skip to a few hundred pages in
>.."and they started using Persian x, y, z, because of the prestige of Persian culture.."

Those dehqans sure know how to Abu Muslim.

>> No.4809767
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4809767

>>4809757

UofT friend, is that you yet again!?

>> No.4809774
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4809774

I lie in bed and wonder at how master race China would be right now if it wasn't for Mao.

>> No.4809778

>>4809774
worse

>> No.4809903

>>4809691


>The Chinese Communist Party's nationalist Han chauvanist solution to the problem is unacceptable.

and yet, eminently successful.

as to ops question, europe, of course.

>> No.4809981

>>4809691
I never quite understood the historical circumstances that allowed China to remain a single political entity. "Han" is barely an ethnicity to begin with and they don't even have complete linguistic unity.

I mean, if didn't become an enduring political entity even after a millennium of roman influence, why did China?

>> No.4809995

>>4808019
Yurop wouldn't beat China, but the last centuries of sporadic orientalism (Ezra Pound, Schopenhauer) have made it inclusive of the greatest hits of eastern philosophy and therefore richer.

>> No.4809997

>>4809981
The culture becomes semi-independent from the ethnicity

China can and did influence its neighbors culturally without resorting to conquest, this Rome cannot

>> No.4810016

>>4809997
The US did

>> No.4810018

>>4809997
Uh, I am not sure about that. You do know the origin of the word "Tsar", don't you?

>> No.4810027

>>4810018
I am sure about that, emulation of the Roman system is one thing, being able to read classical Chinese in Korean or Japanese high school is another

>> No.4810031
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4810031

>> No.4810039

>>4809995
What about the western canon and the religious tradition from Christianity?

>> No.4810046

>>4810027
Latin and Greek were considered necessary to be educated until a hundred or so years ago.

>> No.4810072

>>4810046
Classical Chinese has been taught in Korean and Japan continuously since those countries began to use it over a thousand years ago

The development of the Korean Hangul and the Japanese writing system was the direct response to the inability of the native speakers to speak Classical Chinese

All of the government and official documents until about 150 years ago were all in Classical Chinese

>> No.4810304
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4810304

>>4809774

>I lie in bed and wonder at how master race China would be right now if it wasn't for Mao.

I am Chinese and I ponder upon that myself.

Picture related for the future of Europe.

>> No.4810314

>>4808029
I agree that European history is more interesting at least in my view. But China is still fascinating.

>> No.4810368

>>4809774
China is master race precisely because of the thought and efforts of Mao and the participants of the revolution. What happens after Mao is more questionable.
>in before Clapistani defense force kicks in with 50 posts along the lines of "lol but mow waz hitler+stalin+the debol that's what they told me in skool why wud they lie???"

>> No.4810380
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4810380

>>4809691
>The Chinese Communist Party's nationalist Han chauvanist solution
>CCP
>Han Chauvinism

>> No.4810387

>>4810380
Yes mate. Do bother.

>> No.4810477
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4810477

>>4810380
>yfw post-Mao 'Communist' China reappropriated explicitly Confucian Chinese customs and virtues and stressed their continuity with Communism
>yfw such messianic self-conceptions of nationalised 'Communism' are common and existed with the Russian obsession with sobornost or 'innate' peasant communalism

>> No.4810920

>>4810477
I'm not convinced. There's very little talk about China's culture being uniquely suited to Communism or anything like that. In fact there's virtually no talk about Communism at all. Confucius gets mentioned as a promoter of the 'harmonious society', I guess, but there's nothing very Communist about that.

>> No.4811016 [DELETED] 

>>4809774

All that culture destroyed. The cultural revolution was the biggest cultural genocide of history

>> No.4811272

>>4809774
>mao
>not master raza

>> No.4811277

europe has a richer history, but not older
but china is certainly equivalent
very fascinating and inspiring culture

>> No.4811285

China has a vested interest in having its culture predate Babylon, I have no doubts that if Brazil rises to be an economic super power that South America will suddenly have a quantum leap in how far back it can trace its indigenous culture, even Israel are pissing about digging and trying to show that they're even older than everyone. It's dick waving and typically the richer you are the more you can pay to dig out more length and girth.

>> No.4811309

>>4811285
>South America will suddenly have a quantum leap in how far back it can trace its indigenous culture
Yeah, this is actually already a thing.

>> No.4811333

>>4811309
Got any links? I try to keep up, but S. American ancient culture is such a clusterfuck sometimes with China trying to prove they're all actually Chinese, Russia trying to prove they're all Russian/Siberian, and the genetic testing studies flooding my search results everytime I take a cursory look

>> No.4811387

>>4809744
>unbowed
>slaves to a foreign god

>> No.4811582

there's no real contenders apart from europe because china has had the largest body of literate people for most of history

>> No.4812919

What are some basic, broad, good books to read to learn about Chinese history?

>> No.4814285

>>4811285
OP here, I was more talking about written history than fossil history. If that's what you're talking about than Africa has the oldest history, but nothing was really written down. China developed a writing system very early and tons of written documents have survived to this day, you can't say the same thing for a lot of other places, regardless of whether they had people living there or not. If you didn't write it down, it was forgotten and is basically not a part of history anymore.

>> No.4814319

>>4808019

Even Japan had a richer history than China.

But like Europe today Japan is a shadow of what it used to be.

>> No.4814321

>>4814319
see >>4814285
The earliest records of Japanese history are literally Chinese documents about the country.

>> No.4814331

>>4814319
>Even Japan had a richer history than China.

LOL

japan was basically a vassal state to China in entire periods in history

>> No.4814336
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4814336

>>4814321

>implying the older culture is superior just because of it's age

>> No.4814344

>>4814336
>implying I ever used the word superior

>> No.4814360

India

>> No.4814510

maybe it's just because china is so large. you should look at history in terms of events per thousand square kilometres and century.

also define events.

>> No.4814520

Italy

>> No.4814546

>>4809903
>as to ops question, europe, of course.
duh, most westerners study only, if not deeply on European history, of course you would said that
cause you know no better about others

>> No.4814553

>>4809774
Mao was the Chinese George Washington

>> No.4814607

If by "Chinese culture" you mean those cultures which rose up and fought and splintered and got conquered and spread based in the Yellow River valley, I can be equally inclusive and say Roman culture (there were emperors until early twentieth century) and Persian culture.

>> No.4814611

>>4814285
>OP here, I was more talking about written history than fossil history.
There's a big difference between digging up fossils and digging up relics and artefacts. While the latter isn't written history, the important/popular finds are usually tied to some form of written history, like when they found some older stuff to do with the Babylonian flood/Noah's Ark myth a few months back.

>> No.4815127

probably britain during and after the opium wars. china's luxury and prestige quickly faded after those events for obvious reasons.

>> No.4815135

also wtf is up with people comparing a continent to a country?

>> No.4815173

>>4815135
you sound asian