The Mongol Empire & Yuan Dynasty (1279 – 1368 AD) – Part 2/5

October 20, 2010

Kublai Khan’s mother took the time to educate her younger son in the teachings of Confucius. Without renouncing the violent ways of the Mongols, she encouraged the two sides of his nature that would be the key to his success.

In 1236, at the age of twenty-one, Kublai was granted his own land to rule in northern China by his uncle, who was the great khan.

At the time, the bureaucrats and officials heavily taxed the people and the people were often forced to work for the state like road building.

Encouraged by his mother, Kublai Khan decided to change this and brought about reforms.  The peasants of northern China appreciated what he did for them.

However, traditional Mongol ruling families distrusted what he was doing in China.

When his brother Mongke became the great khan in 1251 after his uncle’s death, Kublai Khan was given more land to rule in northeastern China.

It was now time to prove that he was a warrior. To the Mongols, military success was a sign of a strong leader.

His chance came when his older brother decided to go to war with the powerful Southern Sung Dynasty.

Kublai Khan made the first move in 1252. When he was victorious in his first battle, he returned to Northern China and built a new city to rival his brother’s capital.

This led to a family rift that threatened to tear the empire apart, but his strong relationship with Mongke solved the problem.

On the next campaign to conquer the Southern Song Dynasty, Kublai Khan’s older brother became sick and died. The armies were recalled to decide who the next great khan would be.

Continue to Part 3 or return to The Yuan Dynasty – Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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The Mongol Empire & Yuan Dynasty (1279 – 1368 AD) – Part 1/5

October 19, 2010

Kublai Khan was the first significant non-Chinese to rule over the entire Chinese empire. He also had a goal to rule the entire world.

Like his grandfather, Genghis Khan, he defeated and crushed his enemies with brutal force.

However, after the conquest, he ruled his empire peacefully setting up governments and creating systems of taxation while promoting culture and commerce.

He also made Beijing the capital of the biggest empire the world has ever seen.

Kublai Khan’s empire stretched from the East China Sea to the Danube River in Europe – more than five thousand miles or eight thousand kilometers from east to west.

His military career started late in his life but his skills as a conqueror were the best.

In addition, throughout his reign, he courted the most sophisticated, intellectual, scientific and artistic minds of the day.

The Mongols were a nomadic people and Kublai Khan’s skills as a military leader would eventually lead to the conquest of the Song Dynasty of Southern China.

One of greatest influences over Kublai Khan while he was a child was his mother.  Mongol women often fought beside their men and ruled tribes and territories. She insisted that he be educated in Chinese culture.

Continued in the Yuan Dynasty – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Japan’s War of Lies about Atrocities in China

October 19, 2010

Adolf Hitler said, “If you tell a big lie enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.…”

That’s what Japan has been doing since 1945—telling a big lie about the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in Nanking, China during World War II.

It is estimated that about 17 million Chinese civilians died due to Japan’s invasion of China along with 2 million Chinese troops.

Several hundred thousand civilians were murdered in Nanking.

Eamonn Fingleton is an Irish journalist and author who refused to allow this lie about Nanking to become truth.

Fingleton is a former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times. His books deal with global economics and globalism. He has written on East Asian and global issues for The Atlantic Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Harvard Business Review.

Fingleton writes that Iris Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking, broke a half-century of silence on Japanese war crimes in China.

He says of American scholars, The self-censorship was all such a sharp contrast with the dedication with which American scholars had pored over the horrors of Auschwitz and Treblinka (and indeed of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Why had Nanking been forgotten by most of the world?

The answer, Fingleton says, is that the highest government officials in Tokyo wanted it forgotten and they got their way until Iris Chang wrote The Rape of Nanking.

In an attempt to revive the decades old lies, the rightist Japanese-language magazine Sapio in the summer of 1998, said that Chang’s book was not “serious history”.

The magazine portrayed Chang’s book as having been spawned by a Sino-American conspiracy against Japan.

To learn more about The Rape of Nanking and Iris Chang see The Rape of Nanking with Iris Chang

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Guanxi in China

October 18, 2010

I first learned about Guanxi from the China Law Blog, which quoted the Silicon Hutong Blog.

After reading the post at the China Law Blog, I did more research and also watched a few videos on the subject.

I learned that Guanxi is one of those complexities of Chinese culture that does not translate easily.

There are several elements and layers to Guanxi. First, Guanxi are based on a Confucian hierarchy of familial relationships, long-term friendships, classmates, and schoolmates and to those no stranger – Chinese or foreign – will ever have access. Source: Silicon Hutong

Guanxi developed over the millennia because China did not have a stable and effective legal system. 

In fact, the legal system in China today is relatively new and made its appearance after the 1982 Chinese Constitution was written as the law of the land.

Since 1982, there have been several amendments to the Constitution as China adapts its evolving legal system.

In time, this legal system may replace Guanxi since business law modeled on Western law with Chinese characteristic has developed faster than civil law.

There are a several opinions about Guanxi.  I learned that Guanxi is similar to a gate that opens to a network of human beings but it isn’t that simple.

Merchants in China needed a way to avoid disputes and problems in the absence of a well-developed legal system. To survive, this complex system called Guanxi developed with many components such as partnerships, trust, credibility, etc.

Maintaining Guanxi is different than how relationships are maintained in other cultures. The embedded video with this post offers a more detailed explanation.

The China Law Blog copied the post from the Silicon Hutong Blog.  The post on the China Law Blog had more than twenty comments and it was a lively discussion worth reading if you are interested in discovering more on this topic.

To learn more about Chinese culture, see Honor

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

3 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Quyi – Chinese Singing and Storytelling

October 17, 2010

As one of the older performing arts in China, Quyi is rooted in China’s history and culture, which developed during the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Song Dynasty.

 Chinese Quyi focuses on how the “Body Talks”. 

 During a performance, the actors pay attention to the use of the hands, eyes, body and step.  The focus of this performing art consists of narrative storytelling using staged monologues and dialogues.

It is mostly a spoken performance from one to four people. Do not confuse it with Chinese opera.

Hand gestures are used to present the story’s plot while the eyes are the most important part of a Quyi performance. The eyes show anger, sorrow and joy. Using the eyes in this way is an art in itself.

Since there are different schools of Quyi, the hand, eyes, body and steps are used differently from school to school.

There are fifty-six minorities in China and minority produced Quyi varies and is different from the Han majority.

In fact, since Quyi is a vital part of China’s minority culture, soon after the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Chinese Quyi Association was organized. Today, more than 3,500 members belong and the association publishes a Quyi magazine.

Sources: Cultural Traditions of China, China Fact Tours, and the Ministry of Culture of the PRC

Also see Jingyun Dagu, Beijing’s Story Telling Opera

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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