IT’S GONE QUIET

Okay, Son No 5 has gone off to university, leaving just Daughter No 2, Wife No One and Only, and, of course, No 1 🙂 So, for the first time in some 29 years, there is no male child in the house.
Now, I’m not saying that Daughter No 2 doesn’t make noise and drive us mad from time to time. But I have to admit, an eerie silence seems to have descended upon the house.

I’m thinking about a different future.

And I’ve never had to think in those terms before. I suppose when you’ve lived in one way for so long, you never even think of things being different. So I guess I’m at a point of transition.
So that’s it, just five years to go and Daughter No 2 may also be heading off for university, and the house will have empty rooms. Sounds will echo through the house, and they will all be mine and Yvonne’s.

Of course, there’ll be visits.

After all, you’re never fully detached from your kids, even when they grow up. Okay, for many years after leaving home, they have their own lives to live and you see them less and less. But eventually that changes.
So the empty rooms will no longer be the kid’s rooms, but hotel rooms, with people constantly flitting in and out. But then again, in the last few years before most of them left, they thought it was a hotel anyway 🙂

© Anthony North, September 2007

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EARLY CHINA

Homo Erectus remains of Peking Man tell us that man populated China by 500,000BC, but nothing is known of the region up to about 5000BC, except for the existence of huge, enigmatic pyramids in parts of China. But then Neolithic agrarian societies appeared by the Huang He, or Yellow River.
Around 2800BC we find early mythologies of Sage Kings, entering history with the Bronze Age Xia dynasty, expressing early writing forms and using irrigation. By 1500BC there was the Shang dynasty, using calendars and bronze vases and having a ceremonial religion.
An early feudal society, it broke up by 1066BC, the Zhou dynasty giving way to various small kingdoms. Towards the end of this period, around 600BC, Chinese religions were known.

TAOISM

One of these was Taoism, an advancement on the tribal and animist. Instituted by the mythical sage Lao Tzu in the 6th century BC – writer of the ‘Tao Te Ching’ – it concerns the ‘tao’, or the ‘way’, formalising the hidden principles of the universe and a code of behaviour that lays emphasis in harmonious interaction with the environment rather than good deeds.
Many critics see this as amoral, with no notion of right or wrong. But this ignores the holistic nature of Taoism. People are part of the environment, so in laying emphasis on harmony, right deeds guarantee such harmony.
Taoists meditate to find unity with universal forces, based around the essence known as Ch’i, with its 2 components, Yin and Yang, the opposing feminine and masculine forces which echo destruction and creation, the watery and solid, the moon and sun.
Opposites, in all things harmony comes through their balance. Often a paranoia mentality can arise to keep this balance. Well known spin-offs of Taoism are acupuncture
and feng shui, disciplines which keep forces in balance in the body and the environment. The I Ching is also Taoist, where the throwing of Yarrow Sticks decide the actions to be taken in life, taking destiny away from the person and investing it in forces other than individuality.

CONFUCIANISM

Confucianism was formulated about the same time by the sage Kong Zi, or Confucius. Accepting most of Taoism, it demands a more ordered moral code. Taoism allowed no human leadership, everything in the hands of the fates. Confucius rectified this, with emphasis on mutual respect, moral guidance and a patriarchal social structure based on ancestor worship.
This merging of Taoism and Confucianism identifies an important phase lost in most religious development – a time when belief in environmental forces had to give way to a more society based religion to allow a cohesive society to exist.

SHI HUANGDI

Such a society was always on the historic Chinese mind, entering history with the waring kingdoms being united with Shi Huangdi, leader of the Qin State in 246BC. Declaring himself emperor in 22lBC, he introduced a dictatorial central bureaucracy, connected the mish-mash of fortifications that checked northern migrations into the Great Wall of China, invaded southern China, banned Confucianism and slaughtered intellectuals. Surrounding himself with a huge army for protection, even in death, his burial site was protected by 10,000 buried terracotta warriors.
By 206BC his empire had collapsed with the very different Han dynasty bringing a period of peace which lasted until 220AD.

PARANOIA

Buddhism arrived to live alongside Taoism and a renaissance occurred which highlights the Chinese psyche – a paranoia where individuality is deferred to larger forces, man’s only hope being to comply with their will.
This is seen in Chinese writing, with strict rules of form, rehashing collectivism over individuality. In drama, the set holds more significance than the actors, always symbolising that which is bigger.
As to why this mentality exists, being the largest population in the world, it is too big for a single authority to handle unless, like Shi Huangdi, they are despotic, an echo of his actions found later in Mao Zedong in the 20th century. China can only be held together by fear and oppression.

ARRIVALS AND INVASIONS

By the 3rd century AD the Silk road emerged, Chinese merchants trading with the outside world, but peace was shattered in China itself. Three Kingdoms ruled over the region, barbarian migrations briefly stopped by the Sui and Tang dynasties up to 907AD.
A further centralised bureauocracy tried to hold China together, but internal wars raged once more, leading to 10 kingdoms vying for supremacy. This anarchy lasted until 960 when the Song dynasty again formed a dictatorial central bureauocracy, lasting until the 13th century. Culture again blossomed, remembered by the adventurer Marco Polo.
By 1279 the Mongol invasions were complete, Mongol rule imposed by the Yuan dynasty, their power on the wane, the native Ming dynasty rising by 1368, absorbing Mongolia, and Beijing becoming the seat of power.

ENTER THE EUROPEAN

By 1516, Portuguese explorers arrived, Jesuits entering Beijing in 1600. In 1644 the Ming dynasty collapsed replaced by the foreign Manchus from Manchuria. Nomadic traders, they aligned with western powers, European and American influences rising.
The British flooded the country with opium, the population becoming highly addictive, and by the early 19th century Treaty Ports such as Hong Kong guaranteed that western powers controlled what went in and out of China.
China had, infact, a hidden history through their secret societies, always close to power in the country. Today they represent criminality, such as the Tong and Triads, but they also created bandit armies, the Manchu owing their success to them.
In the late 18th century one such society was known as the Righteous and Harmonious Fist, or Boxers. Anti-western, they found an ally in the empress dowager Cixi, leading to attacks on Christian missionaries and traders.
In 1900 they laid siege to the foreign legations in Beijing. It signaled the end of the Manchus, with western armies relieving the legations, breeding in the Chinese ideas of nationalism.

© Anthony North, September 2007

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