mindstalk | Entries tagged with china

Following my posts on England and the Byzantines.

Copying from the first post: "I'll put in codes at the end of lines. P for Peace, in my opinion; p for challenges to the rule. I don't count foreign wars, or extra-familial foreign invasion. I for the succession passing as Intended, i for not. The latter probably implies a peace failure before or after. ? for ambiguity -- are plots caught by the secret police worth counting as a threat to the peace? If the crown passes to the rightful heir because the heir took it by force I count that as 'i', since no one intends to be killed or deposed."

Hongwu, founder. Chosen son died of illness. -I
Jianwen, grandson. Fought uncles, was overthrown by one. pi
Yongle, uncle. PI.
Hongxi, eldest son. Died very quickly. PI
Xuande, son. PI
Zhengtong, son. captured by Mongols, so brother took over, but he refused to abdicate on return, Zhengtong eventually over threw him. pI?
Jingtai, brother regent-usurper. p-?
Chenghua, son of Zhengtong. Concubine aborted or killed most of his children. P?I
Hongzhi, surviving son. "the sole perpetually monogamous emperor in Chinese history". PI
Zhengde, son. Died childless. PI
Jiajing, grandson of Chenghua. So cruel his concubines plotted to kill him. P?I
Longqing, son. short reign. PI
Wanli, son. Political fight over succession that undermined governance. PI
Taichang, son. died after a month. PI
Tianqi, son. Illiterate carpenter. Uprisings, sonless. pI
Chongzhen, brother. Rebellions, Manchu invasion. pi

I have to say this does seem a lot more stable than the other two. Given the number of sons from concubines, surprisingly little interfamilial fighting. Caveat: Chinese pages probably get less Anglophone attention than English ones, so it's possible there's a bunch of rebellions not mentioned in the short biographies, turning some P into p.

I didn't make many notes of these because it wasn't the point here, but cruelty and incompetence got mentioned a lot, as did emperors going on strike and refusing to do their work, or at least show up personally for meetings.

It's possible Chinese heavy civil service and other institutions add a lot to monarchic stability.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/440376.html

Was at SF's Asian Art Museum today. Pretty good but this isn't about that. While looking at placards I suddenly had the idea of applying my idea of thinking "what else was happening at this time?" to try to anchor diverse events together. Partly for general anchoring, partly to see if I could actually learn Chinese dynastic history at all this time. This is still half-assed, I'm typing largely to learn by typing as much as to be interesting, but anyway.

Dates usually approximate:

Xia: 2000-1600
Shang: 1600-1000, Bronze Age
Zhou: 1000-400? Iron Age?
chaos. Confucius, Buddha, Jain (Mahavira).
Qin: 221-206, well into Hellenistic and rise of Rome
Han: 200 BC - 220 CE. From pre-civil war Roman Republic to a bit after the decline of post-Antonine Rome (death of Marcus Aurelius 180, and this already after plagues; murder of Commodus 193.) I knew Rome and Han China had traded via intermediaries a lot (cf. Gandharan Greco-Buddhist art), this helps refinorce that.
chaos
Tang, 600-900. Dark Ages + Charlemagne, paired with an extensive high point of China.
chaos
Song, late 900 to late 1200s, High Middle Ages. Like Rome/Han, this is a nice pairing -- Song was a great time.
Yuan (Mongols) 1270s to 1360s. Mongols in Europe's abysmal 14th century. Hmm, this would also be the kamikaze period for Japan, and Zheng He's treasure fleet.
Ming: 1368-1644, late medieval to early modern. 1493 told me how half the silver of Potosi went to buy good from China in lieu of decent Ming monetary policy.
Qing (Manchu) 1644-1910 or so.

Japan:
Jomon, -- to 300 BC, Hellenistic
Yayoi, 300-300, Hellenistic to early late antiquity.
Kofun: 300-500. Buddhism to Japan around 550, like Christianity spreading through Dark Age Europe.

Korea: Joseon, 1392-1910.

Middle Ages: Dark Ages or whatever you want to call them, 500-1000. High Middle Ages, 1000-1300 (end of viking raids, monetization, industrialization, Ars Magica 1220, a renaissance.) Late medieval, 1300-1500 (14th-15th centuries, what Crowley was getting away from, famine, Black Death, Hundred Year's War, then Guttenberg in 1450s.)

1500+ modernity, or apparently "the classical period" if you're French. Columbus was 1492 so that makes sense, Americas make 'medieval' totally go out the window. So does printing.

Side bonus: in looking up Chinese dynasties, I was trying to skip past minor short lived dynasties. But some Liao dynasty lasted longer than either segment of the Song! Turned out to be a northern kingdom, Mongolia + northern China. Not Han, but Khitan, and highly egalitarian for women, who were taught to hunt, managed herds and households, and sometimes had government or military posts. Dowager empresses seemed to lead armies pretty often.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/406024.html

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/james-palmer-chinese-youth/

Longish article on Chinese young adults and their relationship with their parents. Their parents survived the Cultural Revolution, and are described as obsessed with security to the point of amorality; lots of bribes, and approval of selling fake drugs to hospitals, and such. The youth are regressing to the secure human mean and want more normal lives and values, and get along better with their grandparents.

"Next door, in prosperous South Korea, with the longest unbroken
Confucian culture in the world, the elderly are poorer, more likely to
still be working, and four times more likely to kill themselves than the
already suicide-prone Korean young. The suicide rate among older
Chinese lags just behind Korea?s, and has tripled in the past decade."

"A Chinese acquaintance of mine, now in his fifties, once described
having to kill his own brother to stop him turning in their parents for
owning banned books."

***

NYC subway rider behavior http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/nyregion/subway-riders-quirks-studied.html

Austerity policies (austerian) may rest on bad arithmetic and accidentally missing data:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/holy-coding-error-batman/
http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally-replicated-reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems#.UW14rDQo2L4.twitter

Myths of Christian persecution and the Age of Martyrs http://chronicle.com/article/The-Myths-Behind-the-Age-of/137423/

URL says it all: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/how-we-got-all-this-great-data-on-american-baby-name-popularity/274989/

***

News is bad for your brain?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli

"In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension
declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why?
Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the
choice not to click, which in itself is distracting. News is an
intentional interruption system"

Transportation options in Jane Austen's world http://www.jasnanorcal.org/ink9.htm

***
Samaritans, the true Jews
http://geocurrents.info/cultural-geography/religion/jewish-or-not-the-samaritans-celebrate-passover-but-a-month-later
most inbred population

Karaites; also Torah+Joshua only, but use standard Passover date
http://geocurrents.info/cultural-geography/religion/karaites-who-are-they-and-where-do-they-live
Samaritans pre-Diaspora, Karaites 8th century Baghdad spinoff?
patrilineal
oldest synagogue in Jerusalem
The largest Karaite community in the U.S. (though mostly of Egyptian
rather than Crimean Karaim origin) resides not far from the GeoCurrents
base, in Daly City

Jews of India
http://geocurrents.info/population-geography/the-jews-of-india

Heterodox Zone
http://geocurrents.info/geopolitics/the-heterodox-zone

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/363311.html

China, wealth, and democracy
http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/3009308.html
China in Venezuela: clashing authoritarian corruption
http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/15/the_trouble_with_authoritarian_joint_energy_ventures

US job seekers being asked for Facebook passwords http://finance.yahoo.com/news/job-seekers-getting-asked-facebook-080920368.html

neutrino communication
http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/3009619.html

possible full theft of the last Canadian election, making a minority a majority through voter manipulation http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/3008313.html

Escher Girls blog on poorly drawn women in comics http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/

Drug culture using Tide detergent as money http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/thieves-rolling-tide-detergent-stores-15922603#.T2ofKsXpFtl

fighting sexism via an IRC counter-bot http://geekfeminism.org/2012/03/19/what-she-really-said-fighting-sexist-jokes-the-geeky-way/
"kwibbian kwibbian kel"

more evidence for Keynesianism http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/fiscal-policy-and-growth-in-europe/

never mind being pro-city, US needs to do away with anti-density policies
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-growth-lesson-america-could-take-from-china/2011/08/25/gIQAxRiU9R_blog.html

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/316811.html

I invite you to guess or recall the answers, without looking them up, and post in comments.

( Answers )

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/300519.html

Rich and Strange Aeons

Entries tagged with china

Instability of the Ming Emperors

Fun with timelines, 1

Links: Chinese, martyrs, Jews, babies, and why lists of links are bad for you

China, democracy, privacy, neutrinos, comic women, cities

When did Christianity reach India, China, and Japan?

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