Reply #70: a culture is not an empire is not a tradition. but both of you are rather amusing. [View All]

[NuttyFluffers]

China is remarkably refined; but then so is most cultures if you really spend time studying them. they have created complex philosophies and had great intellectual, aesthetic, and theosophical debates. they are also the inheritors of a Chinese tradition and are no longer a contiguous culture, let alone the laughably ludicrous notion of contiguous empire, of the Han Imperial period of around 200 BCE - 200CE. they no longer eat wheat as the main staple of their diet, they use Mandarin pronunciation words over their characters, and the characters themselves have migrated in shape (to speak nothing of simplified Chinese). the list is endless. the reason we give them the "5000 years of continuous history" is to a) please their hagiographic image of themselves and b) most of us don't know better.

i completely agree with your assessment,"I would say China today is vastly different from China 70 years ago, don't you think?" sense of self is vastly complex -- identity politics being all the rage -- but it does bear repeating. just like the Jewish, Greek, Hindustani, and Persian traditions (throw in any others as you please), the traditions are still there, but the cultures have definitely undergone severe transformation, and their territorial areas (let alone boundaries for empires) are all disconnected from their past. honestly, if everyone judged their culture from their tradition, then everyone could say their culture goes back 5000+ years, where on earth do you stop? if you don't speak the same, eat the same, think the same, value things in similar manners, or structure your home and family in the same manner (hello, lack of slaves and new opportunities for women), what nonsensical claims can you have to "same culture"?

people throw out terms easily from different disciplines, and vernacular understandings really do muddle up the waters. normally i don't care, but after this exchange, i thought i should intervene and clear up some things. culture, empire, and tradition, are distinct terms; we do well to not fall into political bumper sticker slogans when talking about such things.

ps: you bring up excellent points about Chinese history. i am glad to see someone as well versed about China on this board. do carry on.