Why do Chinese novels keep saying they have 5000 years of history but they really don't ?

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ziad

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Why do Chinese novels keep saying they have 5000 years of history but they really don't ?

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    1. ziad Apr 18, 2018
      now that makes sense thanks
    2. lychee Apr 18, 2018
      @ziad well, it’s not that it’s “fictional” per-say. The issue is that the ancient Chinese have had a longer tradition of writing down history than most other civilizations.

      Imagine that you dig up a 1000 year old scroll and it says: “2483 years ago, King XYZ reigned for 42 years and had 4 sons, named blah blah blah”.

      In modern historical tradition, digging up a sheet of paper that says X happened is not sufficient evidence to call it “real”. In modern Western archaeology, until we dig up an artifact of the period and are able to carbon date it, the Western historical tradition regards the paper claim as “legendary” purely because there is not sufficient evidence to confidently say it has occurred.

      However, just because somethat has “legendary” status doesn’t mean that it’s pure fantasy or unreal. It just means we haven’t been able to dig something up from it (as of today).

      A classic example was that Troy was regarded as a purely “legendary” for the longest time until the archaeological site was discovered at the turn of the 20th Century, upgrading its status from “legendary” to “real”.

      Similarly speaking, the Xia dynasty of China was regarded by Westerners as a “legendary” dynasty until the first archaeological artifacts were dug up circa 1959, so now it is considered a “real dynasty” in the textbooks.

      So about the dating — Chinese paper records have the names of every single consecutive ruler and the years of their reigns since the Yellow Emperor, which if you date assuming the records are accurate, takes you to around 2700 BC. This is the number that the Chinese usually cite.

      However, there’s no archaeological evidence that has confirmed the existence of any dynasties before the Xia dynasty. You can either conclude that archaeologists just haven’t found the sites yet, or it is pure fantasy after all. In either case, anything before Xia is assigned to “legendary” status to Western historians.
    3. ziad Apr 18, 2018
      no i other words they don't have 5000 years history is just a really fictional calendar
      (BS)
    4. Clozdark Apr 18, 2018
      Yup based on chinese calendar
      ziad likes this.
    5. AliceShiki Apr 17, 2018
      In other words, they have 5000 years of history, you just didn't know about it.
    6. ziad Apr 17, 2018
      so its all based on a calendar no real history ?
    7. Clozdark Apr 17, 2018
      Continuous year numbering

      Occasionally, nomenclature similar to that of the Christian era has been used, such as[6]

      Anno Huángdì (黄帝紀年), referring to the beginning of the reign of the Yellow Emperor, 2698+AD=AH
      Anno Yáo (唐尧紀年), referring to the beginning of the reign of Emperor Yao, 2156+AD=AY
      Anno Gònghé (共和紀年), referring to the beginning of the Gonghe Regency, 841+AD=AG
      Anno Confucius (孔子紀年), referring to the birth year of Confucius, 551+AD=AC
      Anno Unity (統一紀年), referring to the beginning of the reign of Qin Shi Huang, 221+AD=AU
      No reference date is universally accepted. The most popular is the Christian Era, such as in "Today is gongli (GC) 1984 nian (year)... nongli(CC)...".

      On January 2, 1912, Sun Yat-sen declared a change to the official calendar and era. In his declaration, January 1, 1912 is called Shíyīyuè 13th, 4609 AH which assumes an epoch (1st year) of 2698 BCE. This declaration was adopted by many overseas Chinese communities outside Southeast Asia such as San Francisco's Chinatown.[7]

      In the 17th century, the Jesuits tried to determine what year should be considered the epoch of the Han calendar. In his Sinicae historiae decas prima (first published in Munich in 1658), Martino Martini (1614–1661) dated the ascension of the Yellow Emperor to 2697 BC, but started the Chinese calendar with the reign of Fuxi, which he claimed started in 2952 BCE. Philippe Couplet's (1623–1693) Chronological table of Chinese monarchs (Tabula chronologica monarchiae sinicae; 1686) also gave the same date for the Yellow Emperor. The Jesuits' dates provoked great interest in Europe, where they were used for comparisons with Biblical chronology.

      Modern Chinese chronology has generally accepted Martini's dates, except that it usually places the reign of the Yellow Emperor in 2698 BC and omits the Yellow Emperor's predecessors Fuxi and Shennong, who are considered "too legendary to include".

      Starting in 1903, radical publications started using the projected date of birth of the Yellow Emperor as the first year of the Han calendar. Different newspapers and magazines proposed different dates. Jiangsu, for example, counted 1905 as year 4396 (use an epoch of 2491 BCE), whereas the newspaper Ming Pao (明報; 明报) reckoned 1905 as 4603 (use an epoch of 2698 BCE). Liu Shipei (劉師培; 1884–1919) created the Yellow Emperor Calendar, now often used to calculate the date, to show the unbroken continuity of the Han race and Han culture from earliest times. Liu's calendar started with the birth of the Yellow Emperor, which he determined to be 2711 BC. There is no evidence that this calendar was used before the 20th century.[8] Liu calculated that the 1900 international expedition sent by the Eight-Nation Alliance to suppress the Boxer Rebellion entered Beijing in the 4611th year of the Yellow Emperor.
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