In her book Taiwan’s Imagined Geography Emma Tung presents the history of the relationship between China and Taiwan beginning in 1683 and ending in 1895. In this work she presents and defends the crucial role of travel writing in the Qing Empire moving past seeing Taiwan as a “ball of mud” without worth to incorporating the island into the Chinese empire. The majority of the book is a summarization of the history of Taiwan after it was conquered by China, as well as the way in which travel writing was used in developing the Chinese’ early beliefs about Taiwan. Despite having captured Taiwan the Xangqi Emperor did not feel that the island was of much use or importance. His court agreed and proposed to dispose of the land once the Chinese had been removed from the area, however a man named Shi Lang disagreed and argued the merits of the island. The popular opinion of Taiwan was influenced by its distance from mainland China, the socio-political climate, and lore applied from popular mythologies due to the lack of true information about Taiwan and its people. The predominant belief being that the people were savages and the island fell outside of the natural limits of China and should not be included in the domain. The beliefs were also influenced by the lack of political connection between China and Taiwan – who unlike Korea did not acknowledge China as superior and pay tribute to the large empire .In addition spiritual beliefs about the cosmos placed Taiwan as a wilderness
When comparing Han China and Classical Rome, many political, geographical, and religious similarities can be found, though many differences are also prevalent. Though Roman and Han political structures both emphasized bureaucracies, they came to them quite differently. Through copious amounts of expansion, both societies spread culture and earned money, though expansion was eventually their downfalls. Their religions differed immensely, with Rome emphasizing polytheism and Han China focusing on Confucianism. The differences and similarities between these two civilizations are to be discussed in this essay.
Nowadays the wide array of transportation means and infrastructures at our disposal has made it relatively easy for us to travel from one country to another; even when those countries are thousands of miles away from each other. However, during the 13th and 14th centuries, travelling was not that easy. Yet, two men, the Italian tradesman Marco Polo and the Moroccan Jurist Ibn Battuta became famous for having managed to perform extremely long distance journeys away from their home country. At the end of their long travels, both men shared their experiences with the world via the books, The Travels of Marco Polo and The Travels of Ibn Battuta. An analysis of those two texts reveals two things. On one hand, Marco Polo remained a cultural
Next is the evidence provided by the works from their methodology. For The Travels of Marco Polo, the evidence for Polo’s conclusions are his own experiences while in China. Therefore, Polo’s work provided Europe a more unfiltered and objective view of China in all its extravagance to Polo and later the Europeans. This unfiltered view point meant that Polo was inaccurate in some of his information. When describing Kublai Khan’s palace, Polo remarked how large the walls are and how extravagant and magnificent it was. The palace itself was in fact just an enclosed royal park used as an encampment. Polo’s observations and vocabulary used to describe the palace showed that European’s viewed China and what they did in awe, even when the Chinese were acting similar to the Europeans in many aspects.
In the text, “Letter to Queen Victoria”, written by Lin Zexu in 1839, he implores the Queen of Great Britain, Queen Victoria, to stop her subjects from selling opium to the Chinese public. Zexu does so by exemplifying the past relationship of China and Britain, by moral persuasion, and by warnings and threats. However, Lin Zexu’s assumption of calling British subjects as Barbarian and compliant to Chinese rule ineffectively persuades.
The Han dynasty was a golden era for China. It saw the greatest land confiscation of the nation’s history and economic success. In this paper I will be focusing on the structure of the national government, the monopolizing of iron and salt, the Yumen Pass and the Yellow Turban rebellion. Join me as we take a trip back in time to visit a time in Chinas history that is highly revered.
In terms of the Chinese tribute system we examined in class, the leaders of China’s voyages dealt with leaders of countries they visited by treating them based on the tribute gifts they received. Under Confucian civilization, China often received tribute from the foreign states they visited and gave them Chinese products and recognition of their authority and sovereignty in return. There were several tribute states to China including neighboring countries such as Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Borneo, Indonesia, South Asia and Central Asia. However when countries stopped paying tribute to China, there were often tensions. During the Zheng He expeditions many goods were carried to build tribute relationships between the Ming Dynasty and newly discovered kingdoms. An example of the a tribute gift given was an eyeglass given to Zhu Di by Parameswara of Malaca. “Of all the tributes Zhu Di received that summer from the many envoys
McNeil is also critical of Landes’ preoccupation in the happenings of Europe alone, while remaining dismissive of all economic and technological accomplishments of China after 1 000 A.D. While Landes dismisses the economic demise of China as a “weird pattern of isolated initiatives and Sisyphean discontinuities,” McNeil instead portrays the rapid innovations of the Sung era, and how they were damaged and disrupted by Mongol conquests and contained within the Ming dynasty, thereby showing that Europe did not surpass Europe in achievement due to their own pre-eminence.
1. Trade rights and religious perceptions affected how Matteo Ricci viewed relations with china by taking a different strategy than the other missionaries. “…the Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) encouraged his followers to immerse themselves in the language and to become conversant with the rich traditions of Chinese literature (Source 21.2, Ricci, Matteo, in Patterns of World History, Vol. 2, p. S21-4)”. Instead of limiting their training in Chinese language and culture and focusing merely on the conversion of the poor, the Jesuits instead immersed themselves in the Chinese language and high culture of the empire. They gained recognition through their advanced knowledge in mathematics, astronomy, military science and other European learning required by the imperial
2. Albert M. Craig, William A. Graham, Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, Frank M. Turner. “China‘s First Empire”. The Heritage of World Civilizations. 1: 1152 (2007, 2005, 2002) Pearson Education, Inc. New
Marta Hanson’s book, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine, details the great importance of separating China into northern and southern regions. The Kangxi Emperor of Manchuria, who ruled from 1662-1772, stressed that the differences in soil, food, and climate dramatically influenced the health of the people that resided either north or south of the Great Wall. In consequence, many of Manchuria’ public health policies were subjective to what Hanson calls geographic imaginations. The following insert will elaborate on the following: explain the concept of actor’s category in relation to geographic imaginations, focus on the case of small pox, and look at how geographic imaginations relate to health policy management and even segregation.
He argues that the Chinese figure adds more elements of horror to the Fontane's novel, given the warring situations that prevailed in the Sino-Japan (Robert, p. 5). The author depicts a clear outline of events that took place since 1876 and how these changes have been addressed in the novel, Effi Briest. Besides, his work has analysed the Europeans hold the notion that they were superior to the various colonies. However, this feeling of superiority did not entirely make them feel safer (p, 9).
There have always been skeptics of his work. Today, there are many historians that are reexamining Marco Polo’s alleged journey to China. The route that Polo documents himself taking must be studied to determine if he could have physically traveled across such an expanse of land. Polo’s
Hong Kong has been commonly constructed as and known to both tourists as a thoroughly metropolitan city, of which its modern architecture, especially with its densely populated skyline around the Victoria Harbour, and boisterous and fast paced lifestyle involving non-stop eating and shopping take centre stage as a few of Hong Kong’s many selling points (Choi, Chan & Wu, p 364). Much of Hong Kong’s status as an economic success could be attributed to its harbour. After Hong Kong was ceded to the British after the First Opium war with the Chinese Qing dynasty in 1842, the island, which was previously a sleepy “collection of fishing villages” (Choi, 2007, p.8), became one of Britain’s most important trading ports for spices and tea from China (p. 9). The development of Hong Kong under British colonial rule has undoubtedly influenced the character of Hong Kong as a tourist destination, with many of its promoted sites, such as the tramways on Hong Kong Island, the Peak tram up Victoria Peak, and the Star Ferry all being historical modes of public transportation still operating today. This tour will focus on the Star Ferry, exploring its symbolic importance to Hong Kong identity and how past and contemporary events that have occurred in the physical area of the Star Ferry Pier where the ferry operates from have been discursively co-opted into, and representative of a greater contestation of hegemonic ideologies surrounding Hong Kong’s identity, as part of an “opposition
Mori readily points out what our government is doing is simply transforming Taiwan into another Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Public China; everyone, to some extent, knows what “special” means here. Accordingly, people gathered together, most of whom were students, and were defending their homeland on March 18th, 2014.
The main aspiration of the Kuomintang (KMT) officials of enacting the Martial Law was that they wanted Taiwan to become bastion for the future recovery of mainland People’s Republic of China (Chao and Myers, 2000: 387). If the communist regime would ever lose support and