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Let me tell you guys a story. Once upon a time, there was a … let’s call it a state.
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It was a area, about here, all ruled by a group of people referred to as the “Zhou,”
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and as such the name of this state was also “Zhou.” Now, this might seem pretty strange
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to us, kind of like calling the United States “Obama” because that’s the last name
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of the guy in charge, but keep in mind this area might not have originally had any common
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identity besides that they were all ruled by the Zhou dynasty. They probably spoke different
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languages and had different cultures, but we can’t really know that for sure because
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they didn’t write anything down. The only people who wrote stuff down were the rich,
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educated elites, which is to say the Zhou themselves, who definitely did share a common
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language and culture. Somewhat annoyingly, they didn’t have a real name for their language
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besides just “the proper way to speak.” Now, there was a geographical term I should
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probably mention, “zhongguo.” This term was sometimes used to describe this country,
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region, place, but all it ment was “central state.” Or possibly “central states,”
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because this language doesn’t require you to specify whether things are singular or
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plural, but the point is, “zhongguo” was never a precise word, it was always just a
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kind of vague geographical description. It was a common assumption at the time that the
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center of the world was maximally civilized and that the further away you got from it
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the less civilized the people were, so “zhongguo” literally ment “the middle realm,” but
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implied “the most civilized realm.” It’s kind of like how in the US we sometimes call
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the president the “leader of the free world”. Do any of us actually have any idea what is
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and isn’t part of the “free world”? Definitely the US, probably the rest of NATO,
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and maybe “allies of the US” in general? Is Mexico part of the free world? Turkey?
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India? No one knows, and no one really cares, it’s not supposed to mean anything, it’s
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just a way of saying “our leader is super important and powerful, and also we’re better
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than you.” Same goes for “Zhongguo.” Anyway, eventually the Zhou lost power to
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a new dynasty called the Qin, which itself was quickly replaced by the Han dynasty, and
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so people started calling the political territory itself “Han” just like with the Zhou.
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The Han dynasty adopted the culture of the Zhou, and over time this culture of the elite
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trickled down to everyone else, and eventually everyone was speaking this language that didn’t
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have a name in this country that didn’t have a name. The Han dynasty also expanded
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the country to the south, spreading the language and culture there too. But after that, when
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the Han dynasty fell and the region broke up into a bunch of smaller states, something
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interesting happened. Even though they were politically divided they all still shared
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that common culture of the elites from the Zhou and Han periods. They looked back on
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the time when the Han dynasty ruled as a sort of golden age, and they saw themselves as
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the rightful descendants of that cultural legacy, so it seemed natural to call themselves
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“the people of Han,” even long after the Han state ceased to exist. They still call
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themselves “Han” to this day, although who exactly counts as Han has always been
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kind of vague. Like, originally it seems like the term just referred to the people of the
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original territory of the Zhou to the north, but eventually the term was expanded to include
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the people of the more mountainous south, sense they had also adopted Han culture after
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being conquered by the Han dynasty. So yeah, as the centuries went by the people
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of this region continued to refer to political entities by the families of their rulers or
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whatever region the rules came from, and they continued to refer themselves Han. However,
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the language slowly diverged into a whole bunch of different languages.
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Now, as you might have noticed, I’ve been talking about what in the west we generally
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call “China,” and yet, I’ve managed to do so without ever once actually using
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the word “China” or “Chinese.” That’s because no one in this region actually uses
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those words. The word “China” probably comes from a Persian word which probably comes
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from a Sanskrit word which might have come from the word “Qin,” the name of that
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super-short dynasty that came between the Zhou and Han dynasties. But not only isn’t
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“China” a word Chinese people use, but the entire idea of “China” might not have
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really existed in it’s modern form until Europeans introduced it. Like, in the US and
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the western world more generally we like to think in terms of nation states. Like, this
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country is France. French people live here, and they speak French. We have this instinct
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that political regimes, cultural identity and language should all line up with each
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other geographically to create what we might call a “nation.” But that way of thinking
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used to be pretty foreign to China until contact with Europeans really got serious in the 1800s,
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at which point the Han people started thinking much more in terms of this nation-state model.
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Well, at least, I think? Ok look, talking about a single person’s sense of identity
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and group membership can be really complicated. Talking about that but generalized for a large
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population is extremely tricky. Talking about that but over the course of two thousand years
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is simply beyond the scope of this video. But from where I’m sitting it looks a awful
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lot like the European nation-state concept at the very least substantially influence
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the way Chinese people think about themselves. Before they were Han people who lived in the
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Qing state which happened to include Zhonguo and who spoke a whole bunch of different languages
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descended from Middle Chinese, but with more and more contact with Europeans they started
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thinking in terms of “China” (Zhonguo) “Chinese people” (the Han) and the “Chinese
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Language,” for which they coined a whole new term: Han-yu, literally just “Han Language,”
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which doesn’t really make any sense, because the Han people haven’t spoken a single mutually-intelligible
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language in hundreds of years. As far as I can tell the phrase “Han-yu” basically
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refers to any of the languages the Han people speak, which is less of a language and more
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of a language family. Only one of these modern languages is officially used by the government
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of China, and that’s the one that evolved in the capital, Beijing. A century ago this
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language was called “guanhua” or “the language of officials,” but, somewhat hilariously,
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today the official name for it is “putonghua” or “common language.” Like, in the 1950s
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after the Communist party took over there were calls to use a different official language
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because guanhua was too bourgeois or whatever, but they couldn’t agree on what exactly
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to replace it with so they just slapped a new proletariat-y label on it and hoped no
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one would notice. In English we call it “Mandarin” because the Malay word for “government official”
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was “mantri” and the Chinese were calling it “the language of government officials”
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so we just started using that … by translating it into Malay first, I guess… I’m honestly
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not really sure what happened here. But yeah, it’s not like the idea of the
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nation state was perfect to begin with, but it’s an especially awkward fit on China.
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A big thing I didn’t mention was how there are currently two different countries claiming
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the title of “Zhonguo,” and there’s also some city states which are kind-of-sort-of
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part of the country but not really, but plenty of other people have made videos about that
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so I’m gonna stop here.