The Beginning

Hello! This is going to be a blog that I'll be maintaining, probably haphazardly, largely dealing with Chinese history. As most readers are probably aware, China has a long and storied history, dating back (depending on who you ask) between four and five thousand years. Throughout that vast span of time, the Chinese historical canon sees the rise and fall of heroes and tyrants, emperors and kings. The history of CHina saw the rise and fall of 11 or 12 great Dynasties (again depending on who you ask), wedged between times of great chaos and the splitting of the Empire. Indeed, the opening line of Luo Guanzhong's famed Romance of the Three Kingdoms is as follows:

話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分

Translated, it means “It is a general truism of the world, that that which is long united must divide, and that which is long divided must unite”.

If any general trends were to be seen in Chinese history, that truism must be at the forefront.

I will start this blog with an examination into what is considered by most Chinese to be the first Dynasty – the Xia Dynasty.

The Xia Dynasty is one which is shrouded in myth. No written record can be traced to the time period in which it was reputed to have existed – starting between 2205BCE and 1989BCE, and ending between 1766BCE and 1558BCE. As such, many modern scholars discount the Xia Dynasty as having existed at all.

Why then begin the blog with an examination into a Dynasty that may not have even existed? Because even if it were true that the Xia was a story invented by the Zhou as has been contended by some scholars, the Xia remains an important part of Chinese history, even as a foundational myth.¹

The Xia Dynasty was supposedly founded by Yu the Great, who must have been an awesome guy indeed to be granted the posthumous epithet of ‘The Great’. What was so great about him?

Chinese Heartland, or the Central Plains. We'll be seeing a lot of this area.

Well, according to myth, the Chinese heartland (which is located in the Yellow River basin, in modern day Henan, South Hebei, the southern part of Shanxi and the western part of Shandong provinces) was at the time of his life inundated with constant flooding and other water related unpleasantness. Yu’s father had spent nine years trying to control the flooding, building a large network of dikes and dams along the banks of the Yellow River. His plan failed, and he was duly executed. (Or not, depending on the version of the story you read).  As such, the task was left to Yu. Yu had different ideas to his poor old dad, and decided to build a bunch of irrigation channels and the like, rather than damming the flood itself.

The result of all this work? Chinese myth and traditional history credit Yu with the creation of the agricultural society that graces China for the next four thousand years.

 Historically, the story is generally thought to be an allegory for successive settlements on the Yellow River which steadily shifted towards agricultural pursuits.² Yu ascended the throne after it was bequeathed to him by Shun, who deemed him the most worthy. Yu in turn handed it to his son, beginning the Dynastical tradition of inheritance deeming succession, not ability. The last king of the Xia, Jie, was said to be corrupt, and was overthrown by Tang, the first king of the Shang Dynasty.

As said above, the Xia Dynasty is shrouded in myth. Most historians tend to think it as fictional, but it is still deemed to be the first Dynasty in most lists of Dynasties.

1. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art and Cosmos in Early China, Sarah Allan

2. David Hawkes