Book extract on Chinese history

China’s people take pride and inspiration from their history, but it can be burdensome too in some respects. The Sinologist Lucian Pye referred to “the millstone of greatness”, noting that “awareness of the greatness of Chinese civilization, together with an appreciation of the distinctiveness of ‘Chineseness,’ is universal”, not least among the Chinese themselves. They never forget that they are the heirs to a unique, identifiably Chinese civilization which arose in the valley of the Yellow River and endured continuously through the last four thousand years of recorded history. On the one hand, the burden is to have so much to live up to; on the other, it is a source of considerable frustration that their universally acknowledged greatness has so seldom translated into peace, prosperity, and a good life for the Chinese people.

Lu Xun, China’s great modern writer and scathing social critic, captures that frustration as he dismisses the entire enterprise of Chinese historiography:

But however fine the phrases of those splendour-loving scholars, or however grand the expressions they use in their chronicles, such as "the rise of the Hans," "the age of Han expansion," or "the age of Han resurgence," while appreciating that their motives are of the best, we cannot but feel their wording is too ambiguous. A much more straightforward mode of expression would be:

1. The periods when we longed in vain to be slaves.
2. The periods when we succeeded in becoming slaves for a time.

These periods form a cycle of what earlier scholars call "times of good rule" and "times of confusion." [Lu Xun National Characteristics 2 150-]

Lu Xun was writing his polemics during yet another time of confusion, after one Chinese empire had fallen, before what was to come had really taken shape. If he was not a man of the left, he certainly admired the Soviet Union and thought its model worth considering for the modernization, democratization, and independence of China. He includes a reminder to us that down through the ages, the great historic achievements of great men were the endeavor of one-twentieth, one-fiftieth, or as little as one-hundredth of the population, of no positive moment to the great mass of the Chinese people who labored mutely on the land, desperately trying to stay alive, produce enough to pay taxes, and escape undue attention of the Emperor’s officials. But when the great men failed or turned out to be evil men, it was the common folk who paid with their lives, hundreds of millions of lives, so many that the mind simply balks.