Several Intriguing Facts You Never Knew About China

[idkthus]

1. Four Great Inventions

Back in the 13th century, people in medieval Europe were shocked seeing barbaric Mongolians blow up Russian castles with massive cannons. The horrible invasion was considered one of the causes of Renaissance. After they realized many Mongolian weapons were stolen from China, many ordinary people and liberal thinker had considered China a model nation to learn from for being civilized, advanced and wealthy. The most well -known evidences are from Marco Polo's books and Francis Bacon's words. It was a theory at that time that the Gunpowder blew up the knightly class, the compass discovered the world market and found the colonies, the printing press and papermaking was the instrument of Protestantism and the regeneration of science in general.

2. Melting pot of ethnicities

If the west considers Chinese a ethnicity, that might be the most mixed one.

First, China has conquered many ethnicities to form such a huge country today and been conquered twice by Mongolians and Manchurians, which greatly changed the genetic makeup of Chinese people from their origin.

For example, China has stepped into central Asia for thousands of years,

And many different races have lived in central Asia as locals, and a few Caucasian mummies have been found in western China, you can find many sources about it with Google. And that's just a small influence, mainly south China, far away from the origin of Chinese civilization, used to have many different aboriginal ethnicities and now they're all mixed into Han Chinese.

Next,ancient China had a very close relationship with Persians and Arabs, the history of business and conflicts among those peoples is as old as silk road. Tang dynasty even had a large war against Arabic empire to struggle for supremacy in central Asia. Ancient China in tang dynasty as former economic center, like America today,already had many foreigners live in their capital and it got more diverse when more and more other races moved to China along with the invasion of Mongolians, which ended up with a new ethnicity, Hui(Asian musilims mixed with Arabs and they're still all over china), and Asian Jews.

CCP today divides people living in China into 56 ethnicities.For example,the western China has over 30million muslims, mainly Uyghur and Hui and other central Asians. The Uyghurs and modern Turks share a same ancestor, Tujue, a powerful regime once existed in northwestern China, they lost the war against ancient China, some fled westwards, some stayed and mixed with other ethnicities.

So, Chinese people are definitely the most mixed East Asians, particularly comparing with Koreans and Japanese.

3. The first democrat republic of Asia

The Revolution of 1911 of China overthrew the 300 years of feudal oppression from Manchurians. The revolutionaries had a discussion and they finally decided to end autocratic monarchy and build a country like America. They had several Congress elections and even several female politicians, and they GAVE people freedom of speech. Please note, at that time most women in the west couldn't vote, and the Japanese were still royal to their emperor.

But that was the reason why many anti-government speeches could b published on the magazines and news paper, and the students protested against the government all the time mostly organized by soviets and Chinese communists. And that was also one of the reasons why the Republic of China was replaced by CCP.

Weird right?

Just look at the map:

The Sun was Japan, the Bear was Russia, the tiger was Britain.

Because all the imperialist counties back in those days never wanted to see a democrat,liberal and strong China. Cause that would threat their vested interest. Because every power got sphere of influence from the former Manchurian regime, they wanna keep it so bad that a healthy and rapid developing new regime was a big threat. They supported warlords and those warlords caused division and endless wars, which destroyed the Chinese economy and democracy.

The worst countries of those were Soviet Russia and Japanese empire, they supported Sun Yat—sen with his national party(KMT) and brought the communism, which took advantage of democracy and freedom of speech to cause tons of anti-government conflicts and riots. The new born government was too week and too liberal to stop them. KMT cooperated with Soviet Unions, accepted the communists to get the money and weapons. The Soviets gave them capital and weapons to develope communist movements in China.

After KMT defeated the Republic of China in the north they started to break with the communst party and finally purged their members. Just when the Chinese red army was gonna be whipped out by KMT like in several months, the Japanese invaded China, they wanted to catch the opportunity of Chinese civil war, a united and stable China was no good for them, the west hold the appeasement policy and ignore the Japanese. China sacrificed a lot during the second anti Japanese war and the worst was during the 8 years of the war, the Chinese red army increased by 100 times.

And plus, after WWII, Stalin supported CCP pretty much on the border but president Truman was a coward. And KMT was corrupt and fucked up like CCP today, so China was almost destined to be a communist country, as you all know, then this country went through some most horrible shit ever happened in human history and it turns out to be abnormal country still remains dictatorial till now.

[Waffles731]

interesting

[idkthus]

thanks

[Anonymous]

Nice take