the Nature of Chinese Civilization

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Henry Dixon
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1 ChinaX Transcript Week 4 -- Discussing One Interpretation of the Nature of Chinese Civilization Section 1: Discussing One Interpretation of the Nature of Chinese Civilization So welcome, again. Today, we're discussing one of our readings, the article by David Keightley, and this is a scholarly article. It isn't an original document. It's a scholarly article, and it's a very unusual scholarly article in the sense that it is written some time ago, and is still virtually required reading, certainly among our undergraduate and our graduate students. It's an important article on how to interpret China's present, in some sense, in the light of its ancient past. Tell us, who's David Keightley? Well, David Keightley is a professor, he's now a retired professor, at the University of California, Berkeley. He specialized in ancient China, particularly the Shang dynasty. And you'll remember from last week, our module last week, when we talked about the Shang as the first attested dynasty within its bronzes and it's divination and things like this. Keightley did something else. Oracle bones have been known now for over 100 years, but Keightley also became a specialist in the reading of the inscriptions on oracle bones. And has been one of the people who used oracle bones to reconstruct the history of the Shang dynasty. Now, in this article, you're going to see that he takes that history and argues that, in fact, particularly from the Shang, but in comparison to Mediterranean culture as well, that we can really see the path that China followed as the Neolithic twig. Twig was bent exactly. The Neolithic twig was bent, so went China's history. This is a kind of a question that has a contemporary resonance. Chinese leaders often talk about China, [SPEAKING CHINESE] Chinese, something with special, in 1

2 this case, socialism with Chinese characteristics. Here Keightley argues that there are truly Chinese cultural characteristics that are not of the last century or last two centuries, but go back to Neolithic society. And that what makes Chinese Chinese, in some sense, not preordained, but set at a very early stage in that everything else is articulated on top of this very strong foundation. OK, Peter, we have a bunch of reading questions for this, and indeed, 23 reading questions. Why do we have all these questions? OK, well, the reason is this. Is that is a very important article, but it's also a scholarly article, which means it has lots of footnotes. It's lots of information in it, and we thought for people who have been out of college for a while, or have not yet gone to college, it might be helpful to just have a sense of the question to ask when you read each section of the article. Some of these are just questions that pertain to one paragraph or two paragraphs, but we thought this might be helpful to people. We're not expecting you to write down answers or anything, but just as you read, to see if you can answer these questions. If you do, you'll understand exactly what Keightley is saying. OK, and so the first question that we ask is the big question, what is the big question that Keightley is asking. And that's the question, in some sense, of what makes China Chinese? And so let's assume that if you agree with Professor Keightley's article, what are the implications of this? How do you defend this point of view? Well, you know I'm not going to answer that now, because I think that's what we want to do is give everybody online the chance to read the article, to go through these reading questions for themselves, and to then join the discussion forum, where they can respond to each other, and say do they agree with Keightley or not. Do they think that's what he sees in the Shang set the definitive path for Chinese history? And after they've had a chance to discuss things, we're going to come back next week, and we're going to say something about what we've read and how we understand the article. And whom among you, we agree with. 2

3 Indeed. So thank you. Section 2: Professor Bol and Kirby discuss "Early Civilization in China: Reflections on How It Became Chinese" So we're here to discuss, again, the David Keightley article, a really important article that asks the question, and tries to answer it, what makes China Chinese? And Professor Keightley argues that what makes China conspicuously Chinese in terms of social organization and many other areas can be found a very long time ago in the Shang dynasty. And as he put it, "as the Neolithic twig was bent, so did Chinese society grow." So Peter, is this true? Is he right? Give me the best argument you can in support of Professor Keightley's arguments. Well, a lot of the people who had comments on this felt he was right, found it very persuasive, as you know. And when we taught this in class, I'd say more than half of our students were persuaded by it. So let me tell you what they thought was persuasive. First of all, they thought that if you look at Greece and at China, and at Shang China, we actually do see this great difference, that the Greeks on their pottery, for example, at designs of individuals, Achilles, Zeus, the gods, who are really presented as individuals, who are struggling and fighting. It's a world of discord. It's not particularly harmonious. And in China, we don't see that. Think of the Shang bronze with its symmetrical designs and everything fitting together. We For the Greeks, world in the afterlife is a problem. For the Chinese or for the Shang, the kings go into the realm of Di, the 3

4 high god, and they're there as ancestors. There's no real division between the living and the dead. If we think of the Shang cities, of what we know of them, they're these very nicely laid out north, south, east, west cities with grids. Think of the helter skelter way of these commercial Greek cities. It does seem that from this that in Greece we have a society that's somewhat more competitive, discordant, not harmonious, harmony doesn't have a high value. Where culture heroes are people we might not want to emulate. Achilles, he's a hero but is necessarily what we want to be. But a Yao and a Shun, for example, as cultural heroes are people that are models for us in the Chinese case. Our heroes, the heroes between the two are very different. So if you generalize at that level, it seems to me that we end up having this sense that Chinese don't have much individuality and tend to work in harmonious groups. And the Western tradition is one of very significant individuality and creativity. OK. So there are two big problems with this that I see. I don't see any problems with this. Well, I would say that our students see a lot of problems. For example, first of all, if Professor Keightley is right, there's no point in having any more modules in this course, because basically everything is preordained. Ah, this is the deal with the twig again. So we might as well just stop right here and liberate you. Well, we could do that. You're most welcome to leave. 4

5 Bye. Second, though, particularly if you assume it has implications for contemporary Chinese society, what it gives you is a caricature. Both the Chinese and international caricature of what constitutes Chinese society, a society that is communal as opposed to having individuals with ambitions in it, a society which is hierarchical as opposed to one with great mobility, a society that is defined by conceptions of harmony that are more profound or more enduring than those to be found in the West. And yet anyone who knows the history of the last 200 years in China, these are profoundly unharmonious centuries. It doesn't explain how China remains the longest continuous civilization on earth, constantly reinventing itself, sometimes within tradition, sometimes without. It doesn't explain how Chinese science can be among the top in the world today. It doesn't explain the revolutions and the successes, the extraordinary rise to prominence of Chinese entrepreneurs today. There's a lot that it doesn't explain and it leads us possibly, it seems to me, with a very simple minded understanding of culture without conceptualizing how cultures change over time. And this is a culture, if it exists as a Chinese culture, in the Neolithic that will have multiple, not just Chinese, cultural influences on it over time. So give me the argument in support of the negative view. No, I'm not going to do that anyone. You've taken my best lines, in fact. I'm sorry. But what I would suggest for all of you is that next week we're going to be talking about Confucius and the Confucians, his two great followers, Mencius and Xunzi. And when you watch that, ask yourself, what is the Chinese sense or the Confucius sense-- it's not the same thing as the Chinese sense-- but the Confucius sense of the individual and the responsibility of the individual towards family and society and politics. 5

6 And I think when we do that then we'll have another way of reflecting back on David Keightley's very, very large and important article, but one that makes claims that seems to me that you've said we need to be very cautious about. Thanks a lot for joining us and see you next week. 6

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