Talk:History of China/Archive 2

Naming Conventions, etc.
Confusing naming conventions of Chinese rulers and people have been observed even though there are some guidelines on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (chinese). Please apply those ideas if one wants to write a new article of Chinese history, considering the enormous number of people and information about China. User:kt2

Mosstoh reverted a whole lot of legimate editing I did earlier today. To Mosstoh, please do not revert major edits without discussion or comment! Clearly English is not your first language, you should accept that others may make legitimate changes to your text. Another gripe: all of your changes have no comment! This is very frustrating for those editing the same wiki, particularly as you make tens of changes in a row! (also posted to Mosstoh's talk page). I would like to propose a revert of the first section of the article to that which I edited. Could some others take a look and give their opinions please? -- prat


 * That revert by Mosstoh was bad form so I reverted back to your last version (which is easier to read and is more grammatically correct). Mosstoh will have to start from your version and add to it. --mav


 * Mosstoh - From my understanding of the history (of which I don't pretend to be an expert), you did put up some interesting ideas that haven't been seen on Wikipedia before. Feel free to drop me a line on my talk page but just a reminder - please discuss major edits before attempting edits. Wikipedia is built from cooperation, not from idiosyncratic views. Thanx User:kt2


 * Would you mind discuss your change here before putting them onto the page? Your work introduced new elements into the articles but required quite a bit of refining on prose. My last edit was just some grammatical change of interpretation. Thanx User:kt2

Hate to sound like I'm whinging, but User:Mosstoh has just made a second silent revert to the original version. I overwrote it, and copied & pasted to preserve other data added in the meantime, but this is getting tiresome! -- prat

Same here. Mosstoh, can you incorporate your interpretations instead of wholesale edition of the article? User:kt2

What has happened to this article? It needs dramatic rewriting, and probably a wholescale reversion to a much earlier version to make it salvageable. It seems as though one user has effectively highjacked this article and turned a superior article into an inferior one. I have every sympathy with prat, kt2 and others over their complaints, going by what has happened to this article. Maybe the starting point should be to suggest what was the latest best version of this article and revert to it, or should a wholescale rewriting of the text start from the version here. Either way, something has to be done to this article. We should be rewriting articles to improve them, not disimprove them, though it does appear that the disimproving in the work of one or two individuals who have been ignoring the advice and work of everyone else. FearÉIREANN 07:19 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I suggest a revert to this version and then to merge-in useful bits added by other users and even from the user who did the dramatic rewrite. Also, 202.156.2.91 reverted my revert without comment the day I left on holiday and Mosstoh (who almost certainly is the same person) began editing from that version again. This is not at all in the wiki spirit and this person's prose is terrible - not to mention that he removed a good deal of material that was here before and very annoyingly makes dozens of edits in a row which makes the edit history useless. --mav

Im not 202, please dont make such hypothesis on me, its cruel. And if you have any problem with reading Chinese fonts on this revert version, please use the encoding instead of complaining, btw, that revert version u shown is ludicrous. I think we should all start it with the current one. -- reply


 * If you are not "202" then why did you write the above as 202.156.2.91? Hm? --mav


 * I agree with a revert. I stopped contributing with this page after Mosstoh's continual revert and (his/her) constant ignoring of other wikipedians.  Mosstoh: it seems that you take changes to your prose as personal attacks rather than considering them as potential improvements.  Here's a very small example.  The last half of one sentence in the first paragraph reads along the lines of 'since the yellow lord (noah)'.  It is factually incorrect (it is based on Chinese legend rather than archaeological evidence).  Also, the 'yellow lord' is normally translated 'yellow emperor' (even though this is technically incorrect when one takes an emperor to be defined as one ruling over an empire, and considers the most current archaeological evidence pointing towards a multiplicity of contemporary kingdoms existing in northern china during the supposed Xia/Shang period).  Your reference to Noah is probably not suitable in such an introductory paragraph; for two reasons.  Firstly, this comparison is not widely used, and secondly it relies upon a knowledege of Christian beliefs.  I know this may be foreign to many Chinese, but in fact the west isn't all Christian.  In fact, here in Australia, Christianity is in significant decline!  I could go on .. but I won't.  In short, your contributions are valued but you must realise that they may be significantly edited because;
 * a) Not all of them seem to be based upon an objective, archaeological viewpoint (such information is fine to include, however, if accompanied with sources and appropriate statements about widespread Chinese belief); and
 * b) English is not your first language; your prose is simply not of the same quality as a native speaker.
 * -- prat

I dont do that for personnal attack, Yellow Emperor was based on legend before it was written down into historical accounts, we're still refering to these account instead of recently folk tales among Chinese. Technically it should be Yellow Lord, emperor refer to huangdi which was conined by Ying Zheng 2,000 years later. First, Noah was born before the beliefs of Christianly hence he had nothing to do with that and secondly the beliefs reached europe much lately. -- reply

This page has now been reverted back to the community-edited version of the 31st of May last. It is regrettable to have to do that but the version created since is inaccurate, littered with mistranslations and is poorly written. It also was the work of one person who ignored the contributions of others and make major changes against their wishes. Apologies to all those who added in spelling corrections, etc in the meantime but from talking to people who worked on this page, there really was no choice but to go back to the last most widely worked on page, which reflected the consensus of contributors and had english of a standard that an english-language encyclopædia could stand over. FearÉIREANN 02:06 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've been going through this article starting from the bottom and so far it looks like most of the work Mosstoh/202 has done is to obscure widely-known transliterations with another transliteration system. For example Sun Yet-Sen was changed to Sun Zhongsan. I've also noticed a great deal of needless and distracting use of Unicode after nearly every Chinese term and name. This is not desirable in an overview article like this and that information is best suited for the first line of a biography or a term and not here (a great many browsers will render this is a series of question marks or boxes). Another thing that I've seen is embedded links to Google searches that are in Chinese. I fail to see how that is useful and it certainly is not a standard thing to do here in wikiland. Well, back to copyediting. ---mav 03:06 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I merged-in all the non-Mosstoh/202 edits that relate to the current text. I tried to find things I could salvage from Mosstoh/202's version but I couldn't. Boy is this page's history a mess. --mav 03:21 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Removed statement about common writing system bridging accents and dialects. This is a bit misleading since the current accents and dialects formed a very long time after the writing system.

Also the relationship between the dialects and Chinese writing is much more complex than that statement makes appear. After the Tang dynasty or so, the form of Chinese using in formal writing was not very similar to the spoken Chinese.

--- Roadrunner

-

This generalization also bothers me....


 * Whenever China was conquered by nomadic tribes, as in the 4th, 13th (Mongols) and 17th centuries, the conquerors sooner or later adopted the ways of the "higher" Chinese civilization.

The Mongols managed to retain a distinct identity.

So does the Manchus with their pigtails... -- reply

-

Sorry this sound pretty non-standard history....


 * Accodring to the Hebrew's Genesis, "Sin", a brother of Heth (Hittite), has occurrences in variant forms in the Far East, moreover, those who came from the Far East to trade with the Scythians were called Sinae (Sin), Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer, referred to China (Far East) as the land of Sinim or Sin. In Egyptian monuments the Hittite peoples were depicted with prominent noses, full lips, high check-bones, hairless faces, varying skin color from brown to yellowish and reddish, straight black hair and dark brown eyes. Many cuniform scholars have noted the similarities between Sumerian and Chinese.

People have also noted the similarities between Chinese and hieroglyphics, Mayan writing and everything else that they don't understand. This is not a mainstream view of history among historians of China. I strongly suspect that historians of the Middle East probably don't think much of it either.

Who are you, I hope you understand the Sumerian is just a figurative example. -- reply

- Mosstoh stop it now or this page will be protected. Several people have explained in some detail why your version is inferior. This is a community written website and the community has spoken. --mav

Oh well, I do understand your job mav, so please revert that back to MAY 28 2003, before I did the prose. -- reply


 * A great deal of work has been done since then so no. Your edits are also a part of this page but the edits you made that are reflected in the "community version" have been copyedited and cleaned-up. You are part of the Wikipedia community too so your cleaned-up edits are valid. --mav 04:49 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Oh mav, could you please remove these links from that revert, I do not like my Maps to be included. -- reply


 * That is fine with me. Oh, you can type three ~ in a row to sign your messages. :) --mav

mav you such a nice person, I had seen your pic. :) -- reply

Deletion of Jiuzhou

A paragragh was devoted to explain how the Qin conquest fitted nicely with the ideology of Jiuzhou, which was promoted since the Period of Warring States. Does it imply that Qin Shihuangdi unified China based on this ideology? Shihuangdi has been known for his zealous support of Legalism, which was observed in executiions of Confuscianists and burning of books. Any Confuscianist view was unlikely to be adopted even if the Confuscianist Shangshu had quoted Jiuzhou. kt2 22:46 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Zhao Tuo & Two Guangs
Wow, messy page history ;) Anyway, made lots of minor formatting changes, and changed what appeared to be the only Wade-Giles names left (names which had been written in Pinyin in a different part of the article - very confusing). I couldn't understand the last sentences of the following paragraph (under Chinese Empire) - bad English or otherwise unclear expression.


 * ''[...]structure collapsed. Zhao Tuo (&#36249;&#20311;) took over Guangdong along with Guangxi, while the aboriginal leader Wuzhu (&#28961;&#35576;) have Fujian and Zhejiang, the Xiongnu emanated in Qin prefectures in the Ordos.

Changed Wuzhu have to Wuzhu held (just guessing by context), but I think someone who genuinely understands the subject should revise this paragraph. Oskar, Jul 27

The sentence is removed. Even if they are true, they are just sideline in the mainstream Chinese history. BTW, we need an article about the brief period of disorientation in China between the end of Qin Dynasty and the beginning of Han Dynasty-it is a background of Chinese chess and many interesting Chinese stories. wshun 22:23 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Organization
Some other countries (e.g. History of the United States or History of Germany) have their articles divided into series. Each subarticle has the following box: [removed box]

This could be something we could apply here, given the length of the article and the potential to add more. --Jiang 06:22 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Sure. The format of History of Germany is nice. We have already articles on each Chinese dynasty, so reformat should not be that hard. Wshun.


 * Just don't divide it arbitrary/randomly. --Menchi 06:35 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Like Muscovy table, it looks friendly with explicit titles. --Menchi 01:34 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

We could divide it by dynasty, but should periods such as the Spring and Autumn Period be included, which overlap dynasties? In any case the articles are too thin, and need to be beefed up before we link them. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cntoc.html is a good place to find this info (it's public domain). And how about the current article? Should it be kept as an more extensive overview or trimmed down? --Jiang 01:45 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Update: I already incorporated the LOC text into the individual dynasties are started new articles (e.g. Hundred Schools of Thought). --Jiang

On second thought, divide it by years might be better. The articles about dynasties are really too thin, not much about cultural and diplomatic development. But since it happens to Chinese version also, I'm afraid the task maybe too difficult right now. wshun 04:29, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * It would be easier to expand the dynasty articles than to start from scratch and repeating everything already in the dynasty articles (why do that?). The problem with going by dynasties is that the series may become to long and eras (Warring States Period, etc.) may be cut off. --Jiang 04:51, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No strong opinion on that. I wonder what is the best title for the period between the fall of Qin and the rise of Han? Any idea? wshun 05:00, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * "Political unrest..." or "...turmoil.."?
 * There are those power struggle between most large dynasties. Should they all get an article? They probably belong better to the end of the previous large dynasty.
 * --Menchi 05:09, Aug 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * Qin dynasty is too short, this period could be considered as the extension of Warring States Period. Since many famous Chinese figures lived during this period, it deserved its own article.  Moreover, there are only three gaps of no dynasties: Qin-Han, Tsui-Tang and Yuan-Ming.  Well, usually labelled "The struggle between Chu and Han", but it doesn't look like a good name. wshun 05:30, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * "Chu-Han struggle"? --Menchi 05:37, Aug 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * Our Timeline of Chinese history seems to ignore those periods. If they're insiginificant enough (my Chinese history is very murky), then they can be tacked onto the succeeding or preceeding dynasty. But how are we to separate this? If it's by dynasty, I think it comes to about 17/18 articles in the seried. That's too much. --Jiang


 * Our Timeline of Chinese history is very bad, I should remark. Noted that there are series of dynasties treated as single periods.  For example, Southern and Northern Dynasties.  Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period are treated as subseries in Zhou dynasty.  Maybe we can create articles like Tsui-Tang period (that's what it is called in China), treating Tsui and Tang as subseries.  Hopefully we can reduce the number of articles in the series reasonably. wshun 06:07, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There is the format used for the History of Japan series (not much different from the navigation bar we have now). --Jiang 23:08, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Oh, do you think that we should follow this pattern? --wshun 00:51, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Those "Jomon Period" things from History of Japan? They are traditional divisions of the dynasty-less Japan. It's not really the same as China.
 * Timeline of Chinese history has navig bar? Where?
 * --Menchi 01:03, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * No, the individual dynasty articles have navigation bars. --Jiang 01:05, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Those three non-dynastic periods (Qin-Han, Sui-Tang and Yuan-Ming) are basically just periods of the proceeding dynasty's first emperor and his immediate forefathers fighting for the power. They're the proceeding dynasty's essential history -- when mentioning the victors, we must mention the defeated(s) as well. So, there, all millennia covered. --Menchi 01:13, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * OIC, the period Chu Han Contention is already mentioned in Han Dynasty. Quite a good name! wshun 05:50, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

--- Here's my two proposals: kt2

1)

2)

Both look to big/wide and would require that we repeat information already included in the dynasty articles. I suggest we just list the dynasties, but for the overlapping periods we add a separate section underneath. --Jiang 21:29, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hold on!!
There was never a consensus to implemet the series table. I think it would be better to present a proposal before we implement. The current table was never proposed. What is "Chinese" bolded? Why isn't the article itself bolded? Why are the country templates linked instead of their respective history articles?

The current setup lists all the dynsaties, but fails to include the historial periods which would be very relevant (Warring States Period, etc.). Please wait before acting. In addition, "prehistorical Chinese" is a bad title. It should be "Prehistory of China". Until we reach a consensus, i will have the current imperfect form reverted. --Jiang 21:13, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The ROC succeeded by the PRC on the chronology is the most interesting decision.

I think dynasty-by-dynasty & inserting historically recognized periods is the best format. But how about the periods that overlap with the dynasties? --Menchi 21:44, Aug 26, 2003 (UTC)


 * exactly, an example of implementing periods that overlap with the dynasties is beneficial. kt2 22:07, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * How about the following modification? Wshun


 * The problem is that at each article, the article is bolded in the table. I'm not sure how it can be bolded (w/ a background added) if there is more than one link per line. I modified your last line. Please take note. --Jiang 23:27, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Highlight the line, but bold only the appropriate word. --Menchi 23:30, Aug 26, 2003 (UTC)


 * I modify the first line and bold Xia. --Wshun


 * It looks obvious now. --Menchi 23:39, Aug 26, 2003 (UTC)

I think dynasties/periods should only be listed together if they coexisted for a considerable amount of time. Adding in the periods would be preferable (bullet pt under dynasties?). --Jiang 23:51, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

How about this one? kt2 00:00, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

My proposal (Jiang 00:23, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)):

Notes: Dynasties that did not for the most part coexist are listed separately. I used bullet pt instead.


 * "S&N Dynasties" sounds like "S&M Dynasties". Maybe "Southern and Northern"? --Menchi 00:28, Aug 27, 2003 (UTC)

If this table is long, it has got to be thin. Otherwise, it will occupy too much space and leave little room for the article. --Jiang

Hi, this is User Talk: yanyang1985. My table got deleted last time. Orginally, I thought a table is a good idea after I saw article Franks. So I went on to make for every dynasty. In my opinion, because Chinese history is usually divided by different dynasties, the divisions should be made between dynasties. Each dynasty, no matter how long it may last, has its own characteristics. After seeing this page, I like the proposal I also suggest maybe we can put a title for both ROC and PRC under China after dynasties. The China after dynasties article may appear

Chinese history after Qing Dynasty is divided into two branches: and also maybe we do not need to add into the list. However, we can highlight these in articles Zhou Dynasty, and Song Dynasty, so readers can notice these important periods while avoiding making a list too long. My proposal is
 * History of the Republic of China
 * History of the People's Republic of China
 * Spring and Autumn Period
 * Warring States Period and
 * Khitan Dynasty
 * Jin Dynasty
 * Western Xia

---2:20pm Aug28 GMT

You can sign your name w/ ~. I'm not too sure on whether to include the historical periods and tributary dynasties. However, I don't think including "China after dynasties" is a good idea. It's not necessary to create a new article. We should just liks "History of the ROC" and "History of the PRC" directly as part of the series. --Jiang 21:19, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Er...Jiang, what did you mean by "You can sign your name w/ ~ "? I am new to this. Yanyang1985 10:33pm Aug28 GMT


 * Just type that, click "Preview" (not "save" yet). You'll see. --Menchi 02:47, Aug 29, 2003 (UTC)

I see now! Thanks - Tim 14:48, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If we install the table, what do we do about this handy navigation bar?

Since we are now listing (mainly) by dynasty, wouldn't it be redundant? --Jiang 08:21, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Yes, completely redundant information-wise. The list is enough. --Menchi 08:51, Aug 30, 2003 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 20:31, 3 May 2016 (UTC)