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One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

cnn.com

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Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#91

Post by MBCook »

doginasuit wrote: post #36
graemep wrote: post #11

Its a Chinese equivalent of the phantom time theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory Its just as silly as phantom time and covers almost exactly the same period. The motive is possibly racist which makes it more sinister.

Maybe it is healthy for society in the long run to have pockets of divergent belief. Most of the time it is groundless and fades away. Every so often it gains traction. If it is based in reality, we gain a better understanding. If it is misleading, it vitalizes a competing and more correct understanding. The more interesting phenomenon is that we are able to agree on anything at all, it's not exactly our strongest in…

How could it be healthy to not even agree on the most basic facts of history like whether hundreds of years actually happened or the shape of the earth?

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#92

Post by nl »

1-more wrote: post #21
graemep wrote: post #11

Its a Chinese equivalent of the phantom time theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory Its just as silly as phantom time and covers almost exactly the same period. The motive is possibly racist which makes it more sinister.

Not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko) which I thought was the same as this but actually compresses a whole lot more time into less than 1000 years and does word magic to imply that King Solomon = Suleiman the Magnificent.

Yes I was going to point to the Fomenko chonology too. I believe that has adherents in some minor Russian nationalist circles:

> In September 2020, major Russian politician and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Glazyev publicly proposed Fomenko's New Chronology as a "reliable support for the formation of modern ideology that consolidates Russian society"

And related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartarian_Empire

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#93

Post by raajg »

I'm currently reading 'There Is No Antimemetics Division' and this news item reminds me of that. Also, 1984, in which the government actively establishes false narratives as actual history and do it so many times that it's impossible to remember what really happened.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#94

Post by duskwuff »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #57
DesaiAshu wrote: post #18

"Claiming that the 300-year dynasty was actually a myth is akin to saying the American Civil War never happened" Aren't republicans in Texas trying to rewrite history books to ignore lynchings and burnings of Black Wall Street and claim that slaves were treated pretty well? Seems like every country has factions who do this - right?

I don't think that's very much alike at all. Denying the existence of a major dynasty is like declaring that Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson didn't exist, and all the historical traditions and documents to the contrary were invented to cover up the two terms Jefferson Davis served in the White House. I've never seen even the most strenuous Lost Cause advocates say something like that, because why in the world woul…

> Denying the existence of a major dynasty is like declaring that Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson didn't exist

There's a great difference of scale.

Lincoln died about 150 years ago. There are voluminous primary sources about Lincoln - e.g. photographs of him, original documents that he wrote, firsthand accounts of his actions, etc. We certainly don't know every detail of his life, but we do know a lot of it, and we're quite confident it's true.

The Tang dynasty, by contrast, fell over a thousand years ago. We know of it primarily through second- and third-hand histories and through interpretation of archaeological artifacts - much like our knowledge of Greek and Roman history, for instance. There are a lot of thinly covered areas, and many of the sources are biased; there's a lot more to be uncertain about.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#95

Post by culi »

galleywest200 wrote: post #87
culi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

birds aren't real, the earth is flat, jet fuel can't melt steel beams, apollo 11 landed in hollywood, and zuckerberg is a lizard

“Birds aren’t real” is fully and completely a meme for goofs. Zuck I think is also just for goofs but the others yes indeed have true believers.

Our politicians and leaders being lizard people absolutely has true believers. Zuckerberg specifically might've taken off as a meme amongst tech critical folk but the core idea comes from genuine conspiracies. Birds are real, I admit, is totally a joke but it flows so well in my comment

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#96

Post by mac3n »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #67
senderista wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Shang dynasty is also kind of a propaganda nightmare, with all the archeological evidence for mass human sacrifice.

Your comment sent me to Wikipedia and this caught my eye [0], a Late Shang inscribed rhinoceros rib, which then deepened the wikihole [1], it's funny how even though I know of the Indian rhino and Sumatran rhino, it never occurred to me that they were even more widespread... [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Shang#/media/File:Shang_d... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceroses_in_ancient_China

wait until you find about the Yana River people!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yana_Rhinoceros_Horn_Site

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#97

Post by kjs3 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #17

The same sort of arguments are playing out in the US, albeit on a shorter timescale. I couldn't say when it started, but it's extremely depressing that the history section in most general bookstores is just a locus for narrative warfare rather than scholarship. Of course, this phenomenon is by no means unique to these two countries. I know a Japanese author who has a small but dedicated following for his argument tha…

No atom bomb. Wow...that some nearly Shockley levels of 'engineers disease' right there.

Edit: clarified which part of the post I was referencing.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#98

Post by kjs3 »

zelda420 wrote: post #25
DesaiAshu wrote: post #18

"Claiming that the 300-year dynasty was actually a myth is akin to saying the American Civil War never happened" Aren't republicans in Texas trying to rewrite history books to ignore lynchings and burnings of Black Wall Street and claim that slaves were treated pretty well? Seems like every country has factions who do this - right?

My daughter is a tx high school student and the books don’t mention slavery in context of the civil war. It’s framed as only a states rights issue, in which Texas is the honorable fighter of freedoms.

It was a states rights issue...the right of those states to own slaves. If you read the articles of succession for each of the confederate states (the actual words the actual people who decided "screw that Union thing..." put on paper to justify what they are doing and sent to Washinton), every one of them explicitly states "we are doing this because you are threatening our right to own slaves". This is the "well ackshually..." argument used to pretend the Confederates were fighting a noble cause and the rest of the hypocrisy being shoveled about.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#99

Post by kube-system »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #80
alsetmusic wrote: post #72

> Callum, a 24-year-old Beijing resident, told CNN that questioning the Tang’s existence could be a way to rebel against established wisdom and a way for China’s young – faced with a slowing economy and greater competition for jobs and resources – to criticize authorities. > “It is a way for people to attack the established authorities. It is almost like saying ‘those so-called experts are nothing special. They have…

Depends on how much you think people actually believe Qanon. This is "We're going to raise a middle finger to the authorities in a form that's hard for them to come down on us, but it's very deliberately against the authorities." Qanon may have been that, too, but my impression is that at least some people really believed it.

That’s exactly the same as what is happening here. They’re ideas crazy enough that most people react with “you’re fucking with me, right?” And some people definitely are… but there’s always a cross section of people gullible enough to believe it wholeheartedly, and a large grey area in the middle of people who aren’t sure what to believe.

They say a lie can travel around the world while the truth is still lacing up its boots. Part of the reason these things are viral is because their ridiculous nature demands attention. And that attention alone is enough to generate influence.

Re: One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

#100

Post by ericmay »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #47
senderista wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Shang dynasty is also kind of a propaganda nightmare, with all the archeological evidence for mass human sacrifice.

Yeah. You're probably familiar with the "Hanfu" revival -- a sort of resurgence in people adopting traditional clothing and makeup styles from the Han and Tang dynasties. It's entirely on account of the fact that those two dynasties were remarkably stable, prosperous, and peaceful, so they lend themselves to historical romanticism -- like the Chinese equivalent of the Renaissance Faire. Good vibes. Even popular in Ja…

That’s really interesting. Thanks for sharing. I’m a big fan of clothing and architecture that are appropriate/historic for a given country or area. It’s unfortunate we’ve standardized on 5-over-1s and graphic t-shirts with sweatpants/leggings over time instead of maintaining some of that cultural and location based uniqueness. I understand why we have changed our clothing patterns, but we did lose a little bit of something in that change, in my opinion.
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