©2006 WC Tan
The origin of the people has been attributed by scholars to the discovery of the "Peking Man", a skull which has been dated to be about a million years old. The origin of the culture has been excavated to the new Stone Age from about 7000 years ago. The appearance of symbols has been discovered on designs on the earliest ceramics from this period. These have been regarded as the prototype of the Chinese language. Scholars have attributed the actual appearance of the language to the Oracle Bone Period about 4000 years ago. During the Shang Dynasty about 3500 years ago, fossils were collected which had the language on them.
The Oracle Bones are called such because the early Chinese were afraid of offending the unknown God and the many deities of nature. The Chinese to this day still regard their departed ancestors as still living in heaven in the presence of God. Out of fear or respect, they would like to consult the unknown God and their departed ancestors about the affairs of this life on earth. This is known as consulting the Oracles. The subjects for seeking the Oracles were about decisions of going to war, hunting expeditions, agricultural decisions of sowing and harvesting, diseases, and astronomical phenomena. They believed that it was God and the departed ancestors who have control or influence in these matters, therefore they should be consulted. We may use our modern day language by saying that the ancient Chinese were seeking the Will of God.
The method of seeking the Will of God is known as divinations which is no different from our flipping of coins, drawing cards, or throwing of sticks today. In the ancient days, the thin shell of the turtle was burned until it cracked. Then the diviners, which today we would call witches, would look at the pattern of fissures on the shell and interpret good or bad omens. This activity corresponds to our present day reading of tea leaves. The interpretations given by these diviners were considered authoritative and the message was recorded on broad pieces of animal bones. Hence, the name Oracle Bones.
Since the Oracle Bones are to record the messages from above, we found that the divine from above was represented in the Oracle Bones as either the personal God or as the deities of nature. Some scholars have interpreted that the supreme God has designated our departed ancestors to become the various deities of nature. The word emperor in the Oracle Bones is used to mean the heavenly emperor. In the eyes of the people in the Shang Dynasty, the real emperor is the one who is above all and this "above" is also synonymous with the word God in the Oracle Bones. There are several hundred pieces of Oracle fossils providing context to this supreme God. One says God commands the rain to fall. This command becomes the Mandate of God in the Chinese Classics. God's command actually means the Will of God. In the Oracle Bones period God is directly in control of wind, clouds and the rain associated with the rain such as wind, clouds, and drought.
Some may interpret the many deities of nature to be polytheism, however, it is because of the many deities associated with nature that people respect the river, forest, mountain, soil, plants, and all the living creatures of the water. When I was in Yunnan Province where there are many minority tribes, they told me that they believe in deities of nature and they are more respectful of the trees and are less likely to clear cut the forest, as the majority Han race are doing.
In the Oracle Bones, we also read in the context of their recording that this God who dwells above does descend below when people are offering sacrifice to Him. The possibilities are that when God detects the fragrance of the sacrifice, he is likely to descend to earth and to dwell among us.
In the Oracle Bones messages, mentions have also been made that the River Deity collaborated with God in response to the command of God to allow the wind to send the water up into the air and for the water in the air to fall down as rain. So, a very important ancestor has been appointed to become the Deity of the River.
The word heaven, in the Oracle Bones, is written as a human figure with a head and body with limbs. Heaven is everywhere; however, like the word God, it is personalized. Therefore to this day, the words God and heaven are used interchangeably and are synonymous. The best example I could provide is by using the example of Jesus of Israel who described the kingdom above as the Kingdom of Heaven (according to the Gospel of St. Matthew). In other gospels, Jesus describes such a kingdom as the Kingdom of God. From the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God, it is obvious that the two words, Heaven and God, are used interchangeably and synonymously. Such is also the case in the Oracle Bones some 2000 years before Jesus.
In the Chinese Classics subsequent to the Oracle Bones, the word God is mentioned less and less frequently, perhaps out of fear and reverence to not repeat in vain the name of God. The word heaven became more frequently employed in conversation and in writing even to the present time. As a result, the Chinese Classics and literature mentioned all the emperors as the sons of heaven, whose duty it was to obey the mandates of heaven, to manage the country as a family of heaven, to care for the members of such a family as citizens of heaven, and to transform the world as the kingdom of heaven. We may therefore say that the Oracle Bones laid down the religious and philosophical foundations for the entire Chinese civilization.
In the canon of poetry of about 3000 years ago in China the poets repeatedly mention that the citizens of heaven are begotten of the heaven and if begotten of the heaven, their nature can only be heavenly. Therefore, human nature is originally heavenly and can only be good. So, the human race is born with human nature which is originally good. This has been the fundamental foundation of the Chinese philosophy.
We will now discuss the origin of the name 'China'. The word China is from outside China and means the ceramic ware, but the actual word China, in Chinese, comes from the Oracle Bones. In the Oracle Bones, from one context, it is mentioned that some families had three sons: the oldest, middle, youngest son. The middle son, is given a prefix of Zhong. Hence, China has been described as Zhong Guo. Together, it means the middle kingdom. This means that China is not an elder kingdom, nor is it a juvenile kingdom, but is a middle kingdom. China is not an older, senior kingdom to bully others, nor a junior kingdom to be bullied or walked upon. China is the middle kingdom which will not dominate others nor be dominated. Hence, such Oracle Bones influence the nation and generate the philosophy "never be the first in the world". In other words, China should never want to be a superpower; it will never be a bullying leader of the world. For the last 5000 years, looking at Chinese history as a whole, China has often been conquered or dominated by her neighbouring tribes. The neighbouring tribes who have invaded and conquered China have become in due course of time Chinese themselves. Therefore, China today comprises 56 tribes with the majority known as the Han people. Actually, the Han people themselves are made up of many former invading tribes. Only after some time have they been amalgamated into one identity as the Han people. The fact that China will never become a superpower has almost become a tradition by now. Therefore, since the Tang Dynasty of well over 1000 years ago, the Chinese have gone overseas to other countries to settle down there. This has been for the most part in South East Asia. Whatever country they went to they have become local inhabitants of that country and have never taken over that country or politically dominated it. Even though they have become economically prosperous, they have never taken control of that country politically. We may say that for it not to be in the nature of the Chinese race to become a superpower is a result of the tradition of the Oracle Bones. China will always be number two, but never number one in the global family.
The next question the reader may ask is that, will this tradition continue? We can say that the answer is provided in past examples.
The Oracle Bones have been studied by many scholars in China. The most authoritative study is an encyclopaedia on the Oracle Bones by Professor Yu Sheng Wu, published in 1979 by Zhong Hua Publishing Company of Beijing. He has since passed on and he was succeeded by another scholar in the field, Zhao Chung, who compiled a dictionary of the Oracle Bones, which was also published by Zhong Hua Publishing Company, in 1988. This book contains some 3000 words or phrases pertaining to the Oracle Bones. The Oracle Bones symbols or pictures have evolved over the last several thousand years to become the present-day written Chinese language. In fact, one thousand years after the popularity of the Oracle Bones during the Zhou Dynasty, the Chinese written language became stable and formulated, which facilitated the writing of volumes and volumes of classics which we will discuss in following chapters. But in our time, since 1949, after China became the People's Republic of China, many of the Chinese characters have been simplified, but as we write this, both simplified and traditional written Chinese language are both in use in equal proportion. The simplified written Chinese is used principally on mainland China and the traditional written Chinese characters are used in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and in the Chinese newspapers and publications outside mainland China.
With so many various national minorities in China, such as Mongolians, the Manchurians, the Uygurs, Kazaks, and the Tibetans, there are many minority languages, but he majority Hans and minorities use Chinese as their common language. In fact, all the people in China speak and write Chinese. As for the Chinese language itself, the written language is the same throughout China. Although it can be written in the traditional way or simplified way, it is still the same written language.
Now we shall explain the spoken language and the pronunciation of the written language. Almost all people in China speak the same spoken language, known as the Mandarin Chinese. For instance, the telephone and radio announcers throughout China speak Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is like the so-called Oxford English used by the BBC announcers in Britain.
The so-called Mandarin Chinese is referred to by mainland Chinese as the common spoken Chinese (Pu Tong Hua). However, in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, it is referred to as National Spoken Chinese (Guo Yu). Having said that, we must point out that besides the common spoken pronunciation, the so called Mandarin Chinese, there are many dialects in China. There are a few major dialects among the Han people. Perhaps the most familiar one is the Cantonese dialect which is spoken in Guangdong province, Hong Kong, Macau and also among many overseas Chinese in the United States and South East Asia. Another major dialect is the South Fujian dialect. Apart from being spoken in South Fujian mainly around the city of Xiamen, this South Fujian dialect is spoken by the majority of people in Taiwan and also among the overseas Chinese in South East Asia.
In short, the so-called Mandarin Chinese is rather a standard pronunciation in the written Chinese language, other dialects such as Cantonese, Fujian and Haka are not separate languages as has been misunderstood. They are but simply dialects of the same language. The minorities such as Mongolians, Tibetans and others, although retaining their own languages, practically all read and write Chinese and speak the Mandarin Chinese.
The Muslim population lives in all provinces of China. They are Chinese-speaking like all other Chinese, despite the fact their Holy Books are written in Arabic.