Genghis Khan isn’t Chinese! Anyway aren’t the Chinese supposed to be anti-imperialist? Or is it English conquer the globe bad, america dominates bad, but Chinese invasion good? Remember war is only bad if it happens to Chinese people……

February 20, 2006 @ 12:09 am | Comment

Should Mickey Mouse be celebrated by only Americans? Oh, oops, there are Disneylands abroad now!

February 20, 2006 @ 12:27 am | Comment

Chinese don’t like to admit to having been conquered by barbarian hordes, even if it did happen over 800 years ago. So Genghis Khan was a Chinese emperor, not a Mongolian ruler.

February 20, 2006 @ 2:04 am | Comment

I’m going to be shamelessly self-promoting and post a section from my book-in-progress about Ungern-Sternberg, the Mad Baron of Mongolia, (*cough* Faber, autumn 2007, *cough*) which takes in Chinese-Mongolian relations on the way –

He looked down upon us paternally, his eyes gentle and twinkling, his smile implying some charming private joke between him and the artist. His face suggested a favorite grandfather, always ready with a laugh and a present, fond of the outdoors and a good family man. It was the ideal portrait for the convivial dinner we were eating, fuelled by white spirits and alcoholic milk, and it showed Genghis Khan, Emperor of the Mongols, killer of millions, and spiritual ancestor of the Mad Baron.

I asked a couple of the diners about him.

‘Genghis Khan! Yes, he is a great Chinese hero!’

There was nodding and general approval round the table, and some toasting of Genghis’ spirit. We were in Inner Mongolia, but all of the diners save me were Han Chinese, for all their downing of Mongolian spirits and singing of sentimental songs about the steppe, bows, and the deep love between a man and his horse. One of them, a local Party boss, grasped my arm sincerely. ‘Genghis was born in Mongolia,’ he said, ‘But he was Chinese. That is why his tomb is here in China. He loved China, like we love China. ’

I had thought that being responsible for the deaths of some twenty million Chinese would have excluded Genghis from the Chinese pantheon of heroes. It was only thanks to his part-Chinese advisor, Yalu, that he was dissuaded from his original plans to burn every city in Northern China down and turn the whole region into nothing but a grazing field for his horses. His general attitude towards the Chinese was contemptuous at best.

Genghis’ heroic status was a commonplace in China, though. Most of my Chinese friends were surprised when told he was Mongolian; to them – and according to their middle school history books – he was just another emperor. It was a deliberate cultural amnesia; as far as many Chinese were concerned, the Mongolian invasion was best written out of history. It was deeply embarrassing – a bunch of steppe barbarians overrunning the Middle Kingdom, the center of the earth, the birthplace of humanity? Impossible. Making Genghis retroactively Chinese was one way to make the conquest by his successors less humiliating. He was useful for the Party, too; newly adopted as a national hero, he could be portrayed as part of the tradition of great, yet justified, tyrants. Like Mao and the First Emperor, he might have sacrificed millions of lives, but he had unified China. Looking at the portrait, I briefly imagined some alternate future where happy Frenchmen toasted Hitler as a great French hero and the savior of a divided Europe

February 20, 2006 @ 3:40 am | Comment

No, Genghis Khan wasn’t Han Chinese. Guillaume de Normandie (William the Conqueror) wasn’t English. Most Americans weren’t Americans at all, they were, well, Europeans… so what?

“The 800th anniversary of the founding of Genghis Khan’s empire in 1206 will be celebrated this year not just in Mongolia proper but also in Inner Mongolia, historically part of the same culture but now under China’s firm control.”

“The Mongolians themselves, now a small minority accounting for about 20 percent of the total population in their own region, are not impressed.”

It’s interesting that the Yahoo article takes every opportunity to vilify China and makes it appear as if some massive conspiracy is out there to totally subjugate the Mongolian people and destroy the “Mongolian spirit.” Inner Mongolia was, historically, an ethically complex region. There’s a reason it’s the way it is (How about more than 300 years of common dynastic rule with the rest of China?).

It’s like saying Meixcans being a minority in New Mexico, or Canadian Inuits, traditionally linked the their brethren in Greenland, now under Canada’s firm control…which I reckon wouldn’t be taken very seriously…

February 20, 2006 @ 6:24 am | Comment

“No, Genghis Khan wasn’t Han Chinese. Guillaume de Normandie (William the Conqueror) wasn’t English. Most Americans weren’t Americans at all, they were, well, Europeans… so what?”

Guillaume founded a dynasty that stayed around for quite a while…long enough to half-latinize the English language, giving rise to many works in Middle English that ARE fundamentally English (The Canturbury Tales, for example) He is as much a father of English culture as he was a Frenchman.

Americans at the time of the revolution were NOT English. That was why they had…um…a revolution (taxed as a colony, but no representation in Parliament). The founding fathers of the US were not fresh off the boat.

The Khans, unlike the Qing, did not adapt themselves to Chinese culture. Their way of life, in their minds was superior. After all, they ruled far more than China. Had they adapted themselves, maybe they would have left a longer legacy. As it is, they only lasted 89 years. (Not even as long as the Republic of China)

“”The Mongolians themselves, now a small minority accounting for about 20 percent of the total population in their own region, are not impressed.”

It’s interesting that the Yahoo article takes every opportunity to vilify China and makes it appear as if some massive conspiracy is out there”

They have every right to be not impressed. Ghenghis was Mongolian, not Chinese 😉

February 20, 2006 @ 6:57 am | Comment

if anything i’m looking forward to a Genghis Khan love fest. Whenever the topic of western imperialism is raised among my Chinese friends they almost always conclude by saying “…and China has never invaded another country.” My reply that Genghis Khan invaded many countries including European ones is often dismissed with “Well he wasn’t really Chinese.” Whatever will they say now?

“Guillaume de Normandie (William the Conqueror) wasn’t English”

No he wasn’t and in English history books he isn’t called English, he is a Norman. Yes he became King of England but that doesn’t make him English. 1066 is often referred to as the last time england was successfully invaded by a foreign power. Also re-enactments of the Battle of Hastings are held quite often in England, it would be interesting to see a re-enactment of the Mongol hordes sweeping through the Great Wall, particularly as it was built to keep out such barbarians.

February 20, 2006 @ 7:22 am | Comment

How can one celebrate a mass murderer? Genghis Khan killed millions of people in his time and left a terrible brutal legacy in parts of the world that he conquered, Iraq, Russia, and China. I still think one of the major reasons that the Arabs, Russians and Chinese were (or still are) so backward and brutal is because of the Mongol invasion and massacre. Remember before The Mongols messed them up, they were the first class civilization at that time. Chinese are still so messed up that they still celebrate their home grown mass murderer Mao by hanging his portrait in TenAnMen square. It is like Europeans celebrate Napoleon or Hitler because at one time they conquered most of the Europe.

February 20, 2006 @ 10:00 am | Comment

Dennis

But many French still DO celebrate Napoleon’s memory.

Genghis Khan was Mongolian – end of story. He was born there, raised there, conquered China (and other lands) for his tribe. Chinese who try to say otherwise are either:

a) Stupid enough to buy the pro-nationalist/cover-up-for-the-fact China gots its arse handed to it on a plate by people that the Chinese government regarded as uncouth barbarians propaganda.

b) They are actively participating in spreading the story in a) because they realise what the truth would mean for Chinese history (at least the version they want to spread).

February 20, 2006 @ 11:47 am | Comment

James, do keep us posted on your book. No throat-clearing necessary!

February 20, 2006 @ 11:52 am | Comment

Whatever Genghis Khan was- whether a hero or a villain- one thing is clear: he was a Mongol!

I do, however, have a problem with Yahoo using rather irresponsible language in its article. Calling Inner Mongolia a region that is NOW under China’s firm control or stating that the Mongols only constitute a minority in THEIR OWN REGION is quite misleading, implying that the current demographic composition is the result of contemporary efforts (As I said before, the region was under Manchu rule, as was the rest of China, for 300 years). I know Kazahk or Uigher Inner Mongolians wouldn’t appreciate the author’s designating the area as the Mongols’ “OWN REGION.” And I know many Han or Manchu natives who probably feel as much Inner Mongolian as the rest of them…

Having said that, having a lovefest for Genghis Khan is a bit weird. Maybe historians of the world can get beyond simple name-calling and really figure out his impact on the Old World?

February 20, 2006 @ 11:58 am | Comment

Now, I’m completely confused about the comparisons. Did Napoleon exterminate large swaths of different ethnic groups on his stomp across Europe? Did Genghis Khan get beaten back by awful Russian winters? Did Hitler successful found an empire that lasted longer than 10 years? What exactly do these men have in common besides they had large armies to command and occupied parts of Europe?

Claiming some nomad from the 1200s as a mass murderer seems rather dull. He was no more a mass murderer than the Egyptians, Babylonians, Vikings, or the Aztecs were. Just be thankful that you live in a time where foreigners aren’t burning down your house and running off with your family. Unfortunately, human history shows that it can still happen under the right kind of circumstances.

February 20, 2006 @ 12:01 pm | Comment

Most Chinese take “Chinese” as the direct translation of “zhong guo ren”, which doesn’t have the exact ethnical meaning as westerner assumed. Just as “American” has ethnic groups of “european oriented” “asia oriented” “african orented”…… When we refer to ethnical meaning, usually we use “han ren” “meng gu ren (mongolian)”….. Actually we are discussing this kind of things frequently ourselves, as to “if han-chinese want to call “yue fei” a hero, who fought with another ethnic group (called jin at that time) for “han ren” , the mongolian-chinese certainly has the right to call Genghis Khan a hero, and to be political correct, both of them can be called the hero of Chinese.
Don’t call somebody else stupid before you get all the details.

February 20, 2006 @ 12:48 pm | Comment

“Most of my Chinese friends were surprised when told he was Mongolian; to them – and according to their middle school history books – he was just another emperor. ”

James, I seriously suspect you are making something up about this. In China, there is a famous TV series from Jing Yong. It is how Han fought with and then against Mongolia and Genghis Khan. Anyone with any education at all will know that TV series. It is called “She4 Diao1 Ying1 Xiong2 Zhuang4”.

Let me put it this way. You got to be talking to idiots if they do not know Genghis Khan is mongolia.

Give me a break.

February 20, 2006 @ 1:34 pm | Comment

Genghis Khan conquers China, then goes on to conquer the rest of the known world. As a result Chinese people celebrate him as a great “Chinese” conqueror. Rather interesting psychology at work here!
The other thing that occurs to me is that supposing Japan had been successful during WW2. Would Hirohito be celebrated as a great “Chinese” emperor 200 years from now?

February 20, 2006 @ 2:17 pm | Comment

Everyone is missing one really important detail. Genghis Khan never conquered China. He had been dead for over 50 years when the Mongol war with the Southern Song finally ended. In fact, he had never even attacked the Song dynasty. It was his grandson Mongke that began the war with the Song and Kublai who ended it.

February 20, 2006 @ 3:51 pm | Comment

*****************
The other thing that occurs to me is that supposing Japan had been successful during WW2. Would Hirohito be celebrated as a great “Chinese” emperor 200 years from now?
******************

Don’t laugh about it so fast. Taiwan had been occupied by Japan for just 60 years and yet some Chinese on that island started considering themselves Japanese. Some even “proudly” enlisted to go to war in the Chinese mainland..

If hitler had succeeded in conquering europe, you might as well be proudly speaking German now.

February 20, 2006 @ 5:25 pm | Comment

Our family friends here in the States are pure Mongolians, and they consider themselves Chinese and speak perfect Mandarin.

February 20, 2006 @ 6:36 pm | Comment

BTW, come to think about it, didn’t the Mongolians creat that Chinese dynasty and got assimilated into the greater Chinese society?

February 20, 2006 @ 6:39 pm | Comment

Now, didn’t the Manchurians also got completely assimiliated into the greater Chinese society?

February 20, 2006 @ 6:40 pm | Comment

Genghis Khan Vodka is terrible stuff. Strictly last resort, when all that’s left is Mao Tai or paint thinner.

February 20, 2006 @ 7:02 pm | Comment

There are two prominent schools of thoughts in China regarding the status of Cheng Ji Si Han and the Yuan dynasty.

The first contends that Mongolia before the Yuan Dynasty was a “peripheral regime” under the wings of the Song Dynasty, and the Yuan Dynasty that was started by Cheng Ji Si Han and which defeated the Song Dynasty was simply another Dynasty in China and it contributed to the national unity of China. And China’s borders increased under the Yuan Dynasty. Despite the horrible practice of dividing the people into different classes during its rule (with Han being the lowest class), the Yuan Dynasty did not try to impose Mongolian language and culture to the Chinese society, and instead invoked Han philosophies(Chen Zhu Li Xue: Neo-Confucianism) to be the official state philosophy .

The other school of thought cast Cheng Ji Si Han as an invader, and did great damage to China. It believes that Mongolia was a completely separate country from China during the Song Dynasty, and the Yuan Dynasty was a period of national enslavement of China.

The above two schools of thoughts are openly debated in Chinese society, and different people hold different views on this issue. (The same can be said about the Qing Dynasty). Some people like the Yuan Dynasty, others hate it. But at the very least, no one in China with above-elementary school education thinks that Cheng Ji Si Han is Han-Chinese, as someone above absurdly claimed in his “anecdote”.

Get your facts straight before mouthing off here.

February 20, 2006 @ 7:03 pm | Comment

I think we’re looking at this question from the wrong angle. We’ve got to remember that the Khan family – Genghis, his sons and grandsons – didn’t just conquer by the sword. They had a lovely tendency to slaughter the male inhabitants of a region and then rape all the women, after choosing a few of the most beautiful to keep as concubines.
Current genetic research suggests that about 16 million men in Eurasia are direct descendents of the Khans. They are descended from an unbroken patrilineal line. That’s one out of every 200 men in the world. If you pause to consider how many living descendents the Khans might have through the matrilineal line, or broken patrilineal lines, and you then stop to think about which region many of those descendents are likely to be living in now…..

We’ve decided above that Genghis Khan wasn’t ‘Chinese’. Ethnically and culturally he was Mongolian, and I’m sure he’d never have dreamed of classifying himself as ‘Chinese’. However, we haven’t stopped to think about just how many of the current Chinese people of different ethnic groups: Mongolian, Han, Uigher etc, owe some of their genetic make-up to Genghis Khan. I very strongly suspect that James’ friends who were toasting Genghis in the restaurant were really honouring a distant ancestor.

All over the world, the myth of ethnic purity is false. If you trace our anscestors back far enough we’re all mongrels. I’m British, so I’ve got Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Norman blood running in my veins. (And that’s a conservative estimate.)

While I understand that the Mongolians would like to monopolise Ghenghis, just as the Macedonians would like to monopolise Alexander the Great (is that a more suitable comparison than Hitler or Napoleon?) the fates of those two conquerors were played out on the world stage, and thus they have become world figures. No one ethnic group, neither Mongolian, nor Han, can monopolise Ghenghis Khan.

February 20, 2006 @ 10:45 pm | Comment

Oh, there’s no doubting that most of northern China, at least, is descended from Genghis. In terms of cultural identity, however, he was certainly Mongolian. As for the claim that the Mongolians were somehow a wing of the Chinese empire before that, it’s nationalistic piffle – the various steppe tribes had a long and complex relationship with their neighbours – raiding, tribute, payoffs, trade – but they were culturally and politically very different from the Han.

Making moral judgements about pre-modern individuals is difficult, of course, but there is something particularly horrible about the Mongolian conviction that they were absolutely destined to rule, and that opposing them was sinful in itself – and they committed genocide on a huge scale in Central Asia.

As for the whole ‘being surprised to find he was Mongolian’ thing – well, it happened, several times. I always like it when people claim that things couldn’t have happened to me when, y’know, I was there. To clarify, though, it wasn’t that they thought he was Han Chinese, rather that they *didn’t think of Mongolian identity as being seperate from Chinese*

It’s worth noting that modern Mongolians (in Mongolia proper, at least) *hate* the Chinese. Really loathe them. Not universally, of course, but on the same scale as, say, the Chinese dislike the Japanese. It’s also worth noting that the only reason that Mongolia wasn’t invaded and incorporated into greater China after the foundation of the PRC was because it was a Russian satellite – hell, Taiwan had a *governor* of Mongolia until the 1980s, I believe. The first sentence of one Mongolian-written local history I own is ‘The first thing to remember is that Mongolians are not Chinese.’

February 21, 2006 @ 12:58 am | Comment

Just to be clear, both the Communists and the Nationalists always saw Outer Mongolia as a part of China, something ardently resisted by the Mongolians. Mao promised the Inner Mongolians independence and then betrayed them and massacred their leaders. (See Jasper Becker’s LOST COUNTRY for the details.) Mongolia initially declared independence in 1911, having been a tributary state of a kind – like Tibet – beforehand, administered as a kind of reservation by the Qing. (The Mongolians were *forbidden* from learning Chinese or adopting Chinese ways in the nineteenth century.) It was taken over by Little Xu, a minor warlord, in 1919-1920, then by the Whites under Ungern-Sternberg in 1920-1921. It was only because of the White invasion that it subsequently fell under Russian ‘protection’ – which involved wholescale purges and pillaging in the 1930s but kept it from being taken over by J. Random Warlord. The Japanese tried to take it over in 1939 but were thrown back by Zhukov – a great and little-known battle, that one. Ironically, the Mongolians are almost the only people in East Asia who actually *like* the Japanese, probably because they were never ruled by them.

Mongolian saying – ‘Two Chinese are worth one Korean. Two Koreans are worth one Japanese. Two Japanese are worth one Mongolian.’

February 21, 2006 @ 1:06 am | Comment

“*didn’t think of Mongolian identity as being seperate from Chinese*”

” ‘Two Chinese are worth one Korean. Two Koreans are worth one Japanese. Two Japanese are worth one Mongolian.'”

It is very interesting that your Chinese friends are so ignorant and your mongolian friends are so nationalistic. What can I say?

February 21, 2006 @ 11:54 am | Comment

Just need to point out one thing again. When you refer to Han-Chinese, please use Han-Chinese instead of Chinese. Most Chinese take “Chinese” as “Citizen of China” rather than “an ethinic group called Han”. Without clarifying this, we will never get each other’s point.

February 21, 2006 @ 12:00 pm | Comment

Mongolian saying – ‘Two Chinese are worth one Korean. Two Koreans are worth one Japanese. Two Japanese are worth one Mongolian.’

Yea James, and there’s a saying in Iran that all Jews are pigs.

February 21, 2006 @ 2:11 pm | Comment

I’m confused, ethnic Chinese claiming Ghenghis and the Khans were … Chinese???

When a (Han) Chinese friend complains that the hated Japanese have never apologized for invading China, I sometimes ask when China apologized for the two times it tried to invade Japan.

The usual answer is “Oh, no, that was the Yuan Dynasty! They weren’t Chinese!”

🙂

February 21, 2006 @ 11:03 pm | Comment

Mongolian saying – ‘Two Chinese are worth one Korean. Two Koreans are worth one Japanese. Two Japanese are worth one Mongolian.

Sweet, there are 1.3 Billion Chinese, only 70 million Koreans, 120 million Japanese, and a measly 6 million mongols. Chinese are still on top! PRC! PRC! PRC!

*note: that doesn’t actually work as well with any other initials other than USA.

February 22, 2006 @ 7:13 am | Comment

To shanghai-slim,

Did they answer you in English or Chinese?

I am pretty surprised that it is a usual answer, maybe I don’t know shanghai too much.

I suspect there are some misunderstandings in it, though not sure.

My understanding of the reason why some Chinese hate Japanese’s invasion so much but han-Chinese don’t hate Mongolian (or Monglian-Chinese) invasion that much: The Han-Chinese turned down Yuan Dynasty themselves eventually and re-established self-esteem. Same for Qing Dysnasty. But Chinese didn’t really defeat Japanese themselves. America should be given more credits in defeating Japan instead of China. That frustrated the Chinese Nationalists…… But that is just my guess, I may be wrong.

February 22, 2006 @ 11:54 am | Comment

“the Chinese see him as one of their greatest leaders”

It says a lot about China’s approach to its own history that it regards Gengis as being one of its own.

As far as I was aware, he was a foriegner who invaded China, raped its women, and slaughtered its men.

Historically, Gengis did pretty much all of the same things as Tojo did, but I don’t see him being hailed as anything other than the butt ugly little butcher that he was.

February 23, 2006 @ 5:25 am | Comment

I think someone didn’t read first comment but Genghis Khan never invaded China. The war between the mongols and the Song lasted for decades, a man’s lifetime really, and Genghis was dead before it even started.

February 23, 2006 @ 4:37 pm | Comment

“I think someone didn’t read first comment but Genghis Khan never invaded China. The war between the mongols and the Song lasted for decades, a man’s lifetime really, and Genghis was dead before it even started.”

Well, he did invade Western Xia and Jin, which ruled parts of China (These weren’t provinces that later merged with China; they were indeed territories that had been ruled by successive dynasties, including the Northern Song). China was divided then, and it’s hard to argue that only the Song had a legitimate claim to the “dynastic mandate,” just because the other dynasties weren’t Han.

February 24, 2006 @ 6:48 am | Comment