The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in history, political science, China studies, sociology, and related subjects.

The Shortest History of China is by Linda Jaivin, an Australian author based in Asia.

The TU Library collection includes other books about many different aspects of Chinese history.

This is the publisher’s description of the book:

From kung-fu to tofu, tea to trade routes, sages to silk, China has inf luenced cuisine, commerce, military strategy, aesthetics and philosophy across the world for thousands of years.

Chinese history is sprawling and gloriously messy. It is full of heroes who are also villains, prosperous ages and violent rebellions, cultural vibrancy and censorious impulses, loyalists, dissidents and wits. The story of women in China, from the earliest warriors to twentieth century suffragettes, is rarely told. And historical spectres of corruption and disunity, which have brought down many a mighty ruling house, continue to haunt the People’s Republic today.

Modern China is seen variously as an economic powerhouse, an icon of urbanisation, a propaganda state or an aggressive superpower seeking world domination. Linda Jaivin distils a vast history into a short, readable account that tells you what you need to know, from China’s philosophical origins to its political system, to the COVID-19 pandemic and where the PRC is likely to lead the world.”

The books starts by referring to a false expression that reveals more about English usage than Chinese tradition.

“May you live in interesting times” is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse.

While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically; life is better in “uninteresting times” of peace and tranquility than in “interesting” ones, which are usually times of trouble.

Despite being so common in English as to be known as the “Chinese curse”, the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced.

Despite being widely attributed as a Chinese curse, there is no known equivalent expression in Chinese.

The nearest related Chinese expression translates as “Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos.”

The expression originates from Volume 3 of the 1627 short story collection by Feng Menglong, Stories to Awaken the World.

Evidence that the phrase was in use as early as 1936 is provided in a memoir written by Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British Ambassador to China in 1936 and 1937, and published in 1949. He mentions that before he left England for China in 1936, a friend told him of a Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

Despite these unreliable sources, the saying was often quoted even by distinguished speakers.

In 1957 the major French literary figure Albert Camus connected the saying to an unnamed Asian sage during a speech he delivered at Uppsala University in Sweden:

An Asian wise man always used to ask the divinity in his prayers to be so kind as to spare him from living in an interesting era. As we are not wise, the divinity has not spared us and we are living in an interesting era. In any case, our era forces us to take an interest in it.

The science fiction novelist Arthur C. Clarke, author of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” wrote in a 1965 essay:

As the old Chinese curse has it: “May you live in interesting times,” and the twentieth century is probably the most “interesting” period mankind has ever known.

In 1966 Robert F. Kennedy delivered a speech, stating:

There is a Chinese curse which says “May he live in interesting times.” Like it or not, we live in interesting times.

Linda Jaivin notes:

There is no Chinese curse that goes “may you live in interesting times”. In any case, it would be redundant. Chinese history simmers with larger-than-life characters, philosophical arguments and political intrigues, military conflicts and social upheavals, artistic invention and technological innovation.

Chinese historical records stretch back at least 3500 years.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) insistence that Hong Kong and Taiwan, along with Tibet, Xnjing and islands in the South China Sea, are part of China makes knowledge about this nation relevant for world safety.

The CCP pursuit of what it calls unification is based in the humiliation and semi-colonization of China by imperialist powers in the nineteenth century and the civil war of the 20th century.

Violent periods of division occurred two thousand years but remain imprinted on national sensibilities.

The first great unification, in 221 BCE – involving standardization of weights, measures and the written language – came with tyranny.

China has around 1.4 billion people, the world’s largest population.

The PRC is the world’s largest trading nation and second-largest economy, a manufacturing powerhouse and an assertive military power, bigger than any other national armed force.

It plays a steadily increasing role in global institutions and international affairs.

The PRC’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative – with projects in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Ecuador, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Ethiopia and Vietnam – is the most ambitious global infrastructure-building project in history.

Domestic schemes are often no less monumental, whether they involve constructing giant dams, establishing systems of surveillance or creating the longest open-sea fixed link on the planet, the 55-kilometre-long Hong Kong-Zhhi-Macao Bridge.

The PRC is also a leader in artificial intelligence, green technology and communications network infrastructure, and aims to become a world leader in science and technology by 2050.

The rise of the People’s Republic has inspired concern about political influence operations and human rights violations.

China is diverse in many ways. Over 90 per cent of the population claim Han ethnicity, with the rest belonging to 55 other ethnic groups, including Uyghurs, Mongolians and Tibetans.

Many speak distinct languages and retain their own religious and cultural practices, despite pressure to assimilate.

The Han, too, may identify with different regional cultures and subcultures, and speak discrete and even mutually unintelligible dialects including Shanghainese and Cantonese – the last claiming more native speakers (over 62 million) than Italian.

The national language, Ptnghuà, sometimes called Mandarin in English, is a constructed tongue. The PRC’s Ministry of Education admitted in 2013 that it was spoken with native fluency by less than 10 per cent of the population, and barely at all by 30 per cent, though it aimed to change that.

The heavily urbanised landscape of China’s twenty-three provinces and five ‘autonomous regions’ (Gungx, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Nngxià and Xinjiang) is as varied as its people, ranging from frozen steppes to tropical islands, jungles, deserts, fertile farmland, tall mountains and low floodplains.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)