The Nine Nations of China
Tal
December 02, 2009, 03:16 AM posted in General DiscussionPatrick Chovanec is an Associate Professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University. I've just been contemplating a fascinating map he has created (and recently published in The Atlantic) which he calls The Nine Nations of China.
Generalisations are odious of course, but I think there is insight to be gained from it. The life we live in the world is necessarily one shot through with a multitude of dazzling and often conflicting views, who is to say that a single one must be the only one.
Further information can be enjoyed on Prof. Chovanec's blog here and here (but regretfully these links are blocked to China based internet users.)
changye
December 02, 2009, 04:50 AMHi tvan
That's correct. Manchuria had been very sparsely populated until the end of 19th century, despite the effort by Qing dynasty to let Han people immigrate to the region. First Russia started developing Manchuria, and later Empire of Japan throughly developed the region with investmen and technology from Japan after the establishment of Manchukuo (伪满洲国), a puppet state, in 1933. A lot of buildings and railways made in those days have been used here in northeast China. This is a main reason why heavy industries thrived until the end of the 20th century in this region.
tvan
December 02, 2009, 12:13 PM@changye, thx. It seems odd that the Manchus would have invaded China, then left their homeland as a backwater. But, I guess the same thing happened with the Mongols.
Until this year I had never been to the Northeast. I didn't realize that it had its own "Forbidden City," though you did warn me about the California Noodles.
orangina
December 02, 2009, 01:21 PMThanks for posting this _tal_, 很有意思。
Tal
December 02, 2009, 10:19 PMIt's my pleasure! *bows*
bababardwan
December 02, 2009, 10:39 PMI agree.I love interesting maps like this;orientating.Thanks tal :)
tvan
December 02, 2009, 04:19 AMObviously he drew his "Nine Nations" geographically, not culturally, especially "The Frontier."
Was Manchuria a wilderness 100 years ago?