While my ancestors were banging rocks together . . .

Chinese culture is old. Really old.  All cultures are old in the sense that they stretch back in a continuous line to prehistory, but the distinction is when in a culture’s evolution does prehistory transform into history.  Prehistory is culture before it has a memory in the form of written or oral information about specific events and people.  History starts when a culture, using the structures of a civilization (specialization in labor, agricultural surpluses, centralized leadership) begins to record and “remember” its trajectory, thereby accumulating information.  It is in this sense that Chinese civilization is old.

I was reminded of the scale of Chinese history while visiting the National Palace Museum yesterday with Abel.   Honestly, I wasn’t really excited about visiting the museum. The whole point of our outing was to visit the neighboring Museum of Formasan Aborigines, which focuses on the indigenous cultures of Taiwan.  Alas, that museum is closed on Mondays, but the National Palace Museum, being one of the largest tourists draws in Taiwan, was open and right next door.   I knew of the museum's impressive statistics – 693,507 precious Chinese artifacts in the museum encompassing 8,000 years of history – and it is in fact the largest collection of Chinese artifacts in the world.  (The largest collection is in Taiwan instead of China because Chiang Kai Shek took the entire national collection when he fled from the communists during the civil war).  Despite the impressive collection, I’m not much for “stuff” museums.  There are only so many clay pots I can look at before I get weary.  Abel proved to be a more patient visitor than me as I whizzed through most of the exhibits, but I did get a taste of all the major sections and a feel for the incredible magnitude of the museum’s collection and of the span of Chinese culture.

To get a sense of the age of Chinese civilization, it is interesting to make comparisons to the English speaking world.  Written language has been around for 4000 years in China, while the earliest example of English (Beawulf) is only 900 years old.  While the Anglo-Saxon world consisted of scattered tribes and warring clans, China had its first emperors and centralized government in 2000 BC.   The Chinese invented some pretty important stuff, including paper, gunpowder, the compass, and printing all while Europe was locked in the Dark Ages.  Not to imply that Chinese history is all fireworks and dumplings, they had serfdom, hungry masses, and unjust emperors.  The interesting part is that China went through this stage of development before Europe had cities or writing and before the Greeks had heard of Plato or Socrates.

It is interesting that most people in the West view China as the “rising dragon” as if it is rising out of obscurity.  In fact, China was the dominant world civilization for millennia, but was eclipsed only in the last 200-300 years by the rapid technological advance and colonialism of the Western world.  A common analogy made by Chinese is that America is a rowdy and ambitious adolescent with seemingly endless energy, while China is wiser and older, just waiting for the reckless teen to wear out. Maybe it's not a perfect analogy, but it does give a sense that American dominance is only a temporary blip in world history rather than a permanent status.

Anyway, back to the museum.  Lots of very old and very pretty things.  Entire rooms full of Jade, an entire floor of Ceramics (of course, you can probably guess where “fine china” comes from), and even a whole room devoted to fancy snuff bottles.  Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the artifacts, photography is not allowed in the museum.  Perhaps because so many tourists couldn’t take photos inside, Abel was the subject of an impromptu photo shoot in the lobby as I tried to feed him before going through the gates.  First, one older lady came up and asked if she could take a picture of the cute baby, and before I knew it there were ten people lined up to take pictures of Abel!!  He ate it up – lots of smiles, coos, and a little spit-up.  I can’t say I blame them, he is pretty stinkin’ cute, and I’d rather have a picture of him over a priceless jade do-dad any day.  Cheesy, but true :-)