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Q: How good of an understanding do Chinese have about their history?
I'm sometimes amazed at what even younger Chinese can throw at me when it comes to citations, quoting ancient poets and the like.
Knowing so little myself, it's hard for me to tell if they're incredibly well versed in all of China's history, or only on very specific periods...
14 years 22 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
Ancient history? They rock, it puts foreign(at least English) education to shame.
Modern history? You might as well ask a pig. Anything to do with Mao and especially the cultural revolution has been "corrected" to fit the needs of the CCP. Unless you actually ask someone who was alive in the 60's/70's then no one has a clue really.
But with poems your right. History and literature and HUGE part of Chinese education (which reinforces my previous argument that learning Chinese is not the same as learning English because it comes up a lot in their language). Plus tons of tv shows are set in ancient China. They love the Chinese dynasty periods, LOVE IT.
I would say their understanding of history is accurate up until about 1937 when Japan invaded. After that its a bit......hazy.
Shining_brow:
I'm not so sure about that... a lot of their literature has been coloured a lot over time - as all histories are apt to - so what really happened, and what they believe, could be vastly different things. Remember, Mao did a good job of purging a lot of that stuff!!
xunliang:
Its pretty hard to change ancient history to support a political party that didnt even exist at the time. The only thing they do is make sure that they only teach the poets who were super patriotic. When it comes to the 20th century it all changes though. Anywho who was even slightly Communist or Socialist is made out to be Maos best friend. But how can they do that with ancient poems?
As already pointed out, historical records are reasonable accurate until just about 1935-1940, and Chinese are well versed on them. But reading and hearing that they single handed defeated the Japanese invasion of their homeland, and that Japan surrendered to China makes me wonder if either the Flying Tigers or General MacArthur was a Hollywood invention for the sake of making movies.......
Their history is on a "need to know" basis. The powers that be (or have been) deem that they don't need to know.
They have no idea. They actually think THEY beat the Japanese.
