The Chinese language is truly a horrendous barrier that demarcates the Chinese ethnic border, looming like a monolithic impenetrable Great Wall, shutting Them out from Us, and shutting Us in from Them.

Most educators and communicators today tend to regard language as a tool merely, a skill to be learned like typing, or riding a bicycle. Language schools and tuition centres sell their language modules like the old Chinese sundry shops used to sell their salted fish, instant, affordable and piece-meal.

Language is certainly an instrument for communication, if we know what communication truly is. But language is also much more than that. In the words of Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, "Language is the Abode of Being."

Simply put, every language is a universe unto itself. The signs, symbols and their significations, its structural rules of syntax, semantics and usage, fashion the worldview of the native speakers, and determine how they behave towards themselves and the world at large.

Given its 5000 years of continuous cumulative and slow evolution, the Chinese language is an awesome world of meanings, furnishing all that a Chinese person can ever need to live a fulfilling life, with the possible exceptions of providing for democracy and science.

The origin of the Chinese language is itself steeped in myths. When an old sage Cangjie invented the Chinese writing with ideograms around the era of the Yellow Emperor, it was reported that the feat:
Shook Heaven and Earth
Made the Spirits howl.

The Chinese language is also the repository of all the myths and historical records that contains the collective memory of the Chinese people, and provides them with their unique sense of ethnic continuity. That treasure trove of human civilisation is so vast, that all I can do in a lifetime is but to scratch its surface slightly. Even so, the little knowledge gleaned from such a cursory study has turned out to be very revealing.

Apparently, the early Chinese agrarian societies that settled down on the plains of the Yellow River had to face much more complicated problems than their Egyptian or Mesopotamian counterparts. There were massive floods lasting for years on end. More importantly for our present context, they were eking out a living in an immense land along many diverse tribes.

The clan system

Historical records talk about the existence of "10,000 nations" even at the time of the Yellow Emperor. Migration and conflicts must have been the order of the day then. Certainly, to the early burgeoning Hua Xia people, the nomadic marauders riding over their horizons must have looked like menacing barbarians.

The clan system of social organisation developed in response to this external threat. When the Yellow Emperor Huangdi merged his dominion with Yendi, another tribal chief, they brought together an alliance of 10 clans, each marked out by a sir name. The putative blood ties that cemented group cohesion against external threat has since become a kind of psychological archetype that characterises Chinese concept of ethnic belonging.

The clan system of social organisation also provided a perfect model for the patriarchal imperial system that was to last for the subsequent millennia. Philosophers and historians penned the glorious deeds of past emperors, in attempts to tame their supreme rulers, so that those with absolute powers will behave like a wise and kindly father to the people.

Over time, as they prospered and developed a sophisticated culture, these early Chinese must have looked at their surrounding nomadic neighbours with disdain and even contempt.

After all, they were living in grace. Their emperor was the Son of Heaven, who presided over a Heavenly Empire, which in turn sits at the centre of the universe. They had superior technology. With bountiful food, wealth and leisure in store, they created all manners of beautiful things.

In contrast, their alien neighbours at the margins of their realm looked impoverished, uncouth, ill-mannered, and definitely wild. Names with derogatory connotations were assigned to these tribes, the Di to the north, the Rong to the west, the Yi to the East, and the Man to the South.

Even so, the greatest threat for this ancient land had always come from within. Dynasties rose and fell, because tribal chiefs, and later liege lords, jostled for power and fought wars, occasionally dividing up the empire.

Turning point

With the ever-present danger of invasion from the barbarians across the borders, the deep-seated need for unity among full-blooded Chinese had thus been built into the collective psyche of the Chinese civilisation. The long history of China has been nothing but a vicious cycle of fragmentation and reunification, marked by the collapse of one dynasty and the emergence of another dynasty.

The most significant turning point was probably the Warring Period (476-221 BC) during the late Chou Dynasty. This was the time when the "Hundred Schools of thought" (including the Confucian School) bloomed. The Emperor had declined in prestige and power, and seven vassal states were constantly at war with one another.

It was Qin Shi Huang from the Qin state who defeated and conquered all his rivals. But he did more than winning military victories. He brought about structural institutional changes that established the first Chinese Empire in the true sense of the word, by imposing a centralised bureaucratic government ruling with standardised laws across his realm.

He also linked up existing walls to become the Great Wall of China, to ward off barbarians to the north. (Qin in Wade-Giles romanisation is Ch'in, from which the English name China was probably derived.)

But the Qin Emperor was despotic, and his rule lasted from 221 to 206 BC only. Upon his death, rebellions broke out, and the Qin domain was finally overtaken by the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD).

The Han rulers consolidated the imperial legacy of the Qin, and adopted Confucianism as their national ideology. Having achieved internal unity, they began their military conquests, expanding their rule to such distant regions as Xingjian, there to open up the Silk Road for trade with the Roman Empire. At the end of the second century, the mighty Chinese armies also invaded and annexed the northern parts of Vietnam and Korea.

Nevertheless, Han control of peripheral regions had always been pretty insecure. So they developed a mutually beneficial "tributary system"; non-Chinese states were allowed to remain autonomous in exchange for symbolic acceptance of Han overlordship. Tributary alliances were confirmed through inter-ethnic marriages at the highest level and exchanges of gifts and goods.

Foreign policy

This tributary system served as the model of Chinese foreign policy right up to the modern times. When Zheng He sailed the vast oceans to reach the coasts of the African Continent in the early part of the 15th century, 80 years before Columbus started his adventures in far inferior fleets, the Chinese mariner probably tried to develop this tributary relationship overseas. This feat is still regarded with great pride by present-day Chinese as a symbol of China's imperial prowess and technological achievement at that time.

The conquests of vast territories by the Han rulers certainly entrenched the concept of a glorious homeland for an imagined Chinese community. But more than any other factor, the tributary system established further the self-perception of the Han Chinese that they were the heavenly-anointed kingdom-at-the-centre, radiating powerful military, diplomatic and cultural influences in concentric circles outwards, reaching distant regions where even barbarians would pay annual tribute to the imperial court.

As the Han Chinese prospered, they became the envy of the hearty horsemen from the north. Over a 2000 year period, waves of invaders breached the Great Wall and poured into the Chinese heartland.

The Mongols under their great Khans rode from the northern grassland, overran China, and established the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1386). In a second wave, the Manchurians from the frozen wilderness of the north-east punched through the Wall, and ruled China from 1644 to 1912. In both cases, instead of plundering and pillaging, the barbarians decided to stay and assimilate themselves into the rich culture of the vanquished Chinese.

In his famous book Nations and Nationalism, Ernest Gillner has this to say about a violation of the nationalist principle: "If the rulers of the political unit belonging to a nation other than that of the majority of the ruled, this, for nationalists, constitutes a quite outstandingly intolerable breech of political propriety."

In the case of the Han Chinese, this "breech of political propriety" by the Mongols and the Manchus was particularly grievous, because they perceived the invaders not only as aliens, but also as culturally inferior aliens. An appeal to meritocracy would demand that surely, the superior must rule over the inferior, and not the other way round.

Sense of superiority

In their attempt to motivate and mobilise Han Chinese to drive out their foreign rulers, the political and intellectual leaders of China had no recourse but to speak the language of Chinese nationalism, based on their Sino-centric perception of superiority.

This sense of superiority was to undergo a perverted twist when, in the 19th century, the putative superior Han culture was proven to be helpless against the mighty onslaught of the technology of war brought on by Western imperial powers.

Since then, the question of coming to terms with modernity, especially in the acquisition and development of scientific and technological knowledge, has become the fixation of many Chinese nationalists. The universal Chinese joy that greeted the launching of their very own astronaut last month is a case in point. The glory of a superior culture had been partially restored.

If my reading of Chinese history is correct, does it mean therefore, that their self-perception of ethnic superiority has always coloured their collective memory? If so, how should the history of China be re-read and re-interpreted by present day Chinese all over the world, in order that ethnic pride may not turn into racial bigotry, if that is at all possible?

My questions are posed out of my sense of ultimate concern for all human beings. Ultimately, ethnocentric perceptions of racial superiority or inferiority are self-delusions. To live a life of self-delusion is the greatest tragedy for any individual if you love Truth.