(no subject)
Note to self:
Stay away from writers who say how much they researched their novel.
People who know what they are doing are perfectly aware of how much they don't know about the topic they are writing about, and thread accordingly. People new to the topic often lack the basics that would allow them to really understand what they are reading, and/or consider each and every source they happen across as equally reliable.
Going from link to link, I found this article by mr. Steve Berry about a novel of his,The Emperor's Tomb (the emperor being Qin Shi Huang), I had hazy memories of trying out the sample of the book, so I took a gander through the article. Mr. Berry admits to knowing little about China before tackling the novel and outlines his research, then goes on to say:
I discovered that well over half of the world’s innovations originated there. Things like printing, the zero, the compass, the stirrup, the abacus, the seismograph, the rudder, the parachute, and masts and sails. The list is huge.
I don't know if this speaks more of mr. Berry or of the American school system, the fact that the Chinese invented woodblock printing, paper, the compass and so on is common knowledge among schoolchildren here (by the way the zero originated in india, the earliest foremast has been identified on an Etruscan vase and square sails were indipendently invented in a few different places)
But, because of the country’s isolation and the tendency of one emperor to eradicate all vestiges of the dynasty that came before him, the Chinese literally forgot what they’d accomplished.
Sorry? Not all of the listed inventions date to before the First Emperor, beside the man sought to eradicate the philosophycal schools he didn't approve of. His infamous book burning order (wich also resulted in texts being learned by heart before being given up or with enmuring them in the walls of one's house, a fascinating story in itself), did not include books on agricolture, medicine, warfare or divination, for instance. And even if it weren't so, how could he have wiped the collective memory of events occurring after his death?
It's a culture that has been around for over 4000 years yet it still struggles to identify itself.
Yes, like just about every other culture around, given the rapid pace of change world-wide and, more specifically, all the twists and turns of Chinese history in the 20th century. The identity struggle of the Chinese owes much more to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping than it does to Qin Shi Huang.
Remember that practice of purging the national memory? The emperors who came after Qin Shi made sure that every detail of his existence was forgotten, including the buried army.
So much so that the fundamental source about Qin Shi Huang is the Shiji (Historical Records), written by Sima Qian, historian of the Han emperor, about a century after the death of the first emperor (work which includes a fascinating description of the tomb), and quite a few Confucian historians wrote about him and his rule (see The Ten Crimes of Qin, for instance)
There would be more, but at this point I came to the conclusion that mr. Berry's sources very likely come from an alternate timeline. What leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the fact that many reviewers of The Emperor's Tomb say they 'learned something about China' from the book (to me it sounds like 'I learned about Catholicism from The Da Vinci Code').
Stay away from writers who say how much they researched their novel.
People who know what they are doing are perfectly aware of how much they don't know about the topic they are writing about, and thread accordingly. People new to the topic often lack the basics that would allow them to really understand what they are reading, and/or consider each and every source they happen across as equally reliable.
Going from link to link, I found this article by mr. Steve Berry about a novel of his,The Emperor's Tomb (the emperor being Qin Shi Huang), I had hazy memories of trying out the sample of the book, so I took a gander through the article. Mr. Berry admits to knowing little about China before tackling the novel and outlines his research, then goes on to say:
I discovered that well over half of the world’s innovations originated there. Things like printing, the zero, the compass, the stirrup, the abacus, the seismograph, the rudder, the parachute, and masts and sails. The list is huge.
I don't know if this speaks more of mr. Berry or of the American school system, the fact that the Chinese invented woodblock printing, paper, the compass and so on is common knowledge among schoolchildren here (by the way the zero originated in india, the earliest foremast has been identified on an Etruscan vase and square sails were indipendently invented in a few different places)
But, because of the country’s isolation and the tendency of one emperor to eradicate all vestiges of the dynasty that came before him, the Chinese literally forgot what they’d accomplished.
Sorry? Not all of the listed inventions date to before the First Emperor, beside the man sought to eradicate the philosophycal schools he didn't approve of. His infamous book burning order (wich also resulted in texts being learned by heart before being given up or with enmuring them in the walls of one's house, a fascinating story in itself), did not include books on agricolture, medicine, warfare or divination, for instance. And even if it weren't so, how could he have wiped the collective memory of events occurring after his death?
It's a culture that has been around for over 4000 years yet it still struggles to identify itself.
Yes, like just about every other culture around, given the rapid pace of change world-wide and, more specifically, all the twists and turns of Chinese history in the 20th century. The identity struggle of the Chinese owes much more to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping than it does to Qin Shi Huang.
Remember that practice of purging the national memory? The emperors who came after Qin Shi made sure that every detail of his existence was forgotten, including the buried army.
So much so that the fundamental source about Qin Shi Huang is the Shiji (Historical Records), written by Sima Qian, historian of the Han emperor, about a century after the death of the first emperor (work which includes a fascinating description of the tomb), and quite a few Confucian historians wrote about him and his rule (see The Ten Crimes of Qin, for instance)
There would be more, but at this point I came to the conclusion that mr. Berry's sources very likely come from an alternate timeline. What leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the fact that many reviewers of The Emperor's Tomb say they 'learned something about China' from the book (to me it sounds like 'I learned about Catholicism from The Da Vinci Code').