NOVEMBER 11, 2025 – China. The armchair tour continues, but I must confess that the more familiar I become with historic names, dynasties, and big sweeping epochs, the more of a stranger I feel as I wander up and down, back and forth inside that country. The view from the window of my figurative tour coach is a bit like peering through an old spyglass at unfamiliar countryside while the coach rushes down the highway—but with the spyglass turned around so I’m seeing things miniaturized, as well as blurred. I’m convinced, however, that we must understand China to see (and better adapt to) the future; thus my compulsion to keep my coach seat and train my spyglass on the scenes rushing by.
Because of China’s size, age, and global influence, the “history coach tour” reaches back to the (first) unification of China under the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C.E. That means the tour covers roughly 2250 years of history—war and peace, stellar achievements across the entire spectrum of human endeavor and colossal failures consigning untold millions to unspeakable misery. In many ways you could call China, “History’s 800-pound gorilla.”
Though I can hope only to see the 800-pound gorilla from afar, I’m determined to keep my eyes, ears, and mind open for a deeper understanding. One potentially insurmountable challenge is the “Western spyglass” I’m using—let alone its reverse orientation (pun fully intended). It’s silly to apologize for my upbringing, education, and acculturation—all quintessentially Western—but to grasp the essence of China accurately, I need to be conscious of my built-in biases as I look through the spyglass. The older I grow, the steeper this challenge, but I have a theory that the slope can be lessened by exposure to Chinese art, music, and poetry. And it might not hurt to indulge my curiosity about Buddhism and its role in the story of China.
Though in our naiveté we non-Asian Americans tend to view China as monolithic, it’s anything but that historically. This is where the study of China becomes most challenging, giving rise to the basic question in many contexts of cultural and commercial cross-pollination, Comparatively speaking, who in historical exchanges influenced whom the most? In other words, as between two cultures involved in trade, war, other interactions, which absorbed the most from its counterparty?
But I’m getting ahead of my China-in-the-fourteenth century self, having raced through the previous 1,500 years of Chinese history. I first need to develop a better hold on the basic framework of each major dynastic period; each break-up, each consolidation, and in each instance, the most prominent figures involved and how and why they mounted and ruled upon the historical stage as they did—and what factors led to removal from that stage.
This will be a long-term, ongoing project. Though I wish I’d started years ago upon acknowledging to myself, “You can’t say you understand the world until you can say you understand China,” at least I’ve now begun my China tour. Ultimately, I’d like to take long excursions into the history of Korea and Japan, as well, not to mention Southeast Asia and the fourth most populous nation of the world, Indonesia, with 280 million souls and the world’s 16th largest economy (nominal GDP; 7th in PPP GDP), poised to overtake Russia and Germany.
And then there’s India. Don’t forget about India!
But first things first and next: the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644) of China.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
