So I have long avoided the issue of “those rocks in the sea” because I’ve long felt that the things that people have been saying are just too idiotic to pay any attention to. However, this issue just won’t go away. So it’s time to enter the fray.
Recently there has been a claim circulating on the Internet that the Scarborough Shoal, a bunch of rocks that stick out of the sea some 123 miles to the west of the Philippines, is Chinese territory because in 1279 a Chinese astronomer by the name of Guo Shoujing supposedly made an astronomical measurement there.
Guo Shoujing was an extremely capable Chinese astronomer who served the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.
According to the History of the Yuan (Yuanshi) he reported to the Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, that the current territory that the emperor ruled over was larger than that of the earlier Tang Dynasty when the last significant astronomical calculations had been made, and that new astronomical measurements should therefore be made in order to correctly calibrate the calendar.
Kublai Khan approved this request, and dispatched Guo Shuojing to set up observatories in various places and to take measurements.
The History of the Yuan states that the officials responsible for carrying out this mission went “east to Gaoli [i.e., Korea], west to Dianchi [in what is today Yunnan Province], south past Zhuyai [i.e., Hainan], and north through the Tiele [the name of a Turkic tribe which inhabited areas to the north of what is today China, at times including areas of what is today Central Asia].”
十六年，改局為太史院，以恂為太史令，守敬為同知太史院事，給印章，立官府。及奏進儀表式，守敬當帝前指陳理致，至於日晏，帝不為倦。守敬因奏：「唐一行開元間令南宮說天下測景，書中見者凡十三處。今疆宇比唐尤大，若不遠方測驗，日月交食分數時刻不同，晝夜長短不同，日月星辰去天高下不同，即目測驗人少，可先南北立表，取直測景。」帝可其奏。遂設監候官一十四員，分道而出，東至高麗，西極滇池，南踰朱崖，北盡鐵勒，四海測驗，凡二十七所。
The section on astronomy in the History of the Yuan then lists one of the places where an observatory was established as “Nanhai” (南海). It is not clear where this was. However, the History of the Yuan lists the calculations that were made there.
南海，北極出地一十五度，夏至景在表南，長一尺一寸六分，晝五十四刻，夜四十六刻。
Nathan Sivin provides a translation of the calculations in his Granting the Seasons: The Chinese Astronomical Reform of 1280, pages 577-579. These pages are available for preview view on Google Books.
He says there that “They first determined that at Nanhai the north pole emerged from the earth 15 du; at the summer solstice the shadow would fall to the south of the gnomon and was 1.16c long; day length was 54 marks, and night length was 46 marks.” (page. 578)
I’m not an astronomer, so I don’t understand what the calculations mean. However, this is what people are now doing: In order to determine where “Nanhai” actually was, people are looking at the calculations that were made there and are then trying to determine from them where they were taken.
One Chinese scholar has recently made the claim that they were taken at Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan dao in Chinese).
This is what is being debated on the Internet at the moment. What I don’t see people doing, is looking at the larger context, and talking about how selective this use of historical information is.
A thousand years ago a Han collaborator working for an alien conquest dynasty made astronomical measurements from around “the territory” (疆宇). That area included what is now the Korean Peninsula as well as probably the area of Mongolia. Meanwhile, there was no mention of places like Tibet or Taiwan.
So if Guo Shoujing’s activities demonstrate the extent of Chinese sovereignty, then why aren’t the Chinese demanding that the world recognize China’s “indisputable sovereignty” over the Korean Peninsula and Mongolia?
While it’s debatable where “Nanhai” was, the Korean Peninsula was clearly one of the places that Guo Shuojing made astronomical calculations from. That is 100% indisputable. So why isn’t China claiming sovereignty over the Korean Peninsula?
On a different point, the Yuan were not “Chinese.” They were a foreign conquest dynasty. Further, the khanate in the east, the area that Kublai Khan ruled over, included territory that went far north into what is today Siberia.
When the Ming Dynasty took over, what were the internationally-recognized legal mechanisms that allowed for the transfer of territory? What legal negotiations took place to determine how much of the former khanate would be internationally-recognized as part of the Ming Dynasty realm? What was the extent of that territory?
Obviously there are no answers to these questions, because these are modern concepts which did not exist in people’s minds at that time. However, the distinction between the modern and pre-modern worlds is one which Chinese today willfully ignore in order to promote their nation’s agenda.
In the end all any of this really does is to just insult human intelligence.
太無恥了!
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It’s interesting to read this quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal :
“In 1979 historical geographer Han Zhenhua (韩振华) was among the first scholars to claim that the point called “Nanhai” (literally, “South Sea”) in that astronomical survey referred to Scarborough Shoal.[8] In 1980 during a conflict with Vietnam for sovereignty over the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands), however, the Chinese government issued an official document claiming that “Nanhai” in the 1279 survey was located in the Paracels.[9] Historical geographer Niu Zhongxun defended this view in several articles.[10] In 1990, a historian called Zeng Zhaoxuan (曾昭璇) argued instead that the Nanhai measuring point was located in Central Vietnam.[11] Historian of astronomy Chen Meidong (陈美东) and historian of Chinese science Nathan Sivin have since agreed with Zeng’s position in their respective books about Guo Shoujing.[12][13]”
In 1988 HanZhenhua reclaimed that “Nanhai’ was Paracels (see ‘Collection of Historical Materials on the South China Sea Islands’ 我国南海诸岛史料汇编 ) possibly to match with Chinese Goverment’s claim..
I agree, and thanks for pointing this out. All of this emphasizes the point I’m trying to make that all of these efforts to determine where exactly “Nanhai” was are idiotic 1) because there is no way of determining for sure and 2) even if one could, it still means nothing (given the historical context in which Guo Shoujing’s expedition/measurements took place).
Just stumbled across your blog. Excellent! To the above idiocies that you cite, one could also make the argument that Hà Tiên belongs to China, given that Ming loyalists settled it before Vietnamese ever arrived. . . . but of course no one ever makes this argument. And isn’t the Trần royal family originally from Fujian? Proof that Vietnam as a whole belongs to China, right?
To move from idiocies to something perhaps less idiotic, I was at a conference last summer where there were some people who research about medieval Fujian, and it’s amazing how widespread the influence of people from that region was, especially given the fact that many people from that area were maritime traders.
One thing that needs to happen with people who deal with premodern Vietnamese history is that they need to move away from using the term “China” (Trung Quốc) and be more specific. In the medieval period, Fujian was known as Min (Mân), and Min/Mân people were enormously influential over a large area.
Were Min/Mân people “Chinese”? To some extent “yes,” in that the kingdom of Min/Mân was created by what we would today call “Han Chinese” who migrated into that region, but after that it’s like calling early Americans “British.” Yes, they are very similar on many levels, and that’s where many of them came from, but people who live in different areas change to some extent.
It’s that Sinicized variant that exerted a strong influence in various places.
Make perfect sense!