In 1831 the Nguyễn Dynasty official, Lý Văn Phức, escorted some stranded Chinese sailors back to Fujian province.
When he arrived there, the guesthouse where he was supposed to stay had a sign over it which indicated that it was for “Barbarians.”
In the nineteenth century, Chinese viewed the world as divided between Hua and Yi. I translate “Hua” as “Efflorescents” and Yi as “Barbarians.”
Being an “Efflorescent” had nothing to do with the blood in your veins or what you looked like. This category was culturally defined. It referred to people who followed the ideals that were elaborated in the (Confucian) classics.
In these divided world, educated Chinese saw themselves as Efflorescents and everyone else as Barbarians.
However, Lý Văn Phức also saw himself as an Efflorescent (“Hoa” in Vietnamese). In fact, he may have seen himself as even more of an Efflorescent than his contemporaries in China because they had corrupted the ideals of antiquity when they followed the hybrid cultural practices of the invading Manchus who established the Qing Dynasty in the seventeenth century.
In any case, after seeing the sign over the guesthouse, Lý Văn Phức wrote an essay in which he defended his “Efflorescent-ness” (or “Hoa-ness”).
I made the above video about this event.
The section of his essay that the video is based on is as follows:
“As for the laws for governing the kingdom, they are based on those of the Two Emperors and the Three Monarchs [of antiquity]. With regard to the transmission of the way, it takes as its root the Six Classics and the Four Books, the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, and those of Zhu Xi and Cheng Yi. As for learning, it springs forth from the Zuo Commentary and the “Odes of the States,” and can be traced back to Ban Zhao and Sima Qian. As for writing, poetry and rhapsodies, there is the Collected Writings of the Zhaoming [Reign], and reliance on Li Bo and Du Fu. For calligraphy, it is the six scripts in the Rites of Zhou, with Zhong You and Wang Xizhi taken as models. In employing worthies and selecting scholars, the Han-Tang exam system is employed, while sashes and caps follow the garments of the Song-Ming. How numerous are the examples. If all of this is called Barbaric, then I know not what it is that we call Efflorescent!”
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_ hoa = 華 has other meanings than efflorescent : magnificent , bright , brilliant , colorful , elite , also flower ; Trung hoa = magnificent center ?
_ coincidentally , Phức among other meanings may also mean smells good ; in vernacular vietnamese , one says about a odorous perfume or flower ” thơm phưng phức “
I agree, but I chose that one because the premodern East Asian world view (by which I mean a worldview shared by elite “Chinese” and “Vietnamese”) saw the world as having a center from which everything spread outward from. Trung Hoa/Zhonghua is not just the Central Magnificence, because the “magnificence” spreads outward from the center. That’s why I prefer efflorescense “a bursting into flower, act of blossoming out.” There is more of a sense of movement in that term, and this idea of power/morality/civility, etc. moving outward from the center is a very fundamental aspect of the premodern East Asian worldview.
Reading your explanations , I would agree , efflorescent is very appropriate for ” hoa “
Accidentally, Ly Van Phuc distant ancestors were Fujianese.
Chinese has a long history record of testing quick-wittedness of foreigners, dating back to the Spring and Autumn. Maybe Ly Van Phuc took this too seriously. Maybe he should learn from 晏嬰 of Spring and Autumn and responded in a more humerous way: a barbaric guest house from a barbaric host, for example.