iUniverse Blog

iUniverse author Hong Yuan talks about The Sinitic Civilization, a thorough exploration of Chinese civilization and history.

Please briefly describe your book . . .

The Sinitic Civilization: A Factual History Through the Lens of Archaeology, Bronzeware, Astronomy, Divination, Calendar and the Annals

The Book is intended for the readers who had questions about the Chinese civilization and its history. There are ten thousand answers to ten thousand questions, something like an encyclopedic reference. The index, with dozens of pages of the history-related terminologies, could serve as an expanded table of contents. By searching for the keywords, topics, and events, readers who are interested in China’s civilization or the world civilization at large could glean information about the Sinitic cosmological, astronomical, astrological, historical, divinatory, and geographical developments, knowing that the foundation blocs of any civilization shared similarity as far as theology, myths, creation, and divination are concerned. Chapter One of the Book had the interpretation of Asking Heaven, which was an epic that contained the ancient Chinese myths about the creation theories.

The Book was not intended for the serious-minded readers alone as the interesting topics like Zhou King Muwang’s Travel and The Legends of Mountains & Seas were also included. Charles Hucker mused about the Zhou king’s rendezvous with Queen Sheba, and Henriette Mertz speculated about a Chinese expedition to the North American continent at the turn of the 3^rd and 2^nd millennia B.C. The Book covered 95-98% of Zhou King Muwang’s Travelogue, and covered the most important parts of the mythic book The Legends of Mountains and Seas.

The Book, though not a 100% word-for-word translation of the two ancient Chinese history annals of The Spring & Autumn Annals (722-481 B.C.) and The Bamboo Annals (the late 3^rd and early 2^nd millennia B.C.-299 B.C.), could be said to have at minimum 95-98% of the contents paraphrased, if not termed translated. In the Book, considerable contents related to Shi-ji (The Grand Clerk’s Script), i.e., China’s multi-dynasty annals, were covered as well.

The Book contained the paraphrasing of ancient poems from The Book of Poems, and hence could serve as a literary source of reference. The Book, absent the Chinese logographic characters, could be used as an entry-level Chinese language textbook as the Chinese words and their meanings were spelled out with the English paraphrase in the brackets. Readers could contradistinguish the Chinese-English words to master the phonetic pronunciation of the Sinitic language.

And can you tell us a little about yourself?

I undertook undergraduate studies in languages and linguistics and graduate studies in mathematical economics, work in the informational technology field, and have a lifelong devotion to rectifying China’s literature of history.

Do you have any particular literary influences? What inspired you to write your book?

What inspired me to write about history is that China’s literature of history needs rectification. The ancient history was lost as a result of Qin Emperor Shihuangdi’s burning of 213 B.C. The author has been writing about history online in a freelance style for twenty years. The ancient history in the Book is just a part of the scope of work. The focus now will shift back to the history about the Republic of China, with topics like “A History of Espionage, Sedition and Sabotage”, “The Civil Wars – Last Duel of the Middle Earth”, and “China At War (1931-1945)”, etc.

What is the one message you would like to convey to your readers?

The Sinitic Civilization is not just another history book about China and its civilization, but a book with enumeration of historical facts on records, with the theme being that the more facts are presented and synthesized, the closer to truth the history becomes. The Book could be alternatively said to be about the historical facts, nothing but facts, and the readers, after consuming the facts, could make their own extrapolation or speculation. In the process of presenting the facts, the ancient forgeries, intentional or unintentional, as well as the myths and legends, were pierced by the facts. For two thousand years, the authenticity of the “ancient version” of the book Remotely Ancient History was debated, and for the last hundreds of years, the “contemporary version” of The Bamboo Annals was also being debated. It is hoped that this Book could end the historical debates once and for all. Armed with the historical facts presented in the book, the readers would find that their previous beliefs about the Chinese civilization and its history might need to be modified or completely changed.

Are you working on a sequel to your book?

There will be a Book III that is to cover the history of China, from the 1st century A.D. to A.D. 1279, i.e., the Mongol conquest of China, that caused a loss of 80% of China’s population and broke the Sinitic nation’s spine. There could be a book dedicated to “The Barbarians”, that could cover the history up to the founding of the Republic of China in 1911. Those topics would have to be realigned to be after the completion of some of the history books on Republican China.

Finally, what advice would you give to aspiring authors?

After writing freelance for twenty years, it was always a dream for the author to have the writings formatted into a book. The delay was worthwhile. During the delay, a lot of brainstorming work was done, which helped to perfect the themes. In the opinion of the author, the themes, subjects or arguments must be impeccable; otherwise, aspiring authors should continue the pursuit of truth and facts before finalizing the thoughts. Aspiring authors should always be encouraged to write their books, with an open mind of synthesizing the thread of themes and perfecting the thoughts along the way.

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