청말, 한족 표상의 구축

Abstract

In fact, the Han Chinese(漢族) in all Chinese nationalities is the powerful majority group which is representative of China. Based on the theory that the idea or concept of nationality was made in modern age, this study especially paid attention to the last period of Qing dynasty(淸朝), because I believe this help us to understand how the Han Chinese represent their national identity by themselves. In those days, the revolutionaries had tried to find the way how their nationality could be indentified, contrasting it and Manchu people for the political purpose to overset Qing dynasty, this made it clear that the boundary of the Han Chinese and Manchu people, and the representation of the Han Chinese was gradually considered as a substantial concept. In particularly, they claimed to stand for the representation of themselves with “slave” and “Huangdi(黃帝)”. Because they recognized the Han Chinese has the serious faults pleased to follow the spirit of the times, and lacks spirit of independence, so the symbolic representation of “slave” was frequently aroused, and “Huangdi” was put forward to distinguish between the origin of the Han Chinese and Manchu people’s on account that he was the progenitor of the Han Chinese. For this, genealogical construction about nationality based on the modern knowledge imported from the western civilization were presented on the printed media in those days with the color of scientific civilization, this simultaneously highlighted the spirit of Great Chinese nation based on the discriminative recognition about barbarian, therefore resulted in strengthening the point of the great power of civilization. The contradiction that consists in these two symbols were caused by the discriminatory practices resulted from the traditional racial segregation, the friendly attitude for the western civilization, and the theory of social evolution, this made the revolutionaries agree two symbols at the same time, and the identity of Han chinese also was dramatically constructed. As the Revolution of 1911 had succeeded, this exclusive representation of the Han Chinese in the last period of Qing dynasty was faced with the demands of the times asking to change, but has been basically exerting big influence ever since it was constructed in modern ages, as you can see the concept words such as “The descendants of Yandi(炎帝) and Huangdi” prevail in Chinese society now, they are just emphasizing its lineage.