From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History

Before I got these, I knew less about Chinese history than I did about Martian biology. WOW. A friend recommended this course highly, for which I have already thanked him profusely. Although the DVD is astronomically expensive, and I have no place in my life for audio books, these transcripts were a Godsend. They total 600 pages over 3 200-page books, and I bought them used.

The professor is brilliant. Being a traditional historian, and also because he had to cram 5,000 years of history into a mere 600 pages [actually, more like 450 if you leave out the appendices – that’s more than 100 years per page], there were a lot of themes left out, but those can be gotten elsewhere. For example, there is no mention of the original construction of the Great Wall; there is no mention of the technology developments that were so crucial to Chinese history, like the invention of agriculture, the adoption of draft animals, etc., that enabled great social changes. But historians basically always ignore technology developments, so this is not a criticism, but merely a characterization – dozens of pages on Buddhism and nothing on technology. There was also scant mention of the daily lives of the agrarian population. But as I said, the guy is brilliant, in that the entire superstructure is revealed in this book, and other sources can be used to flesh it out.

Because the book is literally a transcript, it reads like a verbal speech, and this sometimes produces predictable hilarity. It seems to have been at least partially done by voice recognition software [Dragon Naturally Speaking? IBM ViaVoice?], in that there are a lot of comical malapropisms sprinkled throughout that a human transcriptionist would never write. There are also a lot of emphatic redundancies that are common in spoken English but not found in purpose-written English. But this only adds character; it does not detract, and we all know how it got there and why it’s still there.

For me, the parallels between Chinese and European civilization border on the eerie, since so many subtle similarities exist, including contemporaneous similarities, despite the virtual absence of cross-influence. It is as though some chapters in human history simply needed to be gone thru, possibly at a predictable pace. I repeat… WOW.

It was very hard to locate the whole series of actual transcripts on the used book market, so if that’s what you’re seeking, I wish you well. I repeat… this is a fantastic course. My only regret is that I may be spoiled for life. I want to locate similar historical treatments of Africa, Central Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and I may not find them.

I received my order From Yao to Mao shortly after ordering it. The audio CDs and their packaging were both in good condition. The CDs paly well, no problems.

Can comment didn’t have time to read it

Overall, these are very good lectures. The first few lectures are a little dry. I got the impression that there was not a lot of good background material to utilize for these be getting lectures, but they were included anyway with perhaps more attempt at depth than was needed. As the series progressed, they consistently got better. The professor does do a great job throughout the lectures of showing the Chinese mindset of what imperial power and responsibility meant.

This is no more than a brief survey. How could it be otherwise? 36 half hour lectures to cover 5000 years. Nevertheless, it accomplished its purpose, and I, who knew very little about Chinese history before watching these lectures, learned a lot.

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