Why do we call ourselves Han Chinese and not Tang Qin Ming?

Chinese history up and down five thousand years, in the middle of so many dynasties, Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, the Three Kingdoms, Wei, Jin, North and South Dynasties, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing, and so on. But why do we have to be called Han Chinese, traditional dress to be called Han clothes, write the word called Chinese characters, speak the word called Chinese? This is thanks to a great dynasty in Chinese history, the Han Dynasty.

The name of Han Chinese started after Liu Bang had the world

The title "Han Chinese" began in the Han Dynasty and has been used ever since. The origin of the term "Han" began more than 2,000 years ago with the struggle between the Qin kings and the Chu and Han dynasties.

At that time, the world's heroes rose up, the generals agreed: "first into the finalization of the Guanzhong king of the". Liu Bang led an army of 200,000 men to defeat the Qin army at Lantian, and was the first to enter Guanzhong (Xianyang). According to the agreement, Liu Bang should be the king of Guanzhong in this fertile land.

But before Liu Bang's ass was even warmed up in Xianyang, Xiang Yu went back on his word and led his vassals to plunder Guanzhong, aggressively trying to kill Liu Bang, which led to the "Hongmen Banquet" incident.

Faced with Xiang Yu's powerful 400,000-strong army, Liu Bang had to give up the fat meat in his hands and retreated to the Han River (an area upstream of the Han River), where he became the king of Hanzhong, the so-called "King of Han".

The ancients believed that the Han River flows in the same direction as the Milky Way in the sky, so the word "Han" is associated with the sky.

Liu Bang then used this as a reason to comfort himself, and on the one hand, he gladly took "Hanzhong" as his base and started the "revolution". Later, when Liu Bang unified the world, he adopted the name "Han" as his state name, which lasted for more than 400 years.

Nationalities, like dynasties, evolved and changed until the Han Dynasty saw a great fusion of nationalities, melting Chinese people of different origins and backgrounds into a single identity that everyone **** had.

This is all closely related to the Han Dynasty's political, religious, cultural and economic creations.

Ancient people's identity was a cultural identity, not a blood identity

The unity of the nation was in fact to a greater extent a unity of thought, a unity of culture.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, when the lords were divided and a hundred schools of thought contended with each other, each school, though arguing with each other because of its different ideas, generally showed a yearning for great unity.

The Spring and Autumn Annals of the Rams (春秋公羊传) Yin Gongyuan Nian Yun: "What does it say about the king's first month? Great unification also." Xunzi - discussing the military" said: "within the four seas as a family"

It is the concept of great unity, which promotes the formation of the Qin and Han dynasty situation of great unity.

After the Spring and Autumn period, the state of Chu spread across the Han River and the Yangtze River Basin, and after more than 800 years of expansion and operation, the degree of civilization is getting higher and higher, and the integration of ethnic groups is getting deeper and deeper.

Till Qin unified the six states and established the first great unified feudal empire in Chinese history. After the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, Emperor Qin Shi Huang adopted a series of measures, such as the implementation of the county system, the regulation of "books with the same characters", the unification of currency, weights and measures, and "vehicles with the same track", "the same line", as well as the construction of the Great Wall, etc., which y promoted the integration of the nationalities. The measures of unification of currency, weights and measures, and the construction of the Great Wall y promoted the great integration of nationalities.

Because the mighty Qin dynasty spread its fame far and wide, the neighboring ethnic groups and countries began to call the Chinese "Qin people".

But because the unification of the Qin dynasty was a violent unification, the ideological situation was still a hundred schools of thought, the ruling ideology was inconsistent, the legal system was changing, and the hundred schools of thought were at a loss, so the Qin dynasty's own people's sense of identification with the identity of the "Qin people" was, on the contrary, not strong. Therefore, the people of the Qin Dynasty did not have a strong sense of identity as "Qin people". The fact that the Qin Dynasty was too short a period of time for people to form a deep-rooted conception of it, and that it was replaced by the Han Dynasty, made the name of "Qinren" quickly forgotten.

On the other hand, after the establishment of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty carried out a crucial ruling policy - to depose the hundred schools of thought and revere only the Confucians.

From then on, officials were mainly from Confucian students, and Confucianism gradually developed and became the orthodoxy that ruled the people for the next 2,000 years. Although this was not conducive to the development of academic culture, it was beneficial to the strengthening of the authoritarian system and the unification of the country at that time.

Sima Qian and his Shiji also played an important role in the unification of Han thought.

Sima Qian, in his "Records of the Grand Historian", recognized the Yellow Emperor as the **** ancestor of the world, and that all ethnic groups were descendants of the Yellow Emperor; he preached the idea of unification, advocated unity, and opposed division; he recounted the history of the formation of the Han race, and set up the concept of a unified multi-ethnic state, which had a profound impact.

Politically and economically strong nation can promote people's sense of identity

Besides the ideological unification, the political and economic achievements of the Han Dynasty made the people willing to call themselves "Han Chinese" from the bottom of their hearts and take pride in this identity.

Based on the abolition of feudalism and the establishment of counties in the Qin Dynasty, the Han Dynasty further strengthened the political system of the central government by establishing a system of examination, which allowed the private elite to enter the ruling class and started the tradition of the imperial examination system that had existed in China for thousands of years.

During this period, the Han Dynasty saw the birth of one of the four great inventions, papermaking, of which the people of China are still very proud.

Politically, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty also created the system of assassins, divided the country into thirteen prefectures, and practiced the "household organization of the people", in which the people were formally registered in the government's household registry, which was tantamount to issuing a Han Chinese identity card to every citizen, which greatly strengthened the Han Chinese identity. This was tantamount to issuing a Han identity card to each citizen, which greatly strengthened the sense of self-identity and belonging of the Han Chinese, and reinforced each other's national consciousness.

Economically, Emperor Wu accepted Sang Hongyang's suggestion and enacted the Law of Equalization and the Law of Equalization, and established a nationwide commercial network centered on the capital city, which led to a great development in the circulation of commodities; he also paid attention to water conservancy, and constructed the famous aqueducts Chengguo Canal, Liuxiu Canal, and Baiquan Canal, which led to the great growth of the agricultural economy.

As a result, the Han Dynasty advanced on three levels: political, economic, and cultural, making the Han Dynasty a flourishing dynasty.

The Han Dynasty was famous in China and abroad, and the Han people were also famous in the world

The most important criterion for evaluating a country's strength and decline was its territory, and the Han Dynasty made a good start in the latter part of its history by defeating the once invincible Xiong Nu, the first of its kind in the history of the world at that time.

In foreign relations, the Han Dynasty opened up the Western Regions, defeated the Xiongnu, leveled the Western Qiang, conquered Korea, served the Southwest Barbarians, and collected Fujian, Guangdong, and Southern Guangdong, which led to an unprecedented expansion of the Han Dynasty's territory at that time.

Let's take a look at the Qin Dynasty's territory after the unification of the six kingdoms:

Then we will look at the Western Han Dynasty's territory (in green):

The territory of its rule laid the foundation for the boundaries of the feudal dynasties that ruled China for more than 2,000 years afterward (see the map below), and it even influenced the map of the present-day China.

The Han Dynasty was the strongest voice of its time when it came to the harassment of neighboring countries: those who violate the Han Dynasty will be executed even if they are far away! The Han Dynasty established the unprecedented dignity of the "Han people".

The Han Dynasty was so famous that even ancient Rome in the West knew about it.

Other nations called the Han army "Han soldiers", the Han envoys "Han ambassadors", and the Han people "Han Chinese". So much so that hundreds of years later, the western countries still call the Tang envoys as Han envoys, and a king of a small western country looked at the Tang envoys and cried, "I don't want to see the Han officials again today"!