Merv Project is UP

http://wavesofmerv.blogspot.com/

 Go there. Go there now. Appreciate my MS Paint skills.

Unesco in Afghanistan

Its funny how UNESCO puts out their desire to save "Afghanistan's" cultural heritage.
Lets think, what exactly are they saving? Oh, just all of that ancient Buddhist and Greek cultural crossover.

Heres the bigger kicker, did anybody ask the Afghans if they considered that their own heritage? Okay okay, so maybe UNESCO was referring to the World's cultural heritage, referring to such ancient past relics as heritage for the whole world.

But seriously, why are UNESCO telling Afghanistan that they're going in there to save Afghanistan's cultural heritage. Sure a past culture lived on that land, but they don't live there anymore.
I don't have an issue with what UNESCO is doing, just in how they say it. Don't go in there under the guise that you're helping somebody. They could care less about ancient art and archaeological sites given their astronomically high poverty and illiteracy rates.
Be honest, and go in there to grab the items that hold history within them. Go there to save such items so that we may study them again later, and come to some greater understanding in the future. Don't tell the Afghans that you're saving their heritage. Who are UNESCO to declare somebody else's heritage? I thought the whole point of identity was to know your own so that you could tell other people, and differentiate yourself from them, not to tell somebody else who they are.

There may be no such thing as a fundamental essence of "Chinese-ness", but the Tang Dynasty disagrees.

So it appears that the roots of Nestorian Christianity lies within Syriac Christianity. What is also interesting is the continuous notations of how Nestorians had attempted to meld with Chinese culture, and were doomed to be lost as a religion because of their lack of distinct identity within China. This is further underlined by the numerous instances of adoption of Chinese and Buddhist language in Christian texts. However, despite blending in, it is apparent that their early texts lacked fluency in Chinese.

SPAM modelling peaks my interest as well. The basic idea is a ranking of castes is based on the letters in the word "spam", Scholars being the highest, followed by peasants, artisans, and lastly merchants. So the Tang dynasty Chinese held merchants as lowly people, despite the merchants being typically wealthy. Could this be partly because many of the merchants in Tang China were foreigners? Sure foreigners were tolerated, but probably not held in high esteem. This may have also played a part in why foreign religions had trouble spreading into China, seeing how it would be an all-too-easy connection to place between foreign religions, and the lowly held caste of merchants that brought these religions in with their trade.

Trade brought foreigners with their customs and religions to China. However, the Chinese treated them in such a way to distance them from native Chinese culture, and also required them to assimilate somewhat, likely so the Chinese would have an easier time dealing with the foreigners. It is this interesting double standard that sought to both reduce distinct foreign identities within China, as well as keep them at such a distance from the Chinese identity to reduce the foreigners to a "lowered" status within Chinese society.

It is clear that the Chinese of the Tang Dynasty made all efforts to distinguish themselves from foreign entities, whilst holding their dominion strong and impenetrable. They had a clear idea who they (the Tang Chinese) were, who the outsiders were, and how to keep themselves identifyably separate from outsiders.