Mappae Mundi Ptolemy's map, 150 CE

World map, Turin 1150 AD

Prolegomena to the Great Asia War

If you view the Earth through the eyes of old cartographers as Ptolemy, the contours of the mapped area around the Mediterranean are similar to these captured by the lenses of the orbiting satellites, as the knowledge of ancients about the face of the earth was quite extensive. More than 2,000 years ago, Eratosthenes (c.276-195 BCE) a librarian at the museum of Alexandria, Egypt, calculated the correct size of the Earth. During one of his journeys up the Nile he stopped at Aswan. It was June 21, the day of the Summer Solstice, when the sun reaches its northernmost point on the celestial sphere. Around noon, Eratosthenes leaned over the rim of a well on one of the city squares of Aswan. To his surprise he saw a reflection of the Sun on the water surface deep down below. At this point of our narrative Eratosthenes knew, that at the time of Summer Solstice Aswan is on a direct line between the Sun and the center of the Earth. After Eratosthenes returned to Alexandria he waited for the next Summer Solstice. On noon of that day he measured length of the shadow cast by a vertical line. Later, he fastened each end of that line to a peg, drew one peg down to the ground and with the other drew a circle in the sand. This was his model of the Earth. Next, he repeatedly marked the length of the shadow along the perimeter of this circle. The shadow fitted the circle about fifty times. If the Earth is round and if the shadow of my vertical line is proportional to the distance between Alexandria and Aswan, than the circumference of the Earth must be 50 times the 500 miles separating these two cities, i.e., about 25,000 miles, reasoned Eratosthenes. The actual equatorial circumference of the Earth is 24,902 miles. After the fall of the Roman Empire, these contours begin to blur and by the time of Crusades cartographers, relying heavily on the Bible for information, showed the Earth as flat disks. One of these maps, from a manuscript produced thousand years after Ptolemy has drawn his maps, is shown above. These mappae mundi, depicted a flat Earth, punctuated by few mountains with Biblical names, had Jerusalem as its center. The rivers, not unlike spokes of the wheel, emptied to the ocean surrounding the circular landmass. This map reflects the spiritual world of crusaders as well as contemporary Evangelists.

Ural Mountains and Novaya Zemlya

Blue Earth and its Continents After the Dark Ages, the real face of the Earth gradually emerged, like Botticelli's Venus from her shell. Just before the voyages of Columbus, cartographic maps again begun to resemble the true contours of the land. After the first space voyage Earth took on the likeness of colorful ball. During the night, the demarcation lines between the light and dark areas indicate the energy consumption and relative affluence of various regions. The northwestern areas of Europe, the great urban conglomerations on the Atlantic Coast of the United States and the urban area surrounding Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast are clearly visible. However, the most brilliant spot on the face of the Earth marks the Japanese islands with light radiating from Tokyo outwards. During the day, Asia, Africa, America, Australia, and Antarctica, but not Europe, are clearly defined as continents by the surrounding oceans.

Europe is not a continent. Europe is a western region of Asia. The notion of Europe as a separate continent is just another facet of European self-aggrandizement. With respect to man-made boundaries, on the blue ball of the Earth, only one borderline is visible. The Great Wall of China, separating the civilization of the West from the civilization of the East.
Earth with and without Borders The Earth as seen by the American Indians did not include borders. They believed that the Earth belonged to us, her children. The American Indians came from the northern provinces of the Chinese Empire and regions beyond its northern periphery. They crossed the Bering Straits and settled in the Americas. At that time, the oceans and the great deserts contained the Western civilization. The affluence of Western civilization became pronounced only after its 'discovery' of the 'New World.' There are several euphemisms for invasion of a country, the 'discovery of the New World' being foremost among them. The size of the accumulated wealth gained by Western people from the native people of Asia, Africa, Australia and Oceania by partitioning continents into privately owned real estate is astronomical. An often quoted native lament goes that 'Before the white people came, we had the land and they had the Bible. Now, we have the Bible and they have the land.’ Over the centuries, the true purpose of majority of Western wars was obscured by the fact that, aside from looting other civilizations, Western nations also fought among themselves for the spoils. The principal struggle was between Spain, the leading invading power and the British Empire, her prime successor.
 

Round the World Travels Paralleling the Westward expansion was the expansion aimed against the Confucian countries of the Far East. Within the context of this Eastward expansion, it is interesting to note that shortly after Marco Polo entered China by the land route, Islamic countries of the Middle East fortified their barriers erected to protect their commerce along the Silk Road. These barriers were more formidable than the natural barrier formed by the sea.

The invasions of the Far East by European countries were primarily maritime invasions, following the circumnavigation of the Africa (1497-1499) by Vasco de Gama and the circumnavigation of the Earth by Ferdinand Magellan (1519-1522). Magellan himself did not survive that voyage, as did not 253 people from the 270 who on September 20, 1519 left the Seville. Among those who survived was Pigafeta, the chronicler of the voyage. To his amazement he noticed that, even though he carefully recorded each day of the voyage, one day was missing. The plot of Jules Verne's novel Around the Earth in 80 Days is based on reversal of this Pigafeta's finding as, upon circumnavigating the Earth in the eastward direction, one day will be gained.
Prongs of the Trap  Western invasion of the Far East enveloped the Confucian countries in a two-pronged movement. The British spearheaded the maritime invasions of China. The Americans 'opened Japan' in 1853 when Commodore Perry moored his ships in the Tokyo Bay. The pretext of this display of the United States' naval power was the delivery of a letter from the 13th President of the United States, Millard Fillmore, to the Tokugawa shogun of Japan. The same Fillmore who three years earlier signed the fugitive slave law that required Northerners to return escaped slaves to their Southern owners. Following the signing of a treaty with the Tokugawa shogunate in early spring of 1854, a series of even more disadvantageous treaties were forced upon Japan. Soon the slogan 'honor the emperor, expel the barbarians' was heard throughout Japan. In 1867 the Tokugawa shogun was forced to resign and the imperial government was restored under the Emperor Meiji (1868-1912). The invasions of Japan by the United States culminated in 1945 by outright military occupation of Japan.

Nabob Elihu Yale (1649-1721)

Emperor Babur (r.1526-1530)

Nabobs of the East India Company  The British invasions of the Far East were coined out under the pretext of trade. Foremost among the trading companies was the East India Company, chartered in 1600 by Queen Elizabeth. In 1639 the East India Company bought a strip of beach at Madras, in 1668 acquired a lease to the port of Bombay, and in 1690 built a settlement at the site of present Calcutta. At each of these three locations the company erected a fort from which the British conducted their trade.
At the time, the East India Company started to penetrate India, India was ruled by the Mogul (Mongol) dynasty founded in 1526 by Babur, a descendant of Genghis Khan. The Mogul emperors gradually became subordinate to the officials of the East India Company, known as 'nabobs.' Nabobs amassed huge fortunes. One of the nabobs, Elihu Yale, founded the Yale University. Another, Sir Thomas Raffles, known as Raffles of Singapore, founded the London Zoo, the largest Zoo of the western world up to the time the British government, on the onset of WWII, ordered its animals to be killed as a war economy measure.

Bolan Pass from the time of the British Raj (1858-1947)

Sepoys

British Raj The British occupation of India led to a widening economic gap between the British and their Indian subjects with affluent British settlements contrasting with increasingly squalid Indian slums. The growing resentment of the British rule lead to the Sepoy Rebellion (1857-1858). Sepoys were Indian troops serving in the British Army. A revolt was triggered when the British introduced new rifle cartridges rumored to be greased with oil made from the fat of cows, sacred in India.
The British press opened its atrocity campaign by describing Sepoys as rebels tossing British babies into the air and bayoneting them for sport. The British public viewed their military in India as gentleman warriors, imbued with the vigor of the Anglo-Saxon race, and defending dignity, Christian religion, and Britain's God's ordained mission. After suppressing the revolt, the British consolidated their rule and in 1877 Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. The British continued their eastward expansion. They occupied Ceylon, then Singapore, and Burma and continued their expansion toward China. At this point, let us describe some aspects of the civilization they were about to encounter.

Ferocious Warriors Walking with a Japanese friend through one of Tokyo’s old districts, we entered a beautiful garden. Next to a small pond there was an old portal, guarded by ferocious-looking statues of warriors wielding enormous swords. At this sight I remembered an old European art book, which discussed Raphael's Madonnas - Madonna of the Goldfinch, Alba Madonna, the Sistine Madonna, and the Madonna of the Chair - and contrasted them with the ‘ugly’ religious art of the Orient. My Japanese friend mentioned that she was born in this district and that, as a little girl during the war years, she often walked with her mother through these gardens. I asked her whether she was afraid of these ferocious-looking warriors. She answered that, initially, she was, but after her mother explained to her that they looked so frightening to protect her from evil spirits, she was not afraid of them any more. This was my first lesson, and I have not stopped learning since.
String of Pearls The visualization of sound waves on screens of computer workstations provides insight into the inner quality of languages that could have been perhaps intuitively felt, but not directly perceived before the computer revolution. One way to classify the sound waves typical of different languages is alongside the rough-smooth continuum. Toward the jagged end of this continuum is Dutch. Some of its words, as the name of the impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, are surprisingly rough. Smoothed by English into a ‘go,’ it is pronounced by a native speaker of Dutch in a way a porcine might. At the smooth, undulating end of this continuum is Chinese. Chinese is a syllabic language. Most of its syllables start with a consonant and end with a vowel. Chinese is also a tonal language, which means that it is not spoken, but sung. When viewed on the screen of a computer terminal, Chinese resembles a string of pearls.

The Tower of Distant Sails As with so many other things, it is not what is on the outside, but what is inside that really matters. To the untrained ear, the melody of tonal languages is concealed, as the inner beauty of Chinese names remains hidden to a person not familiar with the language. Thus, Shanghai is the 'City above the Sea' and Hong Kong is the 'Fragrant Harbor,' named after the smell of the santal wood used to build its barges and junks. Names

Island of Fulfilled Desire, Pavilion of the Emerald Forest, Cave of Crystal Spires,
Mountain of Silver Cloud, Tower of Distant Sails, Lake of Heavenly Peace,
Path of Harmony, Road into the Spring, Garden of Eternal Delights

are hidden behind groups of nonsense syllables, transliterating sound, but not meaning. The same is true of personal names. To a Westerner, the Chinese name 'Yi Wen' may not mean more but a name. But to a speaker of Chinese 'Yi' means 'mind,' with connotations of spirit, feelings, intentions, thoughts, gentle, refined. 'Wen' evokes associations pertaining to literature and fine arts. The first character, 'Yi,' consists of radicals depicting sun, rise, and heart. When the sun rises, the world awakens, and the sound of life begins. Together with the radical depicting the heart, this character means 'mind, the sound of the heart.' The character 'Wen' is used not only to denote belles-lettres, but also to depict the literature of the sky, astronomy. Thus, in combination, these two characters convey the message that to find the meaning of life, look into your heart and aspire for the stars. Chinese names often have rich associations, are pronounced in tonal cascades, and are capable of evoking abundant images, both visual and acoustical.

About Chinese Pictographs It has often been said that to understand Chinese culture is next to impossible without learning the Chinese language. However, this road is fraught with difficulty. There is a book by Richard Newnham, About Chinese (1980), written for those who 'may have too little time - or too much wisdom? - for a practical course in Chinese.' Many Chinese, aware of the scope of this task, often try to discourage foreigners from learning Chinese. Some, however, challenge foreigners to learn Chinese by minimizing difficulty of this task. The author remembers taking a guided tour of San Francisco’s Chinatown that included a lecture on Chinese. After drawing a few simple pictographs such as that of a sun and a mountain (which indeed resemble their real-life counterparts), the instructor claimed that by learning about 100 additional characters ‘thus simple,’ one will ‘know Chinese.’ There is no upper limit on the number of Chinese characters. To function in a Chinese society, one should know about 3,000. To function at the college level, one should know about 7,000. The shared opinion among students of Chinese is that only after learning about 1,500 characters one begins to realize the enormity of the task undertaken.
Learning Chinese It takes at least seven years of concerted effort to learn functional Chinese, This is about the same time it would take to learn five moderately-related western languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Dutch. Since Chinese does not share the Indo-European roots with English, the scientific and technical terms like 'physics,' 'chemistry,' 'psychology,' 'catalyst,' , 'computer,' 'telephone' sound differently and look differently. Thus, e.g., the word 'psychology' is represented by characters resembling a heart and that of a student into whose head an instructor’s hands pour knowledge. The telephone is 'electrical speech,' the computer is 'electrical brain,' and a bank is associated with ingots of silver. 

Shakespeare Sha-Shi-Bi-Ya

About Shakespeare and Madonna The names of Shakespeare, Beethoven, Beatles, and Madonna, spelled and pronounced in a similar way throughout most of the world, are written in Chinese as pictographic renderings of approximated sounds with unrelated, disparate meanings. In the case of Shakespeare, four characters representing his name remotely sound like his name, but mean, in turn, ‘a herb,’ ‘gentleman,’ ‘to compare,’ and ‘second in excellence.’ Beethoven is spelled by chaining characters signifying, in turn, 'shell,' 'many,' and 'fragrant.' One has to know that this particular string of characters has to be decoded for sound, not for the meaning. Native speakers of Chinese are able to make this distinction by initially decoding a string of characters for meaning. If the string is meaningless, they decode it for sound. However, most students of Chinese do not have the self-confidence to decide that a string of character is, indeed, meaningless. This difficulty for nonnative speakers of Chinese is so great that the Japanese, who adapted Chinese characters for their own language, developed a separate alphabet, Katakana, to transliterate foreign words and names.

Another difficulty is looking up words in the dictionary and names in the telephone directory. Upon encountering an unknown flower, a botanist looks at its corolla and calyx, identifies the type of petals, and counts the number of stamens within its androecium. In this fashion he or she is able to find the name of the plant in a herbarium. In a similar fashion Chinese, upon encountering an unknown character, first identify the basic component of a character, called its root. Next, they count the number of its strokes, thus zeroing at the character’s position within the general nomenclature. Then they search a dictionary's index within the likely confines of the identified category, hoping to spot the unknown character by using the visual matching.
Chinese Music and Poetry An example of difference between Eastern and Western cognitive functioning are the differences between the music and poetry of these civilizations. Classical Western music is melodic, classical Chinese music is tonal. Western music consists of sequential patterns of melodic sounds that are associated with the left hemisphere. In Chinese music, what is important is its tonal quality, a component of music, separate from the melody, and associated with the right hemisphere. As the Chinese is a tonal language, the magic of its poetry is only partially contained by meaning of its verses, understood by the left hemisphere. Its tonal qualities, as well as the message contained within the visual patterns of the pictographs, are destined for the right hemisphere.

Corpus callosum	Brain hemispheres
Sequential relations	Integration of complex entities

Hemispheric Dominance  In his remarkable book The Japanese Brain: Its Uniqueness and Universality (1985) Tadanobu Tsunoda hypothesizes that Japanese hemispheric dominance is different from other people. What does he mean by hemispheric dominance? The functions of our brain hemispheres are specialized. The left hemisphere is instrumental with respect to language functions and decoding of sequential relations. The right hemisphere handles spatial and other nonverbal relations. It is instrumental in the integration of the complex entities. As Chinese spend considerable amount of time memorizing spatial properties of pictographs (an activity associated with the right hemisphere) their cognitive functioning involves the right hemisphere to a greater extent than the cognitive functioning of the western people. In the 1960s, Sperry's laboratory had the opportunity to study hemispheric specialization when a surgical team cut the corpus callosum in a group of epileptic patients in an effort to control their seizures. The corpus callosum is a band of tissue that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. A psychological follow-up of these patients suggested that, following the brain bisection, each hemisphere was separately conscious. There is neurological evidence that in childhood the functionality of both hemispheres is not fully integrated until after the age of 10 and that this is why adults cannot recapture the magic world of childhood.

Uniqueness of Eastern Consciousness Most western people who attempt to unravel secrets of eastern religions try to decode the meaning of their key concepts. However, the totality of these concepts cannot be translated and interpreted by the left hemisphere alone, as the meaning of these concepts is distributed between both brain hemispheres. The message of eastern religions addresses both hemispheres, as they carry in addition to their interpretable meaning addressed to the left hemisphere also an additional meaning encoded in the tones and patterns of the pictographs that affects the right hemisphere. The eastern religions are suited to the natural consciousness of the Chinese cultural sphere and the western missionaries, proselytizing in China, are not only robbing Chinese of their heritage, but are also violating their unique consciousness. This point is supported by the fact well known to the ministers of the Far East missions: Eastern converts to monotheistic religions show far more fanatical zeal than their Western counterparts.
Temporal Dimension of Consciousness Robert Ornstein in his Psychology of Consciousness (1977) observes that 'causality can be inferred only within a linear mode of temporal consciousness. The information processing of this mode divides the flow of events into serial lists that can be sequentially analyzed, studied, and manipulated.' Ornstein contrasts this linear mode of temporal consciousness with the nonlinear time experience, where 'there is no attribution of causality or construction of sequence. All events occur simultaneously. The nonlinear mode is deliberately cultivated in mystical traditions as a complement to ordinary consciousness. It is sometimes brought about by the administration of consciousness-altering drugs. It is the dominant cultural mode of the Trobriander and of the Hopi Indian. It is a mode associated with intuitive, holistic side of ourselves.' (pp.115-112). These two modes of consciousness are each associated with a separate hemisphere of the brain. The linear temporal mode of consciousness is associated with the left hemisphere, the nonlinear temporal mode of consciousness with the right hemisphere of the brain. Ornstein concludes, that the conflict between these two modes of consciousness has caused much cultural and personal misunderstanding.
Catholic Missions to China Western military invasions of China were preceded by the Western missions to China. The first Christian missionaries in China were Jesuits who, headed by Matteo Ricci  (1552-1610), established a mission in Beijing in 1583. They soon realized that in order to function within Chinese society they must first learn its culture. In 1687, Jesuits published the first compilation of Confucian literature, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus sive Scientia Sinensis. Perusing Pfister's Notices sur les Jesuites 1552-1773 mission de Chine, one is impressed by the cultural richness of the reports, articles, and books by the Jesuit missionaries. The wave of interest in Chinese culture preceded the French Revolution and at that time Confucianism was considered in France to be spiritually close to the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Girl preparing opium for an opium pipe.

Opium Wars The advent of Protestant missions to China coincided with the time the British East India Company started to import opium to China from their Burmese and Indian colonies. This drug trade was joined by some Americans, notably by Warren Delano, maternal grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Delano headed Russell & Co. in Canton, China from 1839 to 1843. A millionaire at 48, Delano wrote from Canton that the sale of opium and its derivative, heroin, to Chinese people is 'a fair, honorable, and legitimate trade.' This drug-dealing business of the British East India Company led to the Opium Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860, concluded by the treaties of Nanjing and Tianjin. To facilitate understanding of these 'treaties,' imagine the United States concluding treaties that would cede Florida to the Columbian drug lords, open the sea-ports of the United States to Colombian ships carrying heroin, and grant the drug lords extraterritorial rights that would make them exempt from the laws of the United States and thus immune to prosecution.

Looty, the Pekinese

Transplanting Religion, Implanting Violence The treaties of Nanjing and Tianjin, aside of legalizing the opium trade, also legitimized missionary activities throughout China. Soon afterwards, China was engulfed in the cauldron of religious wars. The Protestant missionaries played a major role in the the war that was lead by Hong Xiuquan and costed over 20 million lives. Hong Xiuquan was a convert to Protestantism who had vowed to replace the Confucian ethic of China by the puritanical moral precepts of his Protestant mentors. Hong worked for Issachar Roberts, an American missionary who directed the Baptist mission at Guangdong. Under his direction, Hong became a diligent student of the Bible. He soon realized that one way to gain power is to claim a mission under God’s patronage. He proclaimed himself to be God's second son (the first being Jesus Christ) and proselytized the Protestant doctrines. Soon he gained a considerable following. This attracted the attention of other Protestant missionaries, who believed that Hong could help them to spread Biblical teachings in China. Issachar Roberts negotiated with Hong that the 'Chinese Soldiers of Christ' would construct at least eighteen church buildings in every major city immediately after their takeover. Roberts believed that the war lead by Hong Xiuquan was ‘the beginning of a nineteenth-century Reformation in the Far East.’ The war began in 1850 and the Hong Xiuquan's followers made Nanjing the capital of their kingdom. One of their first actions was to take over Nanjing’s printing company. Soon Nanjing’s printing presses were flooding China with the Chinese translation of the Bible. Hong governed Nanjing using rules and regulations similar to those imposed in the 16th century on Geneva by Calvin. The 'Heavenly Kingdom' of Hong Xiuquan controlled large areas in southern China before collapsing in 1864. Meanwhile, in 1860, the British and French forces sacked Beijing where they looted Emperor Xianfeng's palace and gave Queen Victoria a Pekinese dog they found hiding in the ruins. She named the dog Looty. Emperor Xiangfeng died the following year, succeeded by Empress Dowager Cixi.

Empress Cixi (r. 1861-1908)

Empress Cixi One should keep in mind that most of information about China, available in the West, is filtered through translation of Chinese into English. As a majority of Westerners having enough leisure to learn Chinese are missionaries and a majority of Chinese who learned English are Christian converts, this information is filtered by people with fervent religious convictions and strong pro-Western bias. The last effort in the 19th century by the Chinese people to liberate their country from foreign occupiers and their Chinese collaborators was the Yi He Tuan (1898-1900) movement. 'Yi' means 'justice,' 'He' means 'harmony,' and 'Tuan' means 'movement.' As the Chinese language is replete with homonyms, the Chinese culture and heritage is wide open to biased interpretations. 'Tuan,' aside of 'movement,' can also mean society, fellowship, something shaped like a ball, a mass, a lump, a fist. The Yi He Tuan should be translated along the lines of a 'The Association for Justice and Harmony.' Christian missionaries translated 'Tuan' as 'fist' and the Yi He Yuan movement as the 'Boxer Rebellion.' To suppress this attempt to overthrow the occupation of China by foreigners, the British forged another alliance. This time the British allied themselves with the United States, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia. In August 1900, the allied troops entered Peking. The imperial court escaped to Hsi-an. China was forced to pay yet another indemnity and yield to additional foreign demands.

Her Imperial Majesty Wan Rong and Emperor Pu Yi, rulers of China (1908-1912) and Manchukuo (1934-1945)

The Last Emperor of China The Empress died in 1908 and was succeeded by the last Emperor of China Hsuan T'ung (Pu-Yi), best known from the movie Ultimo imperatore (The Last Emperor, 1987), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci's where Peter O'Toole played the role of Pu-Yi's tutor Reginald Johnston.

Sun Yat-Sen and Chian Kai-Shek  A great admirer of Hong Xiuchuan was Sun Yat Sen, whose revolutionary movement topped the last Chinese dynasty in 1911. Sun Yat Sen admired Hong Xiuchuan to such a degree that his friends called him Xiuchuan.

Sun Yat-Sen (1866-1925)

Chiang Kai-Shek  (1887-1975)

 Sun Yat-Sen attempted to replace the teaching of Confucius with a set of precepts, culled from various Western sources. Sun Yat-Sen's collaborator and close relative was Chiang Kai-Shek whose 1937-1945 War against Japan was to win China for Christianity. This goal was reiterated his radio broadcast of April 16, 1938 excerpted as follows.
 
'At the time of Jesus' birth the Jewish people were steadily weakening under the heavy oppression of Rome. Jews were treated like slaves and animals. Then a people's revolutionist was born in the person of Jesus. Jesus was the leader of a religious revolution that lead society from the blackness of night to the brightness of day and enabled everyone to receive the blessings of liberty, equality, and happiness. If we compare the situation in China during the past few centuries when our national life degenerated under Manchu domination, we find that it was very similar to that occurring among Jews under the rule of Rome. Our late leader, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, with his profound understanding of Jesus' spirit of love, overthrew the Manchu Dynasty and established the Republic of China. Let us march together under the Cross for the regeneration of our nation.'

This mixture of politics and religion was one of the factors that set the stage for the Great Asia War, the Pacific theatre of the WWII.