Yeah! The Indo-Europeans! Probably some other commenterhas already said this, but they were a Bronze Age people, not Neolithic. The Yamnaya culture (identified with at least the "core PIE" language ancestral to e.g. English and Hindi) spread out of the Pontic Steppe around 3,000 BC. They were contemporaneous with the Ancient Egyptians and younger than the Sumerians. The farmers the Yamnaya conquered in Europe had already been there, using ceramics, for two thousand years since their own invasion from Anatolia. These people seem older than the Sumerians (at least to me) because the sumerians had writing, and we can recognize ourselves in what they wrote. The Yamnaya's lives are much murkier because they left us no poetry, except the roots of our own.
In addition to the Horse Wheel and Language, I recommend David Reich's Who we are and how we got here. And Razib Khan's excellent podcast, which is right here on substack.
Just curious if you’ve walked in Tajikistan? Dushanbe’s not all that big but would suit how you walk, and while I’m not gonna say it’s the most ‘not like the rest of the world’ country I’ve been to, it’s definitely on the list. Mostly I think it’d tick a lot of the things you’re interested in, eg I’d be surprised if you met any nomadic people in Tashkent itself, but I met a bunch in Tajikistan, which was fascinating. More up Khorog / Murgab way, but Dushanbe was still super interesting
It really depends on what they're thinking about when talking about individualistic vs collective, most outsider's thought tend to immediately go towards the liberal vs socialist divide, but that's only one way to look at it.
Traditionally, and even to now, one of the most notable difference between north south is that in the south, especially the south east, the family clan traditions remains super strong, i.e you are well aware of which family clan you belong to, you have interactions with extended families all the time, there are clan specific events and gathering etc.
My maternal grandfather's side belong to one such families, and they even have their own private family temples etc (an off shoot from the larger clan temple.) that's pretty normal in that particular part of China, while the more north you go, such bounds are very limited if at all present, for example, the North East Manchuria area were all migrants from the very late 19th and early 20th century, mostly from Shangdong, and they also saw huge upheavals in the ensuing decades with multiple huge armies rolling all over, so such extended family ties are just not present at all.
For example, if anyone caught the recent live person version of Disney's Mulan, the story showed a huge round circle building that housed many family, that's quite famous in the South East as an example of such family clans, where most inhabitants would be from the clan, and they live together in a collective community, such examples in the past often also included businesses and schools owned specifically by the clans, and they even offer the equivalent of scholarship for particularly talented young folks from the poorer branches etc.
So from the perspective of how rural traditional families work in China, it does make sense to say that it's individualistic in the north and collective in the south.
Shouldn't you stay in a place for a few months, get to know a few locals and the rhythms of daily life ? Your version of traveling seems painfully superficial, like you're actually kinda addicted to the alienating strangeness of it all. I do find your reports and thoughts interesting !
Thanks for the book recommendations! I just finished On The Trail Of Genghis Khan (multi year horseback journey with much research and reflection) — I think it would pair well with your current interests!
Great piece, Chris. I've been thinking about your writings on China since your last post, and the philosophical divide that exists. Appreciate your open-mindedness (sometimes contrarianism!) that allows you to see and understand Chinese governance through a clearer lens than most Westerners/Americans... sounds like all they need out there are a few La Ruleta-style joints!
One thing you might do in Xi'an is try to get out to some of the smaller towns. When I was last in China in 2017, I did 3 weeks from Xi'an to Beijing and the "old China" I saw in the late 1990s was still around in smaller places.
ALways such a delight to read you, both the content and the form. Disagree on your AB contributing to suicide theory though. I think I get what you're saying but seems to me a stretch. His journeys might have prevented him to learn how to deal with his issues, but that would not have been a contributing factor, rather an avoiding tactic. Or, now that I'm thinking, maybe both, and your theory's not wrong. But we'll never know anyway. So disregard. Just stopped by to thank you for these little gems of wisdom you share with us with such finesse.
Whitewashing CCP like this is just funny. What CCP members are after is power, first of all. Surely, like any criminal organisation, they have a code of conduct, which includes projecting "common good" standing - which you mistake for them having a good cause. They are in fact totally corrupt...
I know from inside how a similar system functions, as I grew up in USSR.
You don't even understand the meaning of the word "bigotry". I have nothing against Chinese, I have (overseas) Chinese as co-authors.
I have an opinion about a clique called CCP which rules PRC in a fascist way, which committed a massacre of their own students on Tiananmen square in 1989, which conducts genocide of Uyhgurs, etc etc etc.
Your earnestness and dedication to learning deep truths about the places you visit comes across in every post—keep going Chris! Glad to be with you on your journey
Great stuff. I'll be in Tashkent same time as you before taking the 14 hr train to Khiva.
I'm in China at the moment. Most of China is nothing like demolished/flattened/reconstituted Beijing, sanitized Shanghai, or even tour-bus-pitstop Xi'an. My advice is to get a real visa first (I got mine in 4 days in Osaka) and then actually travel the country for a month before rehashing the same 4-5 things everyone writes about China: North/South; rice/wheat (or millet); 600 million lifted out of poverty; homogenization of culture/Hanification; infrastructure marvel, etc. It is a baffling/maddening/heartwarming place. In the past 3 weeks I've walked a loop around Xiamen/Gulangyu island, hiked between the Miao villages in eastern Guzhou, and destroyed my knees on the staircases of Chongqing. All firmly on the tourist trail but I couldn't think of more dissimilar experiences :)
FWIW, I'm now on year 8.5 of constant travel, although I don't feel the need to write a Substack about it. I personally couldn't imagine anything worse than going back to New York, hunching over a laptop for pointless email replying, getting excited about a new Sichuan restaurant, checking my Vanguard, driving my Tesla upstate for the weekend...to me, that would be Death. So the charm of this lifestyle has by no means worn off.
But the novelty certainly has. Novelty, in itself, is never interesting for long. I think usiing travel as a context-broadening platform for deeper ontological inquiry (i.e. to learn) is a great framework to wrap around my travel compulsion. Relentless travel keeps my brain busy. It's why I go out of my way to avoid the numbing sameness of so many destinations (Bangkok, Barcelona, Bali) and attempt to destabilize my comfort as much as I can (although I still like high thread counts).
I also appreciated the pastoralism book recommendations. I'll be reading 'Birth of Eurasia' book when I'm in the Stans for sure!
Hit me up if you want to brave the shitty AQI in Tashkent in a few weeks.
Let’s meet up in Tashkent. I don’t believe the rice millet divide. Lol. I do believe the CCP has goals of uniformity. It’s an entirely different question if they pull it off and well, people be people.
Also. They did lift 600 million out of poverty and that somehow is fogotten
CPC allows minority direct representation at the Congress, so I wonder how this drive for uniformity got inculcated in many western minds. The US Congress role in suppressing the 1st nations is not a useful reference.
All I can say is that it’s a big country and generalizations aren’t worth making. You could do the same thing in the United States with about the same result.
I suspect much of the homogeneity is due to the CCP fears China being torn apart with separate cultures seeking independence. The Han are *not* the only Chinese!
Yeah! The Indo-Europeans! Probably some other commenterhas already said this, but they were a Bronze Age people, not Neolithic. The Yamnaya culture (identified with at least the "core PIE" language ancestral to e.g. English and Hindi) spread out of the Pontic Steppe around 3,000 BC. They were contemporaneous with the Ancient Egyptians and younger than the Sumerians. The farmers the Yamnaya conquered in Europe had already been there, using ceramics, for two thousand years since their own invasion from Anatolia. These people seem older than the Sumerians (at least to me) because the sumerians had writing, and we can recognize ourselves in what they wrote. The Yamnaya's lives are much murkier because they left us no poetry, except the roots of our own.
In addition to the Horse Wheel and Language, I recommend David Reich's Who we are and how we got here. And Razib Khan's excellent podcast, which is right here on substack.
Just curious if you’ve walked in Tajikistan? Dushanbe’s not all that big but would suit how you walk, and while I’m not gonna say it’s the most ‘not like the rest of the world’ country I’ve been to, it’s definitely on the list. Mostly I think it’d tick a lot of the things you’re interested in, eg I’d be surprised if you met any nomadic people in Tashkent itself, but I met a bunch in Tajikistan, which was fascinating. More up Khorog / Murgab way, but Dushanbe was still super interesting
It really depends on what they're thinking about when talking about individualistic vs collective, most outsider's thought tend to immediately go towards the liberal vs socialist divide, but that's only one way to look at it.
Traditionally, and even to now, one of the most notable difference between north south is that in the south, especially the south east, the family clan traditions remains super strong, i.e you are well aware of which family clan you belong to, you have interactions with extended families all the time, there are clan specific events and gathering etc.
My maternal grandfather's side belong to one such families, and they even have their own private family temples etc (an off shoot from the larger clan temple.) that's pretty normal in that particular part of China, while the more north you go, such bounds are very limited if at all present, for example, the North East Manchuria area were all migrants from the very late 19th and early 20th century, mostly from Shangdong, and they also saw huge upheavals in the ensuing decades with multiple huge armies rolling all over, so such extended family ties are just not present at all.
For example, if anyone caught the recent live person version of Disney's Mulan, the story showed a huge round circle building that housed many family, that's quite famous in the South East as an example of such family clans, where most inhabitants would be from the clan, and they live together in a collective community, such examples in the past often also included businesses and schools owned specifically by the clans, and they even offer the equivalent of scholarship for particularly talented young folks from the poorer branches etc.
So from the perspective of how rural traditional families work in China, it does make sense to say that it's individualistic in the north and collective in the south.
Shouldn't you stay in a place for a few months, get to know a few locals and the rhythms of daily life ? Your version of traveling seems painfully superficial, like you're actually kinda addicted to the alienating strangeness of it all. I do find your reports and thoughts interesting !
Thanks for the book recommendations! I just finished On The Trail Of Genghis Khan (multi year horseback journey with much research and reflection) — I think it would pair well with your current interests!
Fascinating, Chris. Mainland China is tabula rasa for us and likely to remain so.
With you 100% on why travel. How lucky we are.
Great piece, Chris. I've been thinking about your writings on China since your last post, and the philosophical divide that exists. Appreciate your open-mindedness (sometimes contrarianism!) that allows you to see and understand Chinese governance through a clearer lens than most Westerners/Americans... sounds like all they need out there are a few La Ruleta-style joints!
One thing you might do in Xi'an is try to get out to some of the smaller towns. When I was last in China in 2017, I did 3 weeks from Xi'an to Beijing and the "old China" I saw in the late 1990s was still around in smaller places.
Nice post. I travel and walk places because I’m curious. Means probably learning. Once you stop being curious, this is when you start aging.
ALways such a delight to read you, both the content and the form. Disagree on your AB contributing to suicide theory though. I think I get what you're saying but seems to me a stretch. His journeys might have prevented him to learn how to deal with his issues, but that would not have been a contributing factor, rather an avoiding tactic. Or, now that I'm thinking, maybe both, and your theory's not wrong. But we'll never know anyway. So disregard. Just stopped by to thank you for these little gems of wisdom you share with us with such finesse.
Whitewashing CCP like this is just funny. What CCP members are after is power, first of all. Surely, like any criminal organisation, they have a code of conduct, which includes projecting "common good" standing - which you mistake for them having a good cause. They are in fact totally corrupt...
I know from inside how a similar system functions, as I grew up in USSR.
It's amazing how often bigoted ignorance cloaked in this "I grew up in _______" comes up on social media.
Clearly the way you grew up warped your perception of the world. Shame, really.
Dear troll, CCP is a dangerous fascist organisation. It sucks.
Sure, little fella. You grew up in the USSR!
If you think that people were told about CCP in the USSR, you are totally wrong. They were told it's a friendly party of friendly country.
I think you mistake trauma for insight. You grew up in the USSR!
You don't even understand the meaning of the word "bigotry". I have nothing against Chinese, I have (overseas) Chinese as co-authors.
I have an opinion about a clique called CCP which rules PRC in a fascist way, which committed a massacre of their own students on Tiananmen square in 1989, which conducts genocide of Uyhgurs, etc etc etc.
Your earnestness and dedication to learning deep truths about the places you visit comes across in every post—keep going Chris! Glad to be with you on your journey
Re Tashkent, there's a new Substack newsletter and podcast on Central Asia: https://turantales.substack.com/
Great stuff. I'll be in Tashkent same time as you before taking the 14 hr train to Khiva.
I'm in China at the moment. Most of China is nothing like demolished/flattened/reconstituted Beijing, sanitized Shanghai, or even tour-bus-pitstop Xi'an. My advice is to get a real visa first (I got mine in 4 days in Osaka) and then actually travel the country for a month before rehashing the same 4-5 things everyone writes about China: North/South; rice/wheat (or millet); 600 million lifted out of poverty; homogenization of culture/Hanification; infrastructure marvel, etc. It is a baffling/maddening/heartwarming place. In the past 3 weeks I've walked a loop around Xiamen/Gulangyu island, hiked between the Miao villages in eastern Guzhou, and destroyed my knees on the staircases of Chongqing. All firmly on the tourist trail but I couldn't think of more dissimilar experiences :)
FWIW, I'm now on year 8.5 of constant travel, although I don't feel the need to write a Substack about it. I personally couldn't imagine anything worse than going back to New York, hunching over a laptop for pointless email replying, getting excited about a new Sichuan restaurant, checking my Vanguard, driving my Tesla upstate for the weekend...to me, that would be Death. So the charm of this lifestyle has by no means worn off.
But the novelty certainly has. Novelty, in itself, is never interesting for long. I think usiing travel as a context-broadening platform for deeper ontological inquiry (i.e. to learn) is a great framework to wrap around my travel compulsion. Relentless travel keeps my brain busy. It's why I go out of my way to avoid the numbing sameness of so many destinations (Bangkok, Barcelona, Bali) and attempt to destabilize my comfort as much as I can (although I still like high thread counts).
I also appreciated the pastoralism book recommendations. I'll be reading 'Birth of Eurasia' book when I'm in the Stans for sure!
Hit me up if you want to brave the shitty AQI in Tashkent in a few weeks.
Let’s meet up in Tashkent. I don’t believe the rice millet divide. Lol. I do believe the CCP has goals of uniformity. It’s an entirely different question if they pull it off and well, people be people.
Also. They did lift 600 million out of poverty and that somehow is fogotten
CPC allows minority direct representation at the Congress, so I wonder how this drive for uniformity got inculcated in many western minds. The US Congress role in suppressing the 1st nations is not a useful reference.
Ps — send me DM and we can connect when we both arrive
Sure will do!
All I can say is that it’s a big country and generalizations aren’t worth making. You could do the same thing in the United States with about the same result.
I suspect much of the homogeneity is due to the CCP fears China being torn apart with separate cultures seeking independence. The Han are *not* the only Chinese!