Ancestry

The beginning of Yi Zhongtian's Chinese History is a story that appears confounding yet familiar. The author opens his tale with an account of apes shedding their hair to become naked apes - Chinese Adam and Eve stepping out of the Garden of Eden (which may exist in China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region) - and a detailed description of matriarchal societies.

Yi says Venus and Chinese goddess Nyu Wa are one and the same, and then continues his tale with the emperors of Yan and Huang.

Yi says because of the lack of written material on the history, he researched the changes in Chinese characters throughout different ages to support his ideas.

 

State

The second book in Yi's series explores the coming-into-being of states. He compares Chinese establishments with those of other civilizations. The larger part of the book is spent recounting how Greece, the United States and India evolved. Yi argues the different outcomes of these countries are due to different styles of civilization. While others resort to religion and democracy, Chinese look to their ancestors.

He has employed explanations of Chinese characters, gathering a description of the past by splitting apart and analyzing a character's different components.

Related Reading:Yi's history