One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

garbawarb

If Tang Dynasties are real, why haven't I seen one?

deepsun

> a history influencer named Qiao Yu I assumed that any "influencer" could be easily googled, but I cannot find literally anything. Or Google censors their name?

IAmGraydon

https://archive.is/qD2nD

sincerely

A much better article about the phenomenon: https://open.substack.com/pub/ramble/p/the-tang-dynasty-was-...

graemep

Its a Chinese equivalent of the phantom time theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory Its just as silly as phantom time and covers almost exactly the same period. The motive is possibly racist which makes it more sinister.

contingencies

Let's not get started on corners of the American internet... ask your favourite AI about "list of historical denial theories with US subscribers, including religious". No doubt longer and more amusing!

anigbrowl

The same sort of arguments are playing out in the US, albeit on a shorter timescale. I couldn't say when it started, but it's extremely depressing that the history section in most general bookstores is just a locus for narrative warfare rather than scholarship. Of course, this phenomenon is by no means unique to these two countries. I know a Japanese author who has a small but dedicated following for his argument that nuclear weapons don't exist: https://books.google.com/books/about/Death_Object.html?id=Mw...

DesaiAshu

"Claiming that the 300-year dynasty was actually a myth is akin to saying the American Civil War never happened" Aren't republicans in Texas trying to rewrite history books to ignore lynchings and burnings of Black Wall Street and claim that slaves were treated pretty well? Seems like every country has factions who do this - right?

emptybits

“Many parents say that, thanks to the hoax, their children now feel confused about historical facts, the Nanjing Daily reported” Great, lets make this useful … this specific nonsense will settle down and be proven to be a hoax and/or misinformation. An important component of parenting today is to raise kids who take claims presented on the internet with a large grain of salt. Rather than contrived examples in critical thinking exercises they might get in class or a textbook, parents now have a perfect, real example here to show their kids that online nonsense can look authoritative and be very widely believed, and yet still be false. Shields up. Less time online for kids. And don’t outsource your critical thinking to the online majority or to AI!

A_D_E_P_T

There are primary sources. There are archeological sites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianling_Mausoleum There are also histories written just after the Tang Dynasty had fallen. It was considered good form for a new dynasty to write a historical review of the previous one, and there are two retrospectives on Tang, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Book_of_Tang And there is ironclad evidence from foreign sources. Among others, Japanese histories detail the journeys of emissaries to the Tang Court: https://web.archive.org/web/20260315181529/https://japansoci... So the theory is bait, and hard to take seriously. But I'll give it credit for hijacking a genuinely interesting scholarly premise: What is taken quite seriously is the notion that China's first dynasty -- the Xia Dynasty -- never existed. It is of rather mythic proportions; later Chinese would speak of Xia the way Romans would speak of Troy. And there is very little evidence to support its existence. The Shang Dynasty is also supported by rather scant evidence -- and is also mythic, though obviously less so than the Xia. Worth noting that both the Xia and Shang are exceedingly ancient -- roughly 2000 BC to 1000 BC between them -- unlike the Tang, which fell around 900 AD and is thus middle-of-the-pack by Chinese dynastic standards.

mmooss

In another headline, people under a certain age get most of their news from social media. It 'democratizes' it, said one person quoted. It is more important than ever that we teach people to think critically and skeptically, and the necessity of empiricism (i.e., publicly verifiable evidence).

numbsafari

...and Han Dynasty only exists in Philadelphia.

KwisatzHaderack

I think the bigger point here is that even the CCP, with it’s heavy-handed totalitarian controls on the Chinese web, isn’t able to entirely filter out misinformation.

EdwardDiego

What's interesting is that if you read Wikipedia, there are multiple (without sources, mind) sentences going "btw Li Yuan was totally Han via an ancestor 17 generations previously". So clearly this is rather important to some people.

JennyWeston

Tang Dynasty -- isn't that a band which introduced heavy metal to China in the 90's? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Dynasty_(band) They lived the Spinal Tap lifestyle before Spinal Tap.

YackerLose

"The negationist proposition, in the age in which it is being advanced, cannot therefore be truly denied, since everything, all of us, including those who reject it, have passed over, whether we like it or not, into an age where there is no longer any objective recourse. The proposition, therefore, can be rejected only by a kind of mirror denial. And that is where its victory lies - though in fact it is not its victory, but the victory of real time over the present, over the past, over any form whatsoever of logical articulation of reality." - Jean Baudrillard

alsetmusic

> Callum, a 24-year-old Beijing resident, told CNN that questioning the Tang’s existence could be a way to rebel against established wisdom and a way for China’s young – faced with a slowing economy and greater competition for jobs and resources – to criticize authorities. > “It is a way for people to attack the established authorities. It is almost like saying ‘those so-called experts are nothing special. They have all been misleading people. I am the one who understands the truth, and I have exposed them all.’” China got it's own form of Qanon.

raajg

I'm currently reading 'There Is No Antimemetics Division' and this news item reminds me of that. Also, 1984, in which the government actively establishes false narratives as actual history and do it so many times that it's impossible to remember what really happened.

thataccount

That thing we don't want you to look at never existed.

yanhangyhy

This article still pushes the typical "China bad" narrative, throughout which it attempts to disparage Chinese nationalism. Take the incident mentioned in the piece: the Xi'an Culture and Tourism Bureau later clarified that no one had actually made such phone calls. The reporter simply cited an unverified online comment without doing any fact-checking. This is a classic tactic used to smear an opponent—exaggerating their views to an absurd degree to weaponize public disgust against them. In reality, aside from this fabricated "phone call" incident, conspiracy theories claiming the Tang dynasty didn't exist have never received any attention from mainstream media or the general public in China. Its real-world impact is virtually zero. Following this bizarre logic, the author would be better off reporting on how praise for German Nazism spreads on Chinese social media(but i know CNN dont have the balls).