Just like the Mediterranean coast, that region produced alphabetic writing systems, while we, on the contrary, preserved and passed down our pictographic script. How did this come to be? Because across the entire Earth, only the Central Plains of China possess that unique loess soil—all throughout the Central Plains, it’s just loess plateaus, right? Traveling through Longxi (meaning “Dragon West”), I pondered: what defines loess? Across the globe, the average soil depth over the earth’s crust is no more than three meters, yet in China’s Central Plains, the loess layer astonishingly reaches thousands of meters thick. How did this happen?
Once, while visiting Dunhuang—I believe some of you have been there—there’s the Mingsha (Singing Sand) Mountain nearby. It’s fascinating: it neither grows taller nor shrinks but has maintained its shape for millions of years. A whimsical thought struck me: when God created the world and added *xirang* (self-expanding soil) to the land, perhaps a sieve leaked a little, and that became Mingsha Mountain. Isn’t that magical? Tian Zhen’s song “Crescent Moon Spring” is also about this place—truly enchanting.
This loess is concentrated in the Central Plains, radiating out from Henan as its axis. The area isn’t vast—it’s just that piece of land. To the east were the Yi tribes, to the west the Rong, to the south the Man, and to the north the Di. These surrounding peoples were all minority ethnic groups—not minorities as we understand them today, but uncivilized tribes untouched by the culture of the Central Plains. They were barbaric tribes—not ethnic groups in the modern sense, but akin to animals. The eastern Yi were archers who shot birds; the southern Man were associated with insects and poison (the character for *Man* 蛮 contains the radical for “insect”); the western Rong lived alongside sheep (戎 resembles 羊, “sheep”); and the northern Di were linked to dogs or wolves (狄 contains the “dog” radical 犭).
Yao, Shun, and Yu—it’s hard to say if they were entirely human. And what about the image of Fuxi and Nüwa? Wasn’t it a depiction of them intertwined with serpent bodies? This suggests that when ancient writing, imagery, myths, and legends emerged, the Central Plains was the sole cradle of civilization. So why did pictographic script take root and persist there? Think about it: civilization doesn’t arise in exceptionally favorable or harsh environments, but in moderately livable places. Take loess—ideal for farming. Plowing it was simple, even achievable by human labor alone. Once settled, life there changed little. With minimal change, was there a need for complex writing? Alphabetic systems weren’t necessary; thus, pictographs could endure, deeply and steadily passed down.
This continuity was further solidified by Qin Shi Huang’s unification of writing and the standardization of square-shaped characters under the Han dynasty. Without this process, calligraphy—that uniquely Eastern art form—could never have emerged. And so, we conclude this chapter.
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