https://tentao.pages.dev/en/Recent content in What Could Hold East Asians Together on TentaoHugoenhttps://tentao.pages.dev/en/yigui/Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://tentao.pages.dev/en/yigui/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/linju/Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://tentao.pages.dev/en/linju/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/duoshe/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/duoshe/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/shishi/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/shishi/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/manche/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/manche/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/miben/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/miben/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/huozhi/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/huozhi/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/about/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/about/<h2 id="what-tentao-means">What &quot;Tentao&quot; means</h2> <p><em>Tentao</em> is how my home dialect says 天道, <em>tiandao</em> in Mandarin: &quot;the Way of Heaven.&quot;</p> <p>In everyday Chinese the phrase turns up in sayings like &quot;Heaven rewards the diligent&quot; and &quot;Heaven moves without rest.&quot; That is the meaning I want, but traced further back, to before Confucius.</p> <p>The <em>Book of Documents</em> (<em>Shangshu</em>) has a chapter called &quot;Against Ease&quot; (<em>Wuyi</em>), a warning from the Duke of Zhou to the young king. It opens: &quot;The noble man does not indulge in ease.&quot; Then he goes through the old Shang kings and King Wen of Zhou. Those who worked hard and never let things slide reigned long: seventy-five years, fifty years. The later ones who &quot;lived at ease from birth&quot; reigned briefly: &quot;ten years, or seven or eight, or five or six, or four or three.&quot;</p>https://tentao.pages.dev/en/overview/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/overview/<h2 id="the-question">The question</h2> <p>This site asks one question: <strong>what could hold East Asians together?</strong></p> <p>By East Asians I mean the Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese, the Vietnamese, wherever in the world they live today. These places once shared a common stock: Chinese characters, ancestral rites, ritual, festivals, the same classics. For a thousand years a Vietnamese scholar and a Korean scholar could not speak to each other, yet could pick up a brush and talk in writing.</p> <p>That shared stock has come apart. Most Vietnamese and Koreans can no longer read what their ancestors wrote. Many overseas Chinese, three or four generations on, keep little more than a surname. China itself spent more than a century tearing down and rebuilding; ancestral halls, genealogies and rites were broken off several times.</p>https://tentao.pages.dev/en/series/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/series/<p>Eight series, each covering its own ground, all asking one question: see the <a href="https://tentao.pages.dev/en/">overview</a>. Only some pieces have been translated so far.</p> <section class="series-item"> <h2><a href="https://tentao.pages.dev/en/yigui/">Yigui: A Belief to Rely On and Return To</a></h2> <p>China itself: rites, dress, ancestral halls, genealogies. Subtitle: China&#39;s Heavenly Kingdom and All-Under-Heaven.</p> <p><small>11 pieces</small></p> </section> <section class="series-item"> <h2><a href="https://tentao.pages.dev/en/linju/">The Neighbours&#39; Heaven</a></h2> <p>The Confucian neighbours beyond China (Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Ryukyu, Taiwan) and the Chinese of Southeast Asia.</p> <p><small>32 pieces</small></p> </section> <section class="series-item"> <h2><a href="https://tentao.pages.dev/en/duoshe/">Duoshe: How Civilizations Survive</a></h2> <p></p> <p><small>3 pieces</small></p> </section> <section class="series-item"> <h2><a href="https://tentao.pages.dev/en/shishi/">Current Affairs</a></h2> <p></p> <p><small>3 pieces</small></p> </section> <section class="series-item"> <h2><a href="https://tentao.pages.dev/en/manche/">Slow Train: Where India Is Heading</a></h2> <p></p> <p><small>3 pieces</small></p> </section> <section class="series-item"> <h2><a href="https://tentao.pages.dev/en/miben/">Secret Copies: Why We Love Pseudo-History</a></h2> <p></p> <p><small>3 pieces</small></p> </section> <section class="series-item"> <h2><a href="https://tentao.pages.dev/en/huozhi/">Huozhi: Money and Trade</a></h2> <p></p> <p><small>3 pieces</small></p> </section>https://tentao.pages.dev/en/subscribe/https://tentao.pages.dev/en/subscribe/<div class="subscribe-box"> <h2>RSS</h2> <p><a class="subscribe-rss" href="https://tentao.pages.dev/en/index.xml">https://tentao.pages.dev/en/index.xml</a></p> <p>Add the address above to any RSS reader (Feedly, Inoreader, NetNewsWire, Reeder and so on) and new pieces will arrive as soon as they are posted. Each series page has its own feed too, in case you only want to follow one.</p> <h2>Email</h2> <p>Email subscription is not set up yet. Use the RSS feed above for now.</p> </div>