Research On The Consciousness Of YiXia In The Frontier Writing Of Pre-Tang Literature

How was the concept of "Huaxia" constructed? How did the territory of China come into being? These two ultimate questions are particularly important in the current study of literature and history.For more than 100 years,Chinese culture and text context have been subject to the influence of western thoughts,and some existing concepts of the ancients have been gradually blurred and disappeared in the long river of history.When we are familiar with the connotations expressed by terms such as "nation" and "country",we have forgotten the narration and expression of "Tianxia" by the ancients.As early as in the pre-Qin period,the Chinese scholar group designed the geographical pattern of the five sides of the world.After the unification of the Tang Dynasty,the concept of the unity of the Yi and Xia made it into a boundless empire with strong tolerance and openness,marking the maturity of the Consciousness of The Chinese community.It is the cultural wisdom that the Chinese people offer to the whole world to establish political entities based on cultural identity rather than ethnic kinship,which enables Chinese civilization to avoid the narrow path of nationalistic development and move towards a broad road of harmony and common prosperity for all nations.However,the consciousness of Huaxia community did not come into being overnight.It was constructed bit by bit in the long contrast between "center" and "frontier" and between "Yi" and "Xia".Without the description of "edge region",there would be no deep understanding of "center",and without the description of "barbarians",there would be no recognition of "Huaxia".This paper takes the idea of "Yi Xia" as the research theme in the written texts of the literary frontier in various periods of the pre-Tang Dynasty,observes how the ancients described "the world" in the comparison of "center" and "frontier",and thus reveals the evolution of the overall cultural mentality of the pre-Tang Dynasties,in order to outline the development context of the Chinese community consciousness.The main points and structure of this paper are as follows:"Frontier writing" mainly includes two aspects: the first is the writing about the four barbarians around China,and the second is the writing of the marginal areas of China.The concept of "Yi-Xia" presented in the written texts of border areas is the main interpretation object of this paper.The cognition of Chinese ancients on "Yi" and "Xia" is not only at the national level,but also related to the construction of world order and the identification of regional space.Chinese scholars in the early Tang Dynasty observed and described the "border region" from the perspective of self civilization center,thus constructing the concept of "China",and also forming the structuralist observation of the two worlds of "civilization" and "barbarism".However,in this sense of separation,there is tolerance and harmony between culture,which has a profound impact on the identity of ancient Chinese.Influenced by the changes of academic thought and political system,the frontier writing of the literature of the early Tang Dynasty showed different characteristics in different historical periods,which reflected the changes of the mentality of the scholars in the past dynasties.The frontier writing of literature in the pre-Qin period is mainly reflected in the establishment of the theory of the discrimination between Yi and Xia.In the process of writing,the literati group established three criteria for judging the identity of Yi and Xia,including race,region and culture,and made the pursuit of unity become the universal consciousness of the society,and the concept of Chinese community gradually formed.After the establishment of the qin and Han Dynasties,the unity of space,consanguinity and culture was strengthened in the form of literature writing.Sima Qian’s theory of the consanguence of all nationalities,narrated in Records of the Grand Historian,provides cultural support for the formation of the idea of "the world is one family" and shows the broad feelings of the Han people to blend into the universe.However,in the pursuit of borderless empire,Han people also have a sense of identity separation in their hearts,and they consciously distinguish themselves from other races,which is represented by Ban Gu’s thought of "different species and different regions".This contradictory mentality has also influenced the writing of borderlands in literature of later generations.Wei-jin period and regain the recognition to prevention of psychology,will the Han civilization and other civilization made strict boundary points,Wei-jin scholars with a conservative attitude to the ego of civilization,which made by literature frontiers writing lacks the uplifting of the Han dynasty,and enterprising spirit,and internal space division of Wei and Jin Dynasty,also make the regime in the competition for the Chinese orthodoxy,Including the foreign civilization also participated in this process,making the argument between Yi and Xia become a theoretical tool to prove the Orthodoxy of China.To the Northern and Southern Dynasties,the two koreas are also through literature and field writing reengineering the Huaxia orthodox consciousness and north Korean use of geopolitical advantage of south regional space made the overall negative,On the basis of maintaining Chinese traditional culture,the Southern Dynasty denounced the Northern Dynasty as a country of Hu captives,which dispelled the disadvantages brought by regional identity to a certain extent.However,although the Southern Dynasty actively strengthened the South’s identity in the border writing,it always had nostalgia for the hometown of the northern land.The literati of the Southern Dynasty reflected the border fortress complex described by the Han Dynasty through the virtual super space-time imagination,although these border fortress places were not under the actual control of the Southern Dynasty,however,they still hope to awaken people’s historical memory of the former unified empire through the form of literary frontier writing.The conservative mentality of the Southern Dynasty was undoubtedly revealed through the courtly frontier writing method.The literati’s imagination of the former frontier remained in poetry and failed to turn the consciousness of the central plains into practical political action.The literary frontier writing of the Northern Dynasty showed more recording spirit,reflecting the meritorious mentality and enterprising spirit of the literati of the Northern Dynasty.At the same time,the literary frontier writing of the Northern Dynasty also showed a dual perspective,on the one hand,the literati of the Northern Dynasty praised the north and belittled the south,on the other hand,the literati of the Southern Dynasty respected the Xia and humiliated the foreigners,The seemingly contradictory perspectives of the two actually show the integration of the literary frontier writing of the Northern Dynasty.Behind the difference between the north and the South and the dispute over orthodoxy is the demand of the two sides for the reunification of China.On the whole,the literary frontier writing in the early Tang Dynasty always lingered on the two expressions of "one family in the world" and "great defense of Yi and Xia",but it was still the narration of "great unification",which made the identity of "Yi" and "Xia" change at any time,thus constantly promoting the formation of the consciousness of Chinese community.