Chinese-Scottish Tartan

[Raphael]

I don't want to discuss politics, but I have to say this. Although I am not a supporter of the PRC Government, but I am proud to be Chinese. Lastly, wearing the tartan doesn't mean that you support a certain government. Just be proud of who you are.

[Fit2BKilted]

Ok, I feel I have to pipe up here...

The general wisdom here on choosing a tartan, if you do not have Scots heritage, is to pick one that holds meaning for you. At first glance this tartan may seem like a great choice for Chinese kilties. However, of the handful of Chinese XMTS members here, I believe most of us are Chinese by ethnicity but not by nationality. How comfortable would you be wearing the colours of a foreign country in your tartan, even if it is the country of your forefathers?

Curiously, all of us who wear clan tartan kilts, who were not born in Scotland, are technically wearing the colours of another nation, are we not? The only way to avoid this I can imagine at the moment would be to stick with contemporary original or new-world district tartans... I'm not personally so painfully patriotic.

[Morris at Heathfield]

Fit2BKilted: The Chinese-Scottish tartan is only available from the Strathmore Woollen Company, and only in T7 tartan (i.e., 11 oz. wool), apparently. It would make a lightweight kilt, or a scarf, or a tie, or something like that. Most makers of traditional wool kilts would have experience ordering tartan from Strathmore.

Galician: Remember that Germany went through more than one national flag in the 20th century, even though only one of them is generally favored today. Mainland China went through four national flags in the same period, I believe. People have emigrated from China while it was under each of those flags. Different emigrants may have different feelings about the different regimes represented by those flags.

bigdad1: I would find it hard to believe that human remains unearthed 3000 years ago still existed. In fact, the remains may date from about 3000 years ago, but they were discovered comparatively recently, in the 20th century.

As to the identities of the mummies, I have seen them variously described online as Celtic, Nordic, European, and probably Aryan, too. All of the aforementioned adjectives are, with hardly a doubt, technically incorrect. "European" and "Nordic" are incorrect because the mummies were plainly found in Asia, and there is no evidence of their journeying from any part of Europe within their lifetimes, while there is evidence of a persistent community in the area where they were discovered. The other two are incorrect because they are, at heart, linguistic classifications, and "dead men tell no tales". More to the point, there is no evidence that any Celtic languages were spoken historically in the Tarim Basin, while any Aryan languages (e.g., Khotanese and Tumshuquese) were only attested in that area well after the mummies in question were interred.

So, who were these tartan mummies with light skin and fair hair? The prevalent hypothesis seems to be that they were Tocharians, a long-lost branch of the Indo-European family tree (living neither in India nor in Europe at the time, mind). The weakness of this hypothesis is that "Tocharian" is also a linguistic classification, and the Tocharian languages are also only attested well after the tartan mummies were interred. Until the mummies are properly interrogated, we must remain in some modicum of doubt.

The point to take away: Yes, some of them were known to wear tartan. No, they were not, in all likelihood, Celtic, although they were probably distant relatives (linguistically, at least) of the Celts—and the Germans, and the Latins, and the Greeks, and the Slavs, and the Iranians....

[Raphael]

As much as i want say that we, Chinese, invented the Tartan and Scots just took the credit, but I can't. Tocharians could have just weaved cloth with colour lines intersect with each other for the purpose of decoration and without meaning.

Tartans have meanings and they are not just colour lines intersect each other on a colour background. They represent families, countries, counties, provinces and other establishments. The mummies wore plaid cloth and that's all they were.

[thoth51]

Galician: Remember that Germany went through more than one national flag in the 20th century, even though only one of them is generally favored today. Mainland China went through four national flags in the same period, I believe. People have emigrated from China while it was under each of those flags. Different emigrants may have different feelings about the different regimes represented by those flags.

Well said sir. As a first generation Singaporean, I don't have strong opinions about the China/Taiwan issue, but I AM often irked by foreigners when they ask: " Singapore? Is that in China?"

[Chinese A&SH Highlanders]

I don't want to discuss politics, but I have to say this. Although I am not a supporter of the PRC Government, but I am proud to be Chinese. Lastly, wearing the tartan doesn't mean that you support a certain government. Just be proud of who you are.

Dear Sir,I serious agree with you viewpoint。

[Morris at Heathfield]

Raphael: I think I normally use "tartan" as a synonym for "plaid". If someone asked me what the difference in meaning is between the two words, I'm not sure I would say there was a difference in how I use the two words. But, as for tartans with names and meanings, I would have to say that they were invented by the Scots, probably in the latter half of the 1700s. (Although some may be inclined to blame them on the English. )

Regarding tartans (or plaids) without names and meanings, the Chinese have invented a lot of things, but I don't believe plaid is among them. The oldest samples of plaid cloth that have been found come from Xinjiang and Austria, roughly 1000 BC. It's quite possible that the (presumed) Tocharians and the Halstatt culture invented plaid separately. Once you know how to weave and dye textiles, it's not much of a leap to start weaving plaid patterns.

However, I think it's just as likely, if not more so, that both cultures brought the knowledge and appreciation of plaid with them from the original homeland of the Indo-European-speakers, which was in the steppes of Russia and the Ukraine according to the most accepted hypothesis. In other words, my hypothesis (which can probably neither be proven nor disproven) is that plaid was an invention of the Proto-Indo-European culture, before it broke up into smaller groups (or after it broke into smaller groups, but while certain of those groups were still in contact). Of course, that doesn't prevent other cultures from inventing plaid separately, or Indo-European-speaking cultures from reinventing it after having lost the art.

*yawn* Posts like these need illustrations, like this and this. And I think this is a pretty good introduction to the subject, even if it does cause me to cringe in a couple of places due to its indiscriminate use of the words "Celt" and "Celtic".

[Raphael]

Well said sir. As a first generation Singaporean, I don't have strong opinions about the China/Taiwan issue, but I AM often irked by foreigners when they ask: " Singapore? Is that in China?"

When I first moved to LA from Hong Kong and not many people know where Hong Kong is. Most people assume Hong Kong is in Japan.

Here in Vancouver, we have many 5th generation Chinese and they are very proud of being Chinese.