Frontier Pastoral Culture Interaction And Geographical Distinction

The area of Hexi and Longyou, located between the Loess Plateau, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and the Inner Mongolian Plateau, has always played a dual role through the whole courses of cultural development in Chinese history. On the one hand, it is an area for communication. Through it Buddhism, Islamism, Christianity were diffused from the Midwest of the Old World to the East along the Silk Road and the plain culture in the Central and East area was also introduced into the hinterland gradually, while the civilization of the agricultural cultivation of China was transmitted to the Midwest of the Old World. On the other hand, it is also a fortified place. The nomad moving about freely and quickly in the alleyway of Asia-European plateau was likely to take a way of plunder to compensate their reduced manpower and material supplies. These actions created a severe threatening and calamity to their neighboring rich farming zones. In order to evade or reduce the occurrence of these attacks, fanning folks constructed a defense wall—the Great Wall. Beyond this, they also constructed a defense zone, namely the frontier terrain, between the hinterland and the desert grassland. The area Hexi and Longyou has been long responsible for this duty in the history. This can be discerned from the repeatedly constructing of the Great Walls in this area over the past dynasties.As a result, communication and defense are the two dynamic forces for formation of the regional cultural differentia in the area of Hexi and Longyou in the history.This thesis first analyzes the arrangement of the recovery of HeLong region in-depth, that is the arrangement frame and open out its control over the spatial pattern of the HeLong society. In fact, in order to make the defense valid, farming folks of inner frontier and nomad of outside frontier had been contesting . The advancing and the shrinking of the line of defense of the Great Wall from Longyou to the Hexi and Hetao areas is just a reflection of the change of the power of the two sides. This repeating process greatly promoted the communication between the agricultural culture and the nomadic culture. The spread, buildup and decline of the learning and culture in the Han and Jin Dynasties (206B.C.-420A.D.) can be taken as the result of the expanding and retreating of the fanning culture in the frontier areas. This process also affects the evolution of historical linguistic geography in the Helong area. Due to different mutual infiltration and effect, different linguistic geographic...