Hospital Banner, Beechworth
Date Published
: Traditional
: Ely Finch
Beechworth Hospital Banner, gift to the Chinese community
The text reads "中華國" "The Chinese State".
Beechworth Hospital Banner - gift to the Chinese community
If you want my take on this expression, I'd say that, as with what is today the more favoured term, "中國" "The Central State", this expression is not actually the official name of any specific state, Chinese history being littered with numerous states, and the official title of what was regarded at the time as "the Chinese state" (albeit a Manchu-ruled state) being "大清國" "The Great Qing State", which incorporated both the Manchu and Chinese lands, and other lands besides. However, the English Orientalist conception, which ran utterly contrary to fact, was that there had been a single Chinese state that had existed for millennia and had had various dynasties, of which the Great Qing State was but one. As a translation that accommodates this concept, I think the expression on the banner works very well. In fact, I like it better than "中國" "The Central State", which does carry that rather superious overtone of "the state at the centre of the known universe”. Ely Finch