Korea & Southeast Asia

China called itself Zhongguo — the Middle Kingdom — and it meant every syllable of it. In the Chinese cosmological view, civilization radiated outward from the imperial court, growing thinner and more barbarous the farther you traveled. The peoples at the edges were not quite fully human in the cultural sense: they dressed wrong, ate wrong, governed themselves clumsily.

The peoples at the edges had different opinions.

Korea, the Khmer lands of mainland Southeast Asia, the maritime kingdoms of the Indonesian archipelago — these were not cultural satellites waiting for Chinese civilization to reach them. They were independent centers of political and artistic ambition, capable of absorbing what was useful from China while building something distinctly their own. The Goryeo dynasty produced celadon glazes no Chinese potter ever matched. The Khmer Empire built a temple so vast it took thirty years and perhaps a hundred thousand workers to complete. The maritime kingdom of Srivijaya controlled the sea lanes that made the Indian Ocean trade world function.