Talk:Yellow Turban Rebellion

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Wasn't the leader of the yellow turbans Zhang Jiao? He had a brother Zhang Boa, didn't he? at least tell those faq's

true, there is obviously a typo in the article. fixed now kt2 05:36, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Proper name

i believe that Yellow Scarves Rebellion would be a more proper name. It was the term used by translators Moss Roberts and Brewitt-Taylor as well. Should we move it back there? --Plastictv 13:58, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

i did a search on google. Looks like Britannica and many academic sources use "Yellow Turban Rebellion". So i guess we follow? --Plastictv 14:01, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I agree and made changes clarifying that "Yellow Scarves Rebellion" is just an alternative translation --rm 3 July 2005 04:18 (UTC)
It probably is.

[edit] but...

Why call them Yellow Turbans? After all, they wore scarves, not turbans.

Also, in ROTK, he was called Zhang Jue and his brothers were Zhang Ba and Zhang Lian. Koei changed them to Jiao, Bao and Liang. I have no idea why. Koei appearntly likes screwing around with stuff in their games. But it's their right. They never said it was 100% historically acurate (and it most certainly isn't).

To me as a non-expert, the definitions of turban and scarf seem to overlap: a "scarf is a piece of textile, often long and narrow, usually worn on or near the head" and a turban is a "headdress [...] consisting of a long scarf wound round the head". Although I do not know how the Yellow Turbans/Scarves wore their yellow "thingies", it may very well be that it could be described either as a scarf or as a turban. In naming the article, common use of the name should be given priority, IMHO. I have created a redirection from "Yellow Scarves Rebellion" to "Yellow Turban Rebellion" now, but I feel that the most common English name should also be the title of the article. rm 9 July 2005 14:34 (UTC)

By the way, in the Brewitt-Taylor version, they were named Chang Chio, Pao, and Liang, or in pinyin Zhang Jiao Bao and Liang. So it wasn't Koei. Cao Wei 21:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 张角

I don't understand why the article states "who is referred to as Zhang Jue in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms". This simply does not make any sense since the original was written in Chinese, the Chinese character 角 can be read as jue2 or jiao3 in Mandarin. That aside, is Jue2 or Jiao3 the preferred pronunciation among historians?

Per this site at Stanford University the correct pronunciation is Zhang Jue (you'll have to turn on Big5 encoding to see the page correctly in your browser). I don't know how authoritative that website is, but where English is found on pages Google indexes for "张角", I didn't see any references to Zhang Jiao, only to Zhang Jue. technopilgrim 01:37, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Could the "blue sky falls, yellow sky rises" slogan mean that heaven falls, earth rises?

[edit] "Gangs" vs "Militias"

This reminds me of the coverage of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.. one side has regular "soldiers," but the other are a bunch of "gunmen." I'm not anti-Israel, but the Israeli army is just as, if not more, reckless than the Palestinian forces, if only because they kill more civilians annually (UN statistics). At the very least, it must be said that neither side deserves a more respectable title.

In the case of ancient China, there was even less organizational and technical difference between the rebels and the state forces. All the linguistic distinction does is to conjure up implicit associations in the mind of the reader: gangs as undisciplined fortune-seekers prone to rape and looting; militias as reliable associations of upstanding citizens. In fact, as spontaneously-organized civilian forces, the peasant armies have more of a claim to the title of "militia," whereas the scabs and mercenaries hired by the landlords fit the definition of "gang" much better!

The rest of the article is positively impartial, making this discrepancy all the more noticeable.

[edit] Religion

In the book cited, the claim made does not exist in the section on the Yellow Turbans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by VMalicia (talk • contribs) 16:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC)