I had seen old paintings in museums and palaces in what is today's Europe and Central Asia with fair-skinned humans on horseback whom I learnt were Mongols, and wondered how paintings depicting Mongols (whom I had mistakenly thought were confined to the northern part of Asia beyond the Great Wall of China) came to be in this part of the world.
And then I saw the map of the Mongol Empire and realised that perhaps that the fear that Europeans and Central Asians had of the Mongols had lingered far far along in their memories, passing on to later generations who may unconsciously continue to fear the Yellow Peril.
The Secret History of the Mongols is an interesting read, and perhaps Atwood chose to retain as close as possible the original structure of the text from the Chinese translation, which makes the sentence structure of this book rather sing-song-like.
In contrast to the views of Europeans and Han people then that the Mongols were barbaric, the Mongols (as described in the book) did have family structures, tribe-like systems, although these might be different from the European or Han perception of civilisation then. Barbarism, I think, is a matter of perception and relativity.
It was fascinating to read of Tenmujin's growing up years, where a young boy abandoned by his tribe after his father's death rose eventually to become in today's term the founding father of the fearsome and peerless Mongol Empire. If Tenmijin's rise despite his circumstance wasn't a result of divnity, it would be most incredible and unbelievable and surely pure fantasy.
The Mongols, with their culture and way of living vasely distinct from the Han people who occupy the central plains of what is today's China, were obviously a different ethnic group from the Han people and had conquered and ruled the Han people for close to a century. Thus I find it unsettling that the Han people today consider the Mongol Empire as one of the dynasties in their history.
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