This chapter explores the cultivation of the value of unity in a secondary school history textbook in China by examining the chapters on the founding of the Yuan dynasty in the thirteenth century by the Mongols. The study draws on the system of FIELD in register and APPRAISAL in discourse semantics. As for FIELD, in establishing static relations, the textbook applies shifts in the assigned temporal properties, which affords the reading of a continuous development of history made possible by geo-political unity. In construing dynamic relations, the historical activities are presented as linear, culminating in the unification of the Mongolian steppe and the whole country. In addition, activities are organised in linear series to construe assimilation of the various ethnic groups. As for APPRAISAL, the textbook positively appreciates the activity of unifying the Mongolian steppe and the country, and negatively appreciates wars and disunity. The analyses presented in this chapter show the crucial role of ideational resources (i.e. FIELD), as well as interpersonal resources (i.e. APPRAISAL) in aligning textbook readers into a community of shared values, which is an important aspect of representing minority history in a multi-ethnic country like China.

Chapter 3 examines cross-cultural contacts between the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) in Korea and the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) in China and Mongolia (and the broader Mongol Empire), in order to refine our historical context to make clear the kind of Sino-Korean interactions that made the transfer of distilled liquors to Korea possible. As its suzerain state on Koryŏ’s border for nearly 150 years, the Mongols were able to exert considerable influence on Korea. This opened the way to a wide range of cross-cultural interactions, from the stationing of Mongol soldiers on Cheju Island to trade to court relations and intermarriage, situations that created opportunities for the exchange of such things as liquors, concepts of drinking culture, and still technologies, laying the foundations for soju’s development. Such a process is not excusive to alcohol; we see similar patterns in a variety of cultural artifacts (even Korean foods and national dress). Cross-cultural interactions between the Yuan and Koryŏ realms provided Koreans with access to genuinely cosmopolitan societies in Eurasia, so the range of influences went well beyond China or the Mongols. In this way, soju provides an excellent vehicle for understanding both the extent of Eurasian influence on Korea and also Korea’s place in Eurasia under the Pax Mongolica.