As a normal Chinese with standard Chinese education till 10th grade (then move to a foreign country), I can understand fragments of writings carved in stones 1500 years ago in museums, which I felt quite amazing.
E.g., when people talk about Ancient Egypt nobody doubts its continuity even though there were at least 3 Intermediate Periods similar to periods between Chinese dynasties.
Of course you do, this myth of the "5,000 years of history" making China both unique and exempt from trends that affect the rest of the world is a very old part of the CCP's propaganda:
The Myth of "5,000 Years of History" http://camphorpress.com/5000-years-of-history/
I never mention 5000 years of History, only 1500. I am trying to not related with any politics here.
By your reasoning if there exists some propaganda then my personal experience should not be trusted?
In addiction, the long history is not created by CCP but following the Chinese scholar tradition. It is correct that CCP used it for creating nationalism, but they did not fabricate the whole thing.
To know more about Chinese culture not from [politic fueled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ross_(academic)) books, I suggest you to read The [Problem of China](http://www.freeclassicebooks.com/Bertrand%20Russell/The%20Pr...) by Bertrand Russell. It is authored by a well-known scholar and written before the CCP exists in case you accuse me of suggesting you propaganda. The opinions by the book may be too old but at least the facts are unbiased IMO.
It creates this mindset of golden-ageism, where you expect everything to be already done, everything to be discovered and all of it, just some library lookup away.
Is this unusual, though? Fairly certain most romance language speakers can understand at least some latin if they put their minds to it.
I heard old French read aloud. I understood 10% (optimistically) and not even the overall meaning.
I would say that starting from the 1700's the language slowly makes sense.
Yes it works for basic texts, you can understand some words here and there.
Even as an English speaker, which is not a romance language, I can understand quite a few Latin words here and there, due to the fact that something like 50% of English vocabulary was borrowed from Latin or other romance languages.
The average English speaker cannot make sense of Latin prose. Picking out a few words here and there, isn't the same thing.
"Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur."
All but 'Latine', and perhaps 'dictum', is gibberish to the average English speaker.
First stanza of Beowulf in Old English, transliterated into Latin characters:
> Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning. ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned, geong in geardum, þone god sende folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat þe hie ær drugon aldorlease lange hwile.
Now that I think about it, I have never read Romance text written before the XIII century: Cantigas, Dante, etc.
There is a decent chance that an English speaker with a broad vocabulary would be able to recognize individual words in any foreign language that can be expressed with the ASCII character set.