To your fourth point, the only geography I have remembered is due to flashcards and map guessing games. I’ve found understanding a region’s geography first helps ‘locate’ history for me and have a structure to remember it by.

I’m seconding map guessing games and online quizzes in general as a good route for learning some basic facts about the countries of the world. You might want to try splitting things up by region as well, because it’s probably easier to remember the locations of four countries relative to each other than 200; after you learn enough smaller regions you can try individual continents; after you master continents you can try the world. But at the same time, I also think that it’s a good idea to try to learn “holistically”: things like country name etymologies and basic national symbols (flag, emblem, anthem) and their meanings could maybe help things stick, as could rooting things in e.g. stories and songs or other things you already find interesting.

But above all else, don’t expect yourself to have superhuman memory: I probably wouldn’t remember so much if I didn’t forget so much, and look the same thing up again, and again, and again. So repetition is key, I think. And you should also not expect too much out of yourself: if it’s not information you’d expect others to know about your country, or information even your least-learned neighbor knows about their own country, then it’s not information you strictly need to know about others’ countries.

A lot of people I’ve met that are Chinese have read and or watched the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which will give you a general historical understanding of the Three Kingdoms period, but is also the source of quite a few common idioms. Even in English it’s pretty awesome.

Nobody can know everything and it’s okay to be ignorant as long as you’re learning. The two biggest things to help are repetition and purpose. It’s hard to learn when you’re just throwing darts at a board and learning something without an explicit purpose. Using your example, why are you learning about a certain Chinese dynasty? If you aren’t targeting something specific, then you have to learn everything which is hard. But if you look at it like wanting to know more about Mao and the revolution, then you have something to grasp. You start with the Qing dynasty and learn about the conditions that led to revolution. Ask yourself basic questions like the period, find a map of its territories, who was in the government. Then you start asking yourself increasingly specific questions. What was the class structure, who specifically was at the top, who was at the bottom. What groups were involved and who were the members? When did this person die? When were they involved? What were the laws in place that pissed people off? Once you build a reference point for Chinese history then you can look back earlier and have something to compare it to. Now your certain dynasty took place 400 years before the Qing. You answer the same or similar questions and now you can compare details. You have two reference points. Maybe you notice some Japanese imperialism during a period and you can start to dig into Japan’s history the same way. That’s two countries down and several time periods.

Another part is recording what you learn. Writing things down helps you retain it. I use Obsidian to take notes when going through books, pamphlets, essays, or whatever. Take notes on the answers to questions you have or whatever helps you understand the thing you’re studying. Nobody keeps all that in their heads. Once you have it written down, you can always revisit to refresh it in your mind or improve upon it if you find out you were wrong. Writing things down for the sake of writing won’t help you retain it forever, so you need purpose once again. Share what you learn with others through teaching or just conversation. Come post what you learn here. Use what you learn to analyze the present. If you don’t use it, you tend to lose it.

As for geography, idk. I learn what I have to and that results in being able to point to countries on a map. I never really get super granular like mapping out battles or trade routes or migrations. If you refer to a world map in your studies enough it will start to stick.

I accumulated my geographical and historical knowledge by

• 10% paying attention in middle/high school history class
• 30% playing geographic games
• 60% just looking up all the things I came across

You’re going to have to see it as something desirable, rather than a chore. But if you can do that, you’ll already be well on your way to knowing more than 90% of people. Personally, I couldn’t say very much about Chinese dynasties beyond the Qin, Yuan, Ming, and Qing. And that’s okay. You’re not studying for an Advanced Placement test or filling out a government form with lots of blanks, you’re putting together lots of puzzle pieces from secondhand and thirdhand sources to form an understanding of the world.

On the one hand I don’t want to be paralyzed by perfectionism, but on the other hand I don’t want to be learning too much that is flagrantly incorrect. It’s hard to judge when you are totally naive. On the third hand, it’s good to know about common perceptions of things even if they are wrong, because they are important to how people discuss and integrate. For current events equally to history.

I mean geography and climate you can just trust most sources I’d say, but I’m assuming this is more on the political side. I’d say try not to store things as true / false about a country (barring the obvious ones like China is a big country, inhabited by many chinese) in your mind but rather as remembering what entity A or person B claims about it. It saves you both from believing everyone in China is working 996 and it also tells you something about the side that’s making that claim

The key is that you are interested. Good job!

But when I read something was during a certain Chinese dynasty, I have no such frame. How to overcome this?

I don’t know anything about Chinese Dynasties, either, but I know that for me, simple timelines work and complicated ones do not – not until I know some basics – so this question sparked me to look for more information and here’s the stuff that immediately looked readable to me:

Timeline from here:

But Dynasties were not covering ALL of China, borders and regions change, so I’d also need something like this timeline page that links to maps for different times, like these: Eastern Jin Dynasty around 400 AD with the declining Northern Wei Dynasty and states of the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms: Later Qin, Later Yan and Southern Yan.

Compared to 600 years later with the Song Dynasty, the Liao Dynasty (Khitan Empire), and the Tangut Empire of Western Xia:

That’s WAAAYY too much to take in at once, but if you see a movie or play a game that involves some chunk of time or particular person, you can quick-reference where the interesting item fits. Learning any story – even fictional – helps me fill in details. Certain games, like “Plague, Inc.” might help with general geography (though that particular game omits lots of countries).

How do you learn geography?

I’ll be real with you, I’ve learned more geography playing paradox games than anything else. Primarily Victoria 3 and hoi4 because they have the most modern maps and have the most “involvement” in staring at maps and locations to plan shit out for your economy or military, etc. Only bad map habit I have is referring to shaanxi by the name of its capital xi’an because Vicky 3 does that for some reason.

This is a great effort and I’m proud of you, comrade!