In my line of work, Saturdays and Sundays are the hard days. I work at a cram school, which is basically school for when you're not at regular school. Playing? Enjoying your childhood? God forbid! (Wait a minute, there is no god. God is the opiate of the masses. How foolish of me.) On Saturdays, I have five classes, or ten hours. On Sundays, I have four classes, or eight hours. Some people say it must be easy ("all you do is play games with kids") but it's exhausting to spend your 10 of your 14 waking hours being kicked/sneezed on/clambered around on by screaming kids. By the end of the weekend, I feel like Bloaty the Pizza Hog from Invader Zim:
"What more you askin' for?"
My very last class on Sunday is a kindergarten class. These are kids who have never been in a classroom before, and spend most of the class either crying, or performing various bodily functions. It's one last hurdle to get past before my weekend (that is, Monday and Tuesday).
It is in this class that I have a kid that I call Ricky the Psychopath. I call him that because his name is Ricky and he's a psychopath.
Among his various offenses are using his considerable size to bully other kids in the class, yelling swear words in Chinese when I'm trying to talk, and grinding my chalk into a cocaine-like powder.
There's a good side to everyone, of course. It would be unfair if I didn't say that Ricky has one too. He has a baby sister in the same class. He is very protective of, and a perfect gentleman to, her. A Catholic theologian, Bishop Robert Barron, once said that with the right training, a bully can become a knight. This is what I'm trying to do with Ricky. I think it's possible, but it will take time.
So anyway, last week I was trying to teach some new letters of the alphabet. Ricky and I had the following exchange:
Me: M is for Milk!
Ricky: (whacks the kid next to him. Kid cries.)
Me: Ricky, four! Say sorry. (This is a system that I worked out with his parents. If he gets five warnings in a class, he loses five minutes of playtime at home.)
Ricky: (screams, tries to punch me in the junk)
Me: Five!
Ricky: WO CAO NI MA!
This is a Chinese insult that means "I'll fuck your mom". I laughed so hard the teacher in the next room asked what was so funny after class.
Ricky got a time out for that. No sticker after class either.
China is a weird place in general, but there's something that happens when a kid pops out that sends Mom and Dad on a one-way trip to Loonyville. This is a list of bizarre things that Chinese parents do or think:
--First, backdiapers. These are a kind of towel that Chinese parents stuff into the nape of their kids' shirts, sometimes made for that purpose. It's there to soak up the sweat that pours off the kids' backs in a constant, unutterably foul torrent of Old Testament proportions. Chinese kids sweat a lot, you see. This is because...
--Being cold will give you breast cancer. Chinese people have a weird thing about being cold. They drink their water hot, for example. It could be a hundred degrees and moms will interrupt class by coming into my room and turning off my air conditioner, because their kids will "get cold". I speak from experience, as when I was in Hangzhou there was about a month-long period where it didn't go under ninety, day or night. Meanwhile, the kids are in sweatshirts with sweat pouring down their faces and backdiapers so thoroughly saturated that you could wring them out. There are a few justifications they use for this, among them that being cold, or even drinking cold (i.e. room temperature) water causes breast cancer. Given the level of competence among most Chinese medical professionals, I would not be surprised if they're the ones disseminating this information. For the same reason, some parents don't let their kids shower in winter. This aversion to cold is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture, as is...
--Letting your kids crap on the street. Diapers aren't super big here, so most kids who are old enough to walk but not old enough to control their functions wear pants with an open crotch. When it's time to go, they squat down wherever they happen to be--on a street, in the market, in an underpass--and let it rip. If you have a dog, you know that sometimes they'll squat down to shit and then start crabwalking around, and you have to follow behind them picking it up. I've seen a mom do that with a toddler. He was even on a leash.
The other day I was on a train. I was sitting near the corridor reading my book when a Mom hustled by, holding a toddler. At the end of the car was a communal trash bin. She took the kid, dangled him over the bin, and started up...
--The piss whistle. This is a high-pitched whistling noise that parents make. It triggers a Pavlovian response in their kid that opens the floodgates. As I sat in the train that day, desperately trying to focus on my book, the mom held the kid out, started whistling, and sure enough he unleashed a stream of pee into the trash can. By the way, this whole time, they were right across the corridor from the bathroom. Which tells you something about the quality of Chinese train toilets.
Pretty nasty, if you ask me. But some other Chinese parenting habits are heartwarmingly affectionate. Or at least, they toe the line between heartwarmingly affectionate and disturbingly helicopterish:
--Feeding their kids. I was walking down the hallway at school when I saw Ricky the Psychopath. He was reclined on a chair, with his parents standing over him. Dad was holding chopsticks and a bowl to the kid's mouth, shoveling in food. Meanwhile, Mom was holding a glass of (presumably boiling-hot) water to his mouth and pouring it in at intervals. The kid was doing nothing on his own, just laying back with his mouth open like he was at the dentist, chewing and swallowing. This kid was five years old, and his parents were watering him like a plant. One Chinese friend of mine does this with his nine-year-old daughter, and the lunch lady at our school cafeteria has actually done this to me. Incredible.
This one, though, I can understand. My generation's parents and their generation's grandparents grew up during Chairman Mao's time--during the single worst famine in all of human history, unable able to eat even what you did have (thanks, communism!) This is the first time in living memory where a kid in China can reasonably be expected to have enough to eat--and even then, that's only in the cities. Parents can't get that food into their kids fast enough. Shovel away, I say.
So, right now I’m living in a city
called Guiyang.It’s the capital of
Southwest China’s Guizhou province:
By Chinese standards it’s kind of a
backwater, and there aren’t a lot of expats living here.Guiyang is a place where it’s quite unusual
to see a foreigner, and people aren’t used to it.In fact, even the most basic knowledge about
foreigners escapes many people—they just don’t know what the crap they’re
seeing when we walk by.For example, Guiyangers
(?) seem to be unaware of the fact that if you’re white, you’re (probably) not
from Africa.Outside my apartment the
other day, I walked past a pair of guys sitting on their electric scooters.One turned to the other and said, “That
African sure is tall.”
Another time, I was at the
mall.I was washing my hands in the
bathroom, and a guy walked in. “Whoa, Xinjiangren!” he said.He meant that I was a Uyghur.The Uyghurs are Turks* from western
China. While not exactly "Chinese" looking, they usually have darker complexions and black hair.I, on the other hand,
look like I just walked off the set of “Triumph of the Will”.
But that’s all small potatoes
compared to what one guy said yesterday.I was downtown, walking to work, and as I walked by, he waved and gave
me a cheerful “Anyeonghaseyo!”
That’s “hello” in Korean.Apparently, in this guy’s mind, Koreans are
six-foot-tall white people.Astonishing. *Speakers of a Turkic language, not people from Turkey.
"Do you suffer from a mental illness? If so, explain."
That was one of the questions on the visa form the first time I came to China. Of course I checked no, because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten in, but as a matter of fact I do: I have OCD, and I take meds for it.
Meds which, at the moment, are running fairly low. This means that one of these weekends, I'll have to shell out a few thousand kuai for a weekend in Beijing to visit an expat-run hospital. Why not a local hospital, you ask? Chinese hospitals are bad enough when you have a cold: now imagine telling them you need Head Meds.
Here's what happened the last time I stuck a toe in the Wacky World of Chinese Psychiatry. It was about two years ago, in Hangzhou. I needed to get a mental health check for a job I was applying to--a routine procedure in decent places, but as Gollum said, silly hobbitses, this isn't decent places. This is a Chinese public hospital.
Apparently in China, "Mental health check" is a euphemism for "interrogation of political dissidents and/or the criminally insane". But I head to at least try. More or less knowing from the start that my endeavor was doomed, I headed down to the local public hospital. I was talking with a nice doctor who spoke some English, and she was baffled by the idea of giving mental exams to the non-straitjacketed. "Why would you need that?" she asked.
"Well, in some countries we have to pass a mental exam to work as a teacher." I said. "Basically all I need is a paper that says 'Bro is not crazy' with a doctor's signature."
She called around to find a doctor with the qualifications to make such a statement, apparently a rarity over here. Eventually she ended up calling the infamous #7 Hospital, which is essentially an insane asylum circa 1940 and figures prominently in discussions with Chinese 6th graders (e.g. teaching Alice goes to school by bike quickly devolves into "Haha, teacher goes to #7 hospital by pig". An actual quote.)
With a look of resignation, my doctor friend hung up the phone. "They won't do it." she said.
Figures. "Why not?"
"Well, how to say in English..." she thought for a moment. "he said that Chinese people, white people and black people have different brains. So he can't give you a test for Chinese people."
...huh.
Of course, we shouldn't shoot the messenger. My doctor friend was very sympathetic and did help me schedule my physical for the next morning, which was nice. I guess she realized it wasn't my fault I was born with a tiny caucasian brain.
Shi Hong was helpless.In fear, he offered the throne to Shi Hu.Shi Hu, acting after the example of Cao Cao,
sarcastically declined and said something along the lines of “No, you’re the
crown prince after all, go ahead and take it, but I ‘strongly suggest’ that you
make me the prime minister and the King of Wei—and give me the nine bestowments
while you’re at it.”Note that these are
the same titles that Cao Cao took!Poor
Shi Hong must have seen what was happening.
Now, again, if I had been Shi Hong, I would have said
something awesome like “Golly gosh Shi Hu, who was my dad again?Oh yeah!He was the emperor!And he’s
dead!So…wait a minute!That…that makes me…the emperor!And…and you’re not the emperor!Off with your head!”As you can tell, I spend a lot of time
fantasizing about this.Perhaps, you
would say, he knew he would’ve been killed if he said that, but surely there
must’ve been some faction loyal to him.He could’ve even drawn his sword and made a heroic last stand with his
bros.But he didn’t, and allowed the
situation to get worse.
Anyway, Shi Hong for whatever reason didn’t do this, nor did
he take a lesson from the story of Cao Cao.Instead he asked his mom, the empress dowager, for help.This was the same lady who had saved Shi Hu
when he was in danger!She tried to
enlist another prince to attack Shi Hu, but the plan failed.Shi Hu, emulating his old hero Cao Cao, had
her killed.Imagine the nerve of this
guy!Shi Hu was by rights the empress
dowager’s subject, and he had her executed as if she was a common criminal!I can only imagine the language he must have
used to have her executed—for he could not have done so without the emperor’s
ostensible permission.It must’ve been
something along the lines of “Your majesty, this woman has threatened the
security of your royal person and must be punished, I ask you to order her
death.”Something like that.Imagine doing that with a straight face!What a bastard.And he did this to his very aunt, who had
previously saved his life! What a savage
twist of irony.
So let’s look at Shi Hong—that was the emperor,
remember.These names all sound alike,
at least to me, because I don’t speak Chinese.Understandably dismayed at being forced to approve his mom’s death, he
couldn’t stand it anymore.Talk about a
golden cage!This guy was—supposedly—the
Son of Heaven, and the ruler of all beneath it, but he was basically the
captive of Shi Hu, and had to go along with it.So what did he do?He decided to
make one last plea for humane treatment.He must have known it wouldn’t work, since his cousin was a psychopath
that made the Joker look like Gandhi.At
any rate, however, Shi Hong made his way one night to Shi Hu’s palace, carrying
the emperor’s jade seal, and said something along the lines of “the mandate of
heaven has passed to you.For the
preservation of the dynasty, please take the throne and rule all under heaven!”
That’s right, Shi Hong offered the throne to Shi Hu
again!Imagine having to do that to the
man who had your mom killed!What agony
poor Shi Hong must have gone through.But Shi Hu, in true psychopath fashion, said something dripping with
sarcasm, like “Oh, I am only your lowly servant, I would not dare take the
throne from Your Highness.”Poor Shi
Hong had to return to the palace to await his fate.Of course everyone, Shi Hong included, knew
that Shi Hu wanted to be emperor, and this was as good a time as any, but of
course he had nothing better to do than insult and torment Shi Hong first.
By now Shi Hong had been “ruling” for about a year.Not long afterward, Shi Hu made an
announcement.He said that Shi Hong had
violated the mourning customs regarding his father—which he hadn’t.As a result Shi Hong was “strongly advised”
to abdicate the throne.Poor Shi Hong by
now seems to have been completely despairing of his fate.He made no attempt to resist.In fact, he probably thought that by not
resisting he would escape with his life—which he didn’t.Not long after being deposed, Shi Hong was
executed—which by rights should’ve happened to Shi Hu, if only Shi Hong had had
the courage to try.Poor Shi Hong never
got the justice he deserved in this life, but we can hope that he found rest in
the hereafter.
But, as the ever-quotable Gandalf the Grey said, many that
die deserve life, and some that live deserve death.Shi Hu’s first act as emperor was to change
the era name, following an ancient Chinese custom where not only emperors have
names, but their reigns too.He named
his reign period “jian-wu”, which appropriately enough means “establish
militarism”.He even lived in a palace
called Tai-Wu, or “excessively militaristic”.The two decades that followed were an orgy of bloodshed and chaos to the
people of Northern China.His atrocities
I have already described, and the common people of China were forced into slave
labor to build an extravagant series of palaces, where Shi Hu ate, drank, and
made merry with his concubines until he died in 349.
As a side note, as if killing his cousin weren’t bad enough
already, he also murdered his own son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren.While doing this, he even claimed to be a
Buddhist—I suppose much the same way that the Spanish Inquisition was
Catholic.Maybe he thought he was
helping his victims by speeding them on to their next incarnations. More likely he saw Buddhist missionaries from
an Inner Asian perspective: as shamans with weird powers, and therefore to be
respected and feared.
Of course, the inevitable fate of tyranny is downfall, and
though Shi Hu seems to have died a natural death, his empire was not to
last.Three emperors were enthroned and
deposed in two years, and the realm descended into even worse chaos than
before—I am sorry to say that this tragic story ends with nothing short of an
ancient genocide.
As we’ve discussed, Shi Hu and company were not actually
Chinese, ethnolinguistically speaking.They ruled and terrorized a Chinese population, and took on the
trappings of Chinese emperors, but were themselves Jie.Apparently, the Jie language was completely
different from Chinese, and even from other Xiongnu languages.The Jie people even had a different appearance
from their neighbors.
It is a sad reality that very often, an entire ethnic group
suffers for the terrible actions of a few of its members.The Jie were one of these groups.Following the overthrow of the Later Zhao
dynasty, the Jie people were completely hunted down and killed.This included everyone of the ethnic group,
even those who had nothing to do with the dynasty’s reign of terror—women,
children, whatever.Escape or blending
into the Chinese population was impossible, since the Jie seem to have had such
distinct features.It was
horrible.Even though Shi Le and Shi Hu
were bad guys, I’m sure there were lots of nice Jie people too, and like Shi
Hong, they had to suffer despite having done nothing wrong.Racism is bad.
As a matter of fact, along with the Jie, other Xiongnu were
killed and the survivors driven from China.Could this have been the beginning of the migration of nomads that would
end a hundred years later at the gates of Rome?Maybe!The “Xiong” in “Xiongnu”
sounds kind of like “Hun” after all, don’t you think?
This genocide was so thorough and complete that as a result,
we don’t even know who the Jie were!All
that remains of their language is a single sentence transcribed by a passing
monk.What was this sentence?Does it contain the key to unlocking the
mystery of the Jie people—who they were, where they came from?Probably, because otherwise there would be no
material for a video!At any rate, we’ll
talk about it next time.
Given the barrage of names, let’s review: Shi Le is the aging
emperor who established the dynasty, Shi Hong is the heir apparent, and Shi Hu
is a jealous cousin.Their dynasty is
known as the Later Zhao.They belong to
the Jie ethnic group, which was one of many tribes known to Chinese historians
by the umbrella term “Xiongnu”.
Before long, Shi Le’s health began to fail, and he died,
leaving the empire in the somewhat unsteady hands of Shi Hong.The tragedy that followed can be described as
comparable to something you’d see in Ancient Greek Theater, but to understand
it we have to go back a hundred years to the early third century, to the time
of the Three Kingdoms.So again, from
the fourth century, we’re going back to the early third century, to a
completely different cast of characters.
One hundred years before the Later Zhao, China had been split
up into three warring factions.In
Northern China, the Emperor reigned in name, but was in truth nothing more than
the plaything of Cao Cao, a brutal warlord who filled court with his henchmen
and tormented the poor emperor day and night.While Cao Cao paid lip service to the emperor, he actually kept the
emperor as a virtual prisoner, going so far as to have the emperor’s two wives executed
when they crossed him.One happened to
be pregnant at the time, which means that, in effect, Cao Cao murdered the
child of the emperor of China.But even
this was not far enough for Cao Cao.To
add insult to injury, Cao Cao then forced the emperor to marry his daughter, as
a vacancy had been created.
Cao Cao then “strongly suggested” that the emperor make him
the Prime Minister, as well as the King of Wei, a region in north China.On top of that, Cao Cao got what were called
the “Nine Bestowments”, which were in theory a reward given by emperors for
good service.Remember, this is after killing
the emperor’s wives and unborn child.Can you imagine the agony this poor emperor must have gone through?
The whole affair was an absolute farce.When I read “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,”
reading about the way Cao Cao treated the emperor made me so angry that I used
to throw the book across the room, and then go for a walk to cool off!
That said, the emperor was partially at fault:
Here, we see the emperor’s wife being arrested, with the poor
emperor looking helplessly on—that’s him in the chair.The guy with the sword is Cao Cao.Remember, he’s daring to draw his sword
before the emperor of China!At any
time, the emperor could have stood up and said, “You know, Cao Cao, I don’t
recall this being a constitutional monarchy.Off with your head.”But he never
did, because he was too afraid.Even
when his wife was executed, and she asked him to save her life, all he could do
was mumble something about not even being able to protect himself.Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but I always
like to daydream that if I were the emperor, I wouldn’t have any of Cao Cao’s
nonsense.But this guy, it seems, was
just too much of a spineless coward.
The one thing that Cao Cao never dared to do was claim the
throne for himself, but that kind of actually makes sense, because he knew that
if he did, his descendants would one day fall into the position of the poor
emperor that he so tormented.His son,
however, was less intelligent, and soon after he died, “strongly suggested”
that the emperor abdicate in his favor.
With this in mind, let’s return to the Later Zhao a hundred
years later.Shi Hu—remember, that’s the
envious cousin—looked at Cao Cao as a personal hero.He even lived in a palace that Cao Cao had built.But Shi Hu, while being even more evil than
Cao Cao, could not match him for brains.All he could do was look to the past and try to imitate his
predecessor.So, when Shi Le died and
the gentle, studious Shi Hong ascended the throne, Shi Hu muscled his way into
the palace and staged a coup—in this case at least, the sword proved mightier
than the inkbrush.
In our last video we talked about the rise of Shi Le and his
establishment of the Later Zhao dynasty in 4th century China.I want to begin by reviewing names, since
this can be confusing, especially to people like me who don’t speak Chinese.
I’d like to start by reviewing that, in the year 220, the
mighty Han Dynasty split into three kingdoms.The strongest of these was called Wei, led by the wily and devious Cao
Cao.However, Wei’s hegemony was not to
last.It was replaced by the Jin
Dynasty, which reunited China for several decades at the end of the 3rd
Century.Soon, however, trouble began
with a loose confederation of tribes in the north, called the Xiongnu.They invaded northern China, pushed the Jin
into South China, and established their own Sinicized dynasties.
The Xiongnu were not ethnically homogenous!“Xiongnu” is a catch-all term for a group of
tribes.One of these tribes was called
the Jie, led by the warlord Shi Le.Shi
Le conquered most of northern China, and declared himself emperor.His dynasty was called the Later Zhao, having
supplanted a dynasty called Han Zhao—not to be confused with the Han dynasty of
100 years earlier.Shi Le established
his capital in what is now northern Shandong province, in the very shadow of
the Tai Shan, China’s holiest mountain:
He may very well have even climbed this mountain, as many
emperors have done, to symbolize the legitimacy of his dynasty.Even Chairman Mao did this, an interesting
move for someone who claimed to be the elected leader of a “People’s Republic”.History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes
very well.
Shi Le was a barbarian who had no sense of honor or
mercy.All that mattered to him was
plunder and power.However, having
established his dynasty, he seems to have cooled off in his old age.In fact he even became a Buddhist.As one of the first emperors to convert to
Buddhism, he played a key role, though largely unrecognized, in the early
spread of Buddhism in China.
Having established his claim to the Imperial throne, Shi Le
attempted to arrange for the continuance of his dynasty after his death.There were two primary candidates for the
succession: first, the bookish, mild-mannered and popular Shi Hong, his son.Even though Shi Le was a ruthless and often
cruel warlord, his son seems to have been a pretty decent guy.He was by all accounts a compassionate and
all-around good-natured person who spent his time studying the Confucian and
Buddhist classics.The second candidate
was the psychopathic Shi Hu, a nephew of the royal house who had accompanied
Shi Le on his conquests.
Shi Hu was a real bastard.It’s really impossible to overstate how bad of a person he was.He was famous for having his own men—even his
own sons—beaten to within an inch of their lives.Even worse—by the way, if you’re eating right
now I recommend you pause the video until you’re finished—it’s said that he had
his armies cannibalize local people, as a form of both psychological warfare
and saving on provisions.Even Shi Le’s
hardened crew of badasses trembled in fear at the mention of his name.
Shi Le, who was himself no Mother Teresa, found his nephew’s
shenanigans disturbing to say the least.He wanted to have him killed, but was dissuaded by his wife.According to her, “before a bull grows up, it
breaks the cart”, preemptively quoting the Bard in Much Ado.
But alas, this savage bull did not bear the yoke, and taking
this advice was arguably the worst decision of Shi Le’s career, and could be
said to have doomed his dynasty—and, in an ironic twist worthy of Sophocles,
doomed Shi Le’s wife.But more on that
later.Instead of having this psychopath
killed, Shi Le simply disenfranchised Shi Hu in favor of his son, Shi Hong.This only served to irritate Shi Hu, who felt
that he should be the heir, as he did most of the work of conquering the
empire.
I'm not sure why I haven't posted this before, but this is a video that my friends and I did for a project in Mongolian class a few years back! It's our cinematic version of a classic Mongolian folktale. I was on narration, but you can see me with some pretty wicked hair from 6:50 to 7:10. You can also see between 5:20 and 6:15 our excitement over the then-forthcoming legalization of certain a herbal medicinal product in our state. Here's the story in English.
TOLD BY BAT, BAATAR and SUKHBAATAR (our Mongolian names)
On one hot summer day, an old man was taking his red cattle down to the lake for a drink. This old man's name was Dalantai. As he was coming down to the lake, a huge, terrifying monster came out of the lake! This terrible monster had a hideous face and walked on quick legs. This was Mangas, the Monster! For a long time, this monster had been taking away and eating Dalantai and his brothers' best cattle. Mangas said:
"Hey, old man! I'm hungry. Give me your best cattle, that I may eat them."
"Strong Mangas!" Said Dalantai. "My red cattle sure are delicious. I can even make them into some great khuushuur for you."
"Hmm...khuushuur. Give them to me!" said Mangas.
"I will give them to you, Mangas, but there's one problem. You need my brother Tontii's knife to eat them, as the khuushuur are very thick."
"You wait here," replied Mangas. "I'll go get Tontii's knife."
Mangas went from the lake to Tontii's ger (i.e. Mongolian yurt).
"Tontii!" Mangas cried. "Give me your knife! I need it to eat Dalantai's khuushuur."
"Ok, Mangas," said Tontii. "But my knife's dull. You need my brother's whetstone. His name is Bintii. Go get his stone and come back."
Mangas, dejected, went from that place to see Bintii. Bintii was terrified, on hearing what Mangas said, pointed down the way--for the whetstone was very heavy, and could only be moved with his brother Tantii's carriage.
"My whetstone's over there." he said. At this point in the video, you can hear Mangas singing "Ayani shuvuu"--that is, "Migrating Birds"--a very popular Mongolian song.
Mangas travelled to a distant ger, where he found Tantii, smoking his silver joint pipe.
"Awesome..." mumbled Tantii as Mangas approached, taking a long draft from his dooby pipe.
"Where's your wagon? Give it to me now!" demanded Mangas.
"Sure, Mangas." he replied. "But...my wagon is made of heavy iron. You'll need my brother's big white horse."
"I'll go get the horse." said Mangas. "You wait here."
Mangas therefore headed to Tantii's camp. Tantii was gazing upon his horse, which Mangas promptly demanded. Tantii said:
"Mangas, my horse is out grazing. Head over to my brother Untii's camp by the lake. He has an uurga, which you'll need."
--CUT--
VOCABULARY
A younger version of me with majestic long hair is standing in the library of Western Washington University holding an important looking book. Below, the caption is supposed to say "Teacher--WWU". Unfortunately, the word in Mongolian for teacher is "Bagsh", not "Baksh". Whoops.
"'Uurga'--this is a long lasso made from a birch tree. Mongolian herders, by means of the uurga, are able to capture their horses."
--CUT--
Mangas headed off and found Untii by a nearby lake. He asked for the uurga, and Untii pointed to an island in the middle of the lake.
"My uurga is on an island in the middle of the lake."
"How am I going to get through the water to the uurga?" Asked Mangas.
"Tie the heaviest rock you can find around your neck." said Untii. "It has magical properties which will allow you to quickly reach the island." He indicated a nearby rock with a rope around it. He and his brothers had come up with this plan to do Mangas in.
"Thanks!" said Mangas. He jumped into the water and promptly drowned.
From that day on, Dalantai, Tantii, Bintii, Xantii, Tantii, Untii, would always laugh when they thought of how they tricked Mangas. They lived happily ever after.
THE END.
Courtesy of Strangely Doesburg, the Accordianist Laureate of Washington state.
A few months ago I made a video
about the Jie, a possibly Yeniseic tribe who founded a short-lived dynasty in
Northern China. I’d like to tell their
story today, one which I hope you’ll agree is as dramatic as anything you’d see
on TV or in a movie. So sit back and
relax, and get ready for the epic story of the Jie!
China, third century CE--it was a
time of chaos and savagery. The great
Han Dynasty, which for centuries had ruled all under heaven, had fallen to
internal strife and outside invasions.
In its place emerged three kingdoms struggling for power. In the south, stretching from the Yangtze
river to modern Vietnam, was the kingdom of Wu, led by the patient,
diplomatically gifted Sun Quan. In the
north, bordering the steppe tribes of the Xiongnu, was the kingdom of Wei. Although nominally led by the Han Emperor,
the reins of power were tightly gripped by the cruel and devilishly clever
Prime Minister Cao Cao. In the West—that
is, modern-day Sichuan province—was the kingdom of Shu, led by the imperial
scion Liu Bei, which struggled to rescue the emperor from his captivity and restore the Han to its former
glory. After decades of civil war, a new
dynasty—the Jin—rose from the ashes of Wei and conquered the other
kingdoms. This complex and incredibly
intriguing period of history can be read about in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
I mention it because it forms the backdrop to our story today.
The Jin
dynasty’s hegemony was not to last. By
the 4th century, northern China had fallen to a succession of
nomadic tribes—then known as the Xiongnu—who set up their own pseudo-Chinese
dynasties. These were not unlike the
Mongol Yuan Dynasty, or the Manchu Qing dynasty of the second millennium. Meanwhile the Jin had retreated south of the
Yangtze, where they would remain another century.
One of
these Xiongnu tribes referred to themselves as the “Han Zhao”—a name referring
to the lineage of their leader, who claimed descent from the Han dynasty. Going so far to change his family name to
that of the Han emperors, he claimed the imperial throne, despite the reality
of being a minor steppe warlord. In
order to expand his empire throughout China, the self-proclaimed emperor
enlisted the help of his general, the ruthless Shi Le, who will become one of
the main actors of our drama:
Watch out for this guy, he’s a
badass. Even his name meant “Stone
Strangler”. You might even say he was a…stone cold killer.
Shi Le
was very much a product of these warlike and chaotic times. He was a man much in the vein of Conan the
Barbarian—his greatest joy was to roam the earth, crushing his enemies, seeing
them driven before him, and hearing the lamentations of their women. He belonged to a unique tribe within the
larger Xiongnu group, known in modern Chinese as the Jie—however, in the
Chinese of this ancient period this word would have been pronounced as *kiaet,
or something approximating it. The Jie
were a mysterious group that had emerged from the north, speaking a totally
unique language and even having a different physical appearance from the other
tribes around them. Shi Le—just like
Conan, come to think of it—had been sold into slavery as a boy, but had risen
through society by the might of his sword and ruthless pillaging tactics. By the year 310 or so, he was the most
feared general in all of the Han Zhao army.
Underneath the Han Zhao emperors, his army of ragtag badasses had
conquered most of Northern China, even extending to the Yellow river itself,
the ancient heartland of Chinese civilization:
But even this would not satisfy a
man of Shi Le’s ambition. He didn’t want
to be a simple general—he wanted to be the emperor of China itself. And so, in 319, he took up arms against the
Han Zhao emperor and created his own state, the Later Zhao. Han Zhao, having lost its best general, could
not hold for long, and by 329 had conquered the last pockets of Han Zhao
resistance, and murdered the emperor.
Thus was Shi Le made the
uncontested ruler of North China, despite he himself being *kiaet. The ethnically Chinese Jin dynasty continued
in the south, but was really not much of a threat. And so, in 330, he declared himself Emperor
of the Later Zhao dynasty—the Son of Heaven and ruler of all under it…that is,
the emperor of China. But would his
dynasty, won by the might of his sword, survive? Stay tuned, and find out!
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