my fatigue with palace intrigue

[amw]

After threatening to dive into the Confucius wiki hole a couple entries ago, i decided i'd do just that. But rather than going straight to the man himself, i figured it'd make more sense to get a broader overview of Chinese history before deep-diving on philosophy that i've previously barely shallow-dived on. Also i figured it'd help so next time i

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[amw]

I think there is some aspect of history that helps with the language. In my recent learnings i have found that quite a lot of 成語 reference some historical event, or were famously attributed to a historical person, so knowing that gives you some context. Also it seems to help with politics a bit, like i was reading about some boring general or other who became a 門神, i think he was 關羽, and then there is some quote from 鄧小平 which reference some story about it that no foreigner would know what they are talking about if they hadn't explicitly learned it. It's just so boring though 😅

Of course our latest fearless leader is trying to compensate by having a fake version of classical knowledge. This article was a good one, talking about the 國之大著 trend which China watchers been laughing about for a while now: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=59485 Fun fact: when i typed that phrase in pinyin it first came out as 果汁打折 which is much more relevant to the lives of actual Chinese people.

Anyway, there are a few interesting guys in Chinese history, especially more recently. The best one i read about recently was 鄭成功 who was the son of a Chinese pirate and an unknown Japanese woman from Nagasaki. Following in the footsteps of his father, who switched careers from pirate to privateer/admiral, he started taking care of business in the Taiwan Strait. When the Qing dynasty took over China, he maintained a pocket of resistance in Xiamen, then eventually kicked the Dutch out of Taiwan and created his own mini-dynasty. He kept raiding ports along the coast, eventually even making it all the way up to Nanjing. Of course eventually the Qing wiped him out, re-took the cities along the Fujian coast, then invaded Taiwan, but it's still a neat story about someone who was perhaps an early representation of what Taiwanese culture would become in the future - maritime-oriented, multi-cultural, independent from Beijing etc.

I think there will be some interesting people like that from Guangdong as well. For me, i really think the story of Guangdong and Fujian is more interesting than the northern or inland provinces, who seemed to alternate between being at war with each other and invading the surrounding lands, all under the control of the latest emperor, whereas coastal provinces (historically Yue, not Han) seem more open and free - piracy and trade and travel and whatnot.