what sport did the qing masses play? how are they performing on a global stage (like olympic, world cup etc if those exists ittl)
A Superpower Qing Dynasty: Dulimbai Gurun in 2024
- Thread starter Canopus108
- Start date
Travels and Talks Across The Great Qing, Part Two: Chengdu Nightclub
When we foreigners - all non-Chinese are foreigners, even in our homes - think of the Great Qing we typically think of Buddhist temples, Hanfu scholars, and of course teahouses. And this is more often than not what the Great Qing wants us to think of, the dignified centre of a global power that has a presence from the depths of the Pacific to the moon above.
But young people across the world are similar in their dissimilarities. They are dissimilar in their cliques, dissimilar in their dreams, and of course dissimilar to their parents, and even in the land of Confucian morality this holds true. They will zig when told to zag and zag when told to zig, and when told to study hard and make money they will look for idle entertainment to spend their parents hard-earned Yuan on.
Chengdu is no sprawling metropolis like Songjiang, and unlike Beijing it is not the beating heart of power that all arteries lead to. For a provincial capital it feels small and forgotten. But if Songjiang is the mainstream, Nantou the working class, and Beijing the refined conservative, Chengdu is the home of the avant-garde. In politics, arts, and in all things fun Chengdu is where the Great Qing come to think up the cutting edge. The universality reform movement got its start here at a national political conference. Music genres from the fast-paced rap to lightning to the “greens” were first heard in the Chengdu underground before moving to Songjiang. Murder mystery parties, escape rooms, and Jianghu play all began in the old warehouses and parks of Chengdu.
The most famous example of Chengdu’s character is the world-famous nightclub scene. While Songjiang, Nantou, and even stuffy Beijing both have plenty of nighttime entertainment, Chengdu has more per person than anywhere else in the world. Muslims have the Hajj, Jews have the Aliyah, but for youth across the world pilgrimage means coming to Chengdu once in their life to drink the hardest baijiu liquor, listen to musicians on their way up or on their way down, and to dance with people they’ll never meet again. The morality guardians occasionally rage against Chengdu’s values from the front of classical symbols like Poet-Saint Du Fu’s home but the city continues all the same.
So naturally one autumn evening I found myself on the east bank of the Fuhe River searching for the club every foreigner comes to; the Shuimu, or Jellyfish. It was supposed to be in an old warehouse that had been converted into a wet market that had then been closed, but that didn’t really narrow it down. There were no glaring neon signs or gauche street advertisers like other clubs. And my phone told me I was in the right place but I couldn’t find anyone online discussing how to get in. Lost, I did what every smart foreigner does and trusted the wisdom of the crowd. I followed a group of university students who went behind the building to the loading dock, which of course was now the main entrance, strode up a ramp, and waited for the elevator to take us together to the top floor - and the bar.
Baijiu is the most famous liquor in the world, but unlike its cousin whiskey, baijiu has been marketed to westerners as a party drink to be sculled and not savoured. Not only that, geopolitical tensions and the large Tianxia market mean the average American’s experience with baijiu is almost universally the poorer quality export labels that burn your throat and taste like nothing. Some Americans even drink it chilled rather than room temperature!
In Asia though it is central to business, with many believing a person's true character can only be seen while drunk on baijiu. While more and more people were comfortable rejecting such excesses, it remained a feature at every conference and dealing. Here in the Jellyfish though the rituals and the meals baijiu normally accompanies had been allowed to fall aside.
Before me was a…remarkable opportunity for me and I intended to take in a proper tasting focused on the three baijiu elements: the grain flavours, yeast flavours and the ageing flavours. Here at the bar I was surrounded by people debating the merits of the four types of baijiu - strong aroma, sauce aroma, light aroma, and rice aroma - and the dozens of labels on display, but I already knew what I wanted. Checking my phone to see that I had enough cash left for the night, I decided to spend it all on a single bottle of Yanghe Daqu.
First produced in the Sui-Tang period and elevated as a worthy tribute to the Qing emperors, Yanghe Daqu was of the “strong aroma” fruit type unlike the world-famous savoury Maotai Baijiu from Guizhou. While Yanghe Daqu is produced in Jiangsu, the strong aroma type is also associated with Sichuan whereas the more infamous Maotai has a “sauce flavour” that resembles soy. While they and all other varieties went through the same fermentation process, strong aroma baijiu had a different mix of ingredients with Yanghe combining sorghum and wheat grain and undergoing cultivation in wells and trenches, unlike Maotai which placed more emphasis on sorghum was buried underground for the 2-3 months.
A full graph on baijiu production
As the first sip flowed down my throat, it filled my whole body with warmth. The fruity flavour filled my mouth with pineapple sweetness while the liquid burned and softened my throat. The herbs, which the bartender insisted made it “healthy”, seemed to strengthen my resolve, dimming the bright lights and easing my aches and pains. Even as the world began to spin I could suddenly sense around me in perfect clarity all the love and hope in the world. My worries disappeared as I raised my arms to embrace all mankind. The second sip, while not hitting as hard, expanded the feeling to the whole cosmos.
Well so I thought. In reality I was getting drunk on 60% ethanol, was raising my arms to avoid stumbling, and was about to fall over. But there was no time for that! It was time to dance.
The club was loud, crowded, and so smoke filled I could hardly tell how big the room was. The music was all in Mandarin or Sichuanese dialects, swapping between the hits of five years ago, local acts I could never quite catch the name of, and the occasional KTV classic like Ticket to the North for everyone to sing along to. We slammed our feet into the ground, punched the air, and swayed as one. Somehow I never bumped into a single person - when I finally snuck off the thick wooden dance floor to go get a drink, the crowd magically parted for me as if saying farewell. I was sad to leave - but I wasn’t here for fun and to wax poetic on alcohol, I was here to find someone to interview for a travel book. Someone who could give a local’s insight into modern life. Asking the bartender to reserve my bottle for me to take home at the end of the night, I resumed my search. Whether at the bar, on the floor, or even after some desperation in the line for the bathroom, I couldn’t make headway. I needed a better plan.
There was surely somewhere to sit and talk though! Trusting again to the wisdom of the crowd I stumbled behind a few people who were going down a corridor I hadn’t checked yet and we quickly came to an open balcony overlooking the river, a perfect view of the heart of the city to the west. As a humid breeze hit my face and finished sobering me up enough to focus, I stood together with my fellow clubbers and gazed with awe at the warm orange lights that embraced the night life of Chengdu. Students going out for night study, workers heading home, couples going on the first date of hopefully many ... I couldn’t see any faces, just colours and movement, like blood in the veins.
“It’s almost like a living creature, isn’t it?”
I turned to my left to see a young woman in a long blue and white qipao, swaying in tall platform shoes but otherwise clear-headed and sober. Her hair and makeup were impeccably conservative, but I saw a glimpse of a tattoo on her wrist. She was staring out over the bank at the city and continued speaking.
“Like a jellyfish, you can see right through it”.
“What does that make the Qing?”
“Whatever it wants to be normally”.
Finally. A subject.
Her name was Zhan Wu, though she demanded I mention her nom de plume of “Dancing Fish” under which she blogs about ice skating. She was a student at Guangzhou majoring in demographics and social planning and when I let her know I was writing about my travels across China and the people I met, she immediately declared that I needed a historic grounding, sat me down, and began to lecture. I was still a little drunk, enough to not argue but not enough to lose focus, which seemed the perfect level. Her friends to the side rolled their eyes at what was apparently a typical action of her, and continued to speak amongst themselves of more casual matters.
“The industrialisation period that began under Qianlong led to the greatest demographic disruption since the Yuan Dynasty annexed the Jin Dynasty. Hundreds of millions - HUNDREDS - slammed into a few dozen cities in the space of decades. China has always had the largest population in the world but it was the flood of cash into the lower classes that created a consumer class greater than the rest of the world combined”.
Her talk of consumer classes and urbanisation had me half wondering if she was a socialist of some stripe, but then university was the time to experiment. It seemed not though.
“Of course a richer population does not automatically create reforms like those of Xianfeng and to a lesser extent Daoguang, but what they do do is create a greater level of social complexity. Human needs rise from pure subsistence to questions of culture and spiritualism. Nature reserves, television, and rights. The wealth of the Jiaqing ‘opening’ period played a key role in this”.
At this point I began to try and change the topic towards her life and how she grew up, but she aggressively waved the issue away.
“No no, this is the problem with writers. You want a story instead of statistics. And how many times can you hear someone talk about their childhood?”
Well I suppose a demographic nerd is a story in her own right.
“Women’s liberation is often interpreted as part of the general economic trend, but in reality it had its own unique conditions. It egan as both a top-down and bottom-up reform - from the top were the Qing and Manchu themselves, who never had lotus foot binding but otherwise restricted their women to the palace. But the closer alignment of Mongolians and their steppe princesses to the Qing in Jiaqing’s reign and the Mongolian fad brought about meant more and more high class women were out riding. Meanwhile at the bottom the new textile factories were hiring women to fill the ranks, and at least some cash was in the hands of women for the first time. Meeting in the middle was a middle class that was hoping to educate their children. Scholars meanwhile were beginning to debate the history of women’s rights within China, from the soldier Hua Mulan to the warrior queen Fu Hao to Empresses like Wu Zetian, Lu Zhi, and Feng Wenming and scholars like Dr Tan Yunxian. These arguments formed the basis for later women’s movements, forming secretly using Nushu in Jiangyong County or publicly like the scholar circles of Hangzhou”.
“Appeal to tradition is considered a fallacy in the west” I said, with as little inflection as possible.
She rolled her eyes at that. “Yes, yes, foreigners and their modernism. Here it is a requirement to include proper references to tradition”.
“You can justify anything that way!”
Zhan nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! But you still need to justify it. It forces you to consider history as a single…thing! The same way as this city or the empire”.
I was beginning to think she was drunk, and that it was only making her smarter.
“Steppe culture like the Mongols, Manchu, and Turks have always been more liberal on women’s rights than Han, but it was the economic influx of Han cash and the bureaucracy’s meritocracy that made women’s reforms possible. The Qing as a hybrid of both was the best possible outcome. That’s why the first woman bureaucrat, Zeng Jifen, and woman officer, Nalan Abahai, came before the first legislator, Qiu Jin”.
“In the west it was the other way around - elected first followed by general entry” I said, having heard this particular Qing canard before.
“Must have taken you longer then. You see, it is the imperial nature of the Qing that makes centrally driven reform possible while in the west the distributed nodes of power must all improve first. The Qing, looking for new markets and new talents to support their reign, were incentivised to sponsor women's education and entry into the government".
I doubted this model somewhat since the rest of the world had plenty of monarchies and autocrats, but I wasn’t here to debate Qing propaganda about hybrid vigour and the monarchy. Well, not much. “Didn’t women only gain the right to inherit the throne in 1984? When it became obvious that Prince Youzhi was unlikely to have other children? Britain had queens centuries ago under their laws Princess Huisheng would have inherited. Foot mutilation was never permitted in the west but only outlawed here in the 1810s. And Zeng Jifen was the daughter of Zeng Guofan, she had nepotism”.
She paused and looked at me, and then nodded enthusiastically. “Yes! Progress is inherently uneven, skewing to the existing rich. Which is why we need a centralised government to drag outliers forward and why we have to take improvement as an aggregate! The Great Qing cannot be consistent across such a vast empire, but it has benefitted the greatest number of people across the majority of the world and is thus good. Polygamy, harems, the housebound nature of women across the world, all gone because of us”.
“I grant that the existence of a female scholar such as yourself helps prove that point”.
“Somewhat” she grinned.
“Were you inspired by-”
“No!” she cried out mockingly. Her friends turned to see if there was an issue, but apparently Zhan’s professorial stance made it clear who was torturing whom. “I did not become a scholar because of any examples. I became a scholar because of my parents, like any good Chinese child. I choose to study social reform movements because their particularism is an interesting change from demographic generalities. Not everything we do has a backstory and it is poor science to assume it does”.
Zhan turned back to stare at the city. “It’s those great material and cultural forces of history that make decisions, not individuals. We talk about emperors but it’s not as if they could have stopped the flow of history, stagnated the Qing while European empires formed like in uchronia. It was inevitable that the Qing would rely on an expanded bureaucracy and undo the reductions of the Yuan”.
“Perhaps”
“Definitely!” she insisted.
“Does that mean we could predict the future?”
“Of course! If you had a computer the size of the moon and a perfect surveillance of every atom”.
“I’m sure the Censorate is trying both”.
We talked a little more before she left to go to dinner with her girlfriend, while I went back into the club, my work for the night complete. Still, her words stuck with me. Were we all set on our course by vast historic forces? Was that the true Mandate of Heaven? How far back did this go, to the early days of settlement in the fertile Yellow River Valley?
I only had another day in Chengdu before I headed west, but I resolved to spend some more time in the city centre I had been skirting around. It would be good to get some generalities instead of particulars, as Zhan would say.
This chapter was somewhat experimental and criticism or general takes at the direction are invited
Pujie did not inherit in this timeline but his daughters lived.
Lightning music is ITTL dubstep. Greens are a mixture of OTL blues and rap about cheating, a reference to the Chinese phrase “to wear a green hat”. Jianghu means “rivers and lakes” and is the world where wuxia takes place, so Jianghu Play is the equivalent to LARP - it’s not all about fantasy and swords of course but the name stuck.
Jellyfish nightclub is a real place which every foreigner and most students go to, but the rest of the details are fictional to account for divergence. If you have the opportunity do go yourself if you want to see how.
Nalan Abahai is a fictional Manchu soldier, other historic figures are real and of varying degrees of fame.
Next chapter is about a military base in the Himalayas - sorry no generalities here, there’s nothing to add about Chengdu for now. Current plan is for the character to travel from Chengdu to Tibet, Altishahr, Uliastai, Baikal, Changchun, and finally Nanjing
But young people across the world are similar in their dissimilarities. They are dissimilar in their cliques, dissimilar in their dreams, and of course dissimilar to their parents, and even in the land of Confucian morality this holds true. They will zig when told to zag and zag when told to zig, and when told to study hard and make money they will look for idle entertainment to spend their parents hard-earned Yuan on.
Chengdu is no sprawling metropolis like Songjiang, and unlike Beijing it is not the beating heart of power that all arteries lead to. For a provincial capital it feels small and forgotten. But if Songjiang is the mainstream, Nantou the working class, and Beijing the refined conservative, Chengdu is the home of the avant-garde. In politics, arts, and in all things fun Chengdu is where the Great Qing come to think up the cutting edge. The universality reform movement got its start here at a national political conference. Music genres from the fast-paced rap to lightning to the “greens” were first heard in the Chengdu underground before moving to Songjiang. Murder mystery parties, escape rooms, and Jianghu play all began in the old warehouses and parks of Chengdu.
The most famous example of Chengdu’s character is the world-famous nightclub scene. While Songjiang, Nantou, and even stuffy Beijing both have plenty of nighttime entertainment, Chengdu has more per person than anywhere else in the world. Muslims have the Hajj, Jews have the Aliyah, but for youth across the world pilgrimage means coming to Chengdu once in their life to drink the hardest baijiu liquor, listen to musicians on their way up or on their way down, and to dance with people they’ll never meet again. The morality guardians occasionally rage against Chengdu’s values from the front of classical symbols like Poet-Saint Du Fu’s home but the city continues all the same.
So naturally one autumn evening I found myself on the east bank of the Fuhe River searching for the club every foreigner comes to; the Shuimu, or Jellyfish. It was supposed to be in an old warehouse that had been converted into a wet market that had then been closed, but that didn’t really narrow it down. There were no glaring neon signs or gauche street advertisers like other clubs. And my phone told me I was in the right place but I couldn’t find anyone online discussing how to get in. Lost, I did what every smart foreigner does and trusted the wisdom of the crowd. I followed a group of university students who went behind the building to the loading dock, which of course was now the main entrance, strode up a ramp, and waited for the elevator to take us together to the top floor - and the bar.
Baijiu is the most famous liquor in the world, but unlike its cousin whiskey, baijiu has been marketed to westerners as a party drink to be sculled and not savoured. Not only that, geopolitical tensions and the large Tianxia market mean the average American’s experience with baijiu is almost universally the poorer quality export labels that burn your throat and taste like nothing. Some Americans even drink it chilled rather than room temperature!
In Asia though it is central to business, with many believing a person's true character can only be seen while drunk on baijiu. While more and more people were comfortable rejecting such excesses, it remained a feature at every conference and dealing. Here in the Jellyfish though the rituals and the meals baijiu normally accompanies had been allowed to fall aside.
Before me was a…remarkable opportunity for me and I intended to take in a proper tasting focused on the three baijiu elements: the grain flavours, yeast flavours and the ageing flavours. Here at the bar I was surrounded by people debating the merits of the four types of baijiu - strong aroma, sauce aroma, light aroma, and rice aroma - and the dozens of labels on display, but I already knew what I wanted. Checking my phone to see that I had enough cash left for the night, I decided to spend it all on a single bottle of Yanghe Daqu.
First produced in the Sui-Tang period and elevated as a worthy tribute to the Qing emperors, Yanghe Daqu was of the “strong aroma” fruit type unlike the world-famous savoury Maotai Baijiu from Guizhou. While Yanghe Daqu is produced in Jiangsu, the strong aroma type is also associated with Sichuan whereas the more infamous Maotai has a “sauce flavour” that resembles soy. While they and all other varieties went through the same fermentation process, strong aroma baijiu had a different mix of ingredients with Yanghe combining sorghum and wheat grain and undergoing cultivation in wells and trenches, unlike Maotai which placed more emphasis on sorghum was buried underground for the 2-3 months.
A full graph on baijiu production
As the first sip flowed down my throat, it filled my whole body with warmth. The fruity flavour filled my mouth with pineapple sweetness while the liquid burned and softened my throat. The herbs, which the bartender insisted made it “healthy”, seemed to strengthen my resolve, dimming the bright lights and easing my aches and pains. Even as the world began to spin I could suddenly sense around me in perfect clarity all the love and hope in the world. My worries disappeared as I raised my arms to embrace all mankind. The second sip, while not hitting as hard, expanded the feeling to the whole cosmos.
Well so I thought. In reality I was getting drunk on 60% ethanol, was raising my arms to avoid stumbling, and was about to fall over. But there was no time for that! It was time to dance.
The club was loud, crowded, and so smoke filled I could hardly tell how big the room was. The music was all in Mandarin or Sichuanese dialects, swapping between the hits of five years ago, local acts I could never quite catch the name of, and the occasional KTV classic like Ticket to the North for everyone to sing along to. We slammed our feet into the ground, punched the air, and swayed as one. Somehow I never bumped into a single person - when I finally snuck off the thick wooden dance floor to go get a drink, the crowd magically parted for me as if saying farewell. I was sad to leave - but I wasn’t here for fun and to wax poetic on alcohol, I was here to find someone to interview for a travel book. Someone who could give a local’s insight into modern life. Asking the bartender to reserve my bottle for me to take home at the end of the night, I resumed my search. Whether at the bar, on the floor, or even after some desperation in the line for the bathroom, I couldn’t make headway. I needed a better plan.
There was surely somewhere to sit and talk though! Trusting again to the wisdom of the crowd I stumbled behind a few people who were going down a corridor I hadn’t checked yet and we quickly came to an open balcony overlooking the river, a perfect view of the heart of the city to the west. As a humid breeze hit my face and finished sobering me up enough to focus, I stood together with my fellow clubbers and gazed with awe at the warm orange lights that embraced the night life of Chengdu. Students going out for night study, workers heading home, couples going on the first date of hopefully many ... I couldn’t see any faces, just colours and movement, like blood in the veins.
“It’s almost like a living creature, isn’t it?”
I turned to my left to see a young woman in a long blue and white qipao, swaying in tall platform shoes but otherwise clear-headed and sober. Her hair and makeup were impeccably conservative, but I saw a glimpse of a tattoo on her wrist. She was staring out over the bank at the city and continued speaking.
“Like a jellyfish, you can see right through it”.
“What does that make the Qing?”
“Whatever it wants to be normally”.
Finally. A subject.
Her name was Zhan Wu, though she demanded I mention her nom de plume of “Dancing Fish” under which she blogs about ice skating. She was a student at Guangzhou majoring in demographics and social planning and when I let her know I was writing about my travels across China and the people I met, she immediately declared that I needed a historic grounding, sat me down, and began to lecture. I was still a little drunk, enough to not argue but not enough to lose focus, which seemed the perfect level. Her friends to the side rolled their eyes at what was apparently a typical action of her, and continued to speak amongst themselves of more casual matters.
“The industrialisation period that began under Qianlong led to the greatest demographic disruption since the Yuan Dynasty annexed the Jin Dynasty. Hundreds of millions - HUNDREDS - slammed into a few dozen cities in the space of decades. China has always had the largest population in the world but it was the flood of cash into the lower classes that created a consumer class greater than the rest of the world combined”.
Her talk of consumer classes and urbanisation had me half wondering if she was a socialist of some stripe, but then university was the time to experiment. It seemed not though.
“Of course a richer population does not automatically create reforms like those of Xianfeng and to a lesser extent Daoguang, but what they do do is create a greater level of social complexity. Human needs rise from pure subsistence to questions of culture and spiritualism. Nature reserves, television, and rights. The wealth of the Jiaqing ‘opening’ period played a key role in this”.
At this point I began to try and change the topic towards her life and how she grew up, but she aggressively waved the issue away.
“No no, this is the problem with writers. You want a story instead of statistics. And how many times can you hear someone talk about their childhood?”
Well I suppose a demographic nerd is a story in her own right.
“Women’s liberation is often interpreted as part of the general economic trend, but in reality it had its own unique conditions. It egan as both a top-down and bottom-up reform - from the top were the Qing and Manchu themselves, who never had lotus foot binding but otherwise restricted their women to the palace. But the closer alignment of Mongolians and their steppe princesses to the Qing in Jiaqing’s reign and the Mongolian fad brought about meant more and more high class women were out riding. Meanwhile at the bottom the new textile factories were hiring women to fill the ranks, and at least some cash was in the hands of women for the first time. Meeting in the middle was a middle class that was hoping to educate their children. Scholars meanwhile were beginning to debate the history of women’s rights within China, from the soldier Hua Mulan to the warrior queen Fu Hao to Empresses like Wu Zetian, Lu Zhi, and Feng Wenming and scholars like Dr Tan Yunxian. These arguments formed the basis for later women’s movements, forming secretly using Nushu in Jiangyong County or publicly like the scholar circles of Hangzhou”.
“Appeal to tradition is considered a fallacy in the west” I said, with as little inflection as possible.
She rolled her eyes at that. “Yes, yes, foreigners and their modernism. Here it is a requirement to include proper references to tradition”.
“You can justify anything that way!”
Zhan nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! But you still need to justify it. It forces you to consider history as a single…thing! The same way as this city or the empire”.
I was beginning to think she was drunk, and that it was only making her smarter.
“Steppe culture like the Mongols, Manchu, and Turks have always been more liberal on women’s rights than Han, but it was the economic influx of Han cash and the bureaucracy’s meritocracy that made women’s reforms possible. The Qing as a hybrid of both was the best possible outcome. That’s why the first woman bureaucrat, Zeng Jifen, and woman officer, Nalan Abahai, came before the first legislator, Qiu Jin”.
“In the west it was the other way around - elected first followed by general entry” I said, having heard this particular Qing canard before.
“Must have taken you longer then. You see, it is the imperial nature of the Qing that makes centrally driven reform possible while in the west the distributed nodes of power must all improve first. The Qing, looking for new markets and new talents to support their reign, were incentivised to sponsor women's education and entry into the government".
I doubted this model somewhat since the rest of the world had plenty of monarchies and autocrats, but I wasn’t here to debate Qing propaganda about hybrid vigour and the monarchy. Well, not much. “Didn’t women only gain the right to inherit the throne in 1984? When it became obvious that Prince Youzhi was unlikely to have other children? Britain had queens centuries ago under their laws Princess Huisheng would have inherited. Foot mutilation was never permitted in the west but only outlawed here in the 1810s. And Zeng Jifen was the daughter of Zeng Guofan, she had nepotism”.
She paused and looked at me, and then nodded enthusiastically. “Yes! Progress is inherently uneven, skewing to the existing rich. Which is why we need a centralised government to drag outliers forward and why we have to take improvement as an aggregate! The Great Qing cannot be consistent across such a vast empire, but it has benefitted the greatest number of people across the majority of the world and is thus good. Polygamy, harems, the housebound nature of women across the world, all gone because of us”.
“I grant that the existence of a female scholar such as yourself helps prove that point”.
“Somewhat” she grinned.
“Were you inspired by-”
“No!” she cried out mockingly. Her friends turned to see if there was an issue, but apparently Zhan’s professorial stance made it clear who was torturing whom. “I did not become a scholar because of any examples. I became a scholar because of my parents, like any good Chinese child. I choose to study social reform movements because their particularism is an interesting change from demographic generalities. Not everything we do has a backstory and it is poor science to assume it does”.
Zhan turned back to stare at the city. “It’s those great material and cultural forces of history that make decisions, not individuals. We talk about emperors but it’s not as if they could have stopped the flow of history, stagnated the Qing while European empires formed like in uchronia. It was inevitable that the Qing would rely on an expanded bureaucracy and undo the reductions of the Yuan”.
“Perhaps”
“Definitely!” she insisted.
“Does that mean we could predict the future?”
“Of course! If you had a computer the size of the moon and a perfect surveillance of every atom”.
“I’m sure the Censorate is trying both”.
We talked a little more before she left to go to dinner with her girlfriend, while I went back into the club, my work for the night complete. Still, her words stuck with me. Were we all set on our course by vast historic forces? Was that the true Mandate of Heaven? How far back did this go, to the early days of settlement in the fertile Yellow River Valley?
I only had another day in Chengdu before I headed west, but I resolved to spend some more time in the city centre I had been skirting around. It would be good to get some generalities instead of particulars, as Zhan would say.
This chapter was somewhat experimental and criticism or general takes at the direction are invited
I should note that Zhan is not an impartial or necessarily accurate lecturer but she broadly lays out the ITTL analysis that hopefully answers this question
- Economic reforms created women with financial agency and a class of people looking to educate their kids
- The Qing supported reforms to create a new loyalist class and expand the economy
- With imperial inheritance reform the last of the old gender barriers are pretty much gone
- The in-universe view that women's rights in China declined as the empire developed from warriors and queens in the Shang to mutilated and housebound prisoners in the Ming and Qing is also a take that exists in OTL
- Praise for “steppe peoples” as an instrument of liberation that reversed the declining position of Han women is at least somewhat propaganda but not entirely inaccurate ITTL. OTL Qing didn't necessarily approve of foot binding but they didn't try to ban it nearly as hard as they enforced the Queue
Pujie did not inherit in this timeline but his daughters lived.
Lightning music is ITTL dubstep. Greens are a mixture of OTL blues and rap about cheating, a reference to the Chinese phrase “to wear a green hat”. Jianghu means “rivers and lakes” and is the world where wuxia takes place, so Jianghu Play is the equivalent to LARP - it’s not all about fantasy and swords of course but the name stuck.
Jellyfish nightclub is a real place which every foreigner and most students go to, but the rest of the details are fictional to account for divergence. If you have the opportunity do go yourself if you want to see how.
Nalan Abahai is a fictional Manchu soldier, other historic figures are real and of varying degrees of fame.
Next chapter is about a military base in the Himalayas - sorry no generalities here, there’s nothing to add about Chengdu for now. Current plan is for the character to travel from Chengdu to Tibet, Altishahr, Uliastai, Baikal, Changchun, and finally Nanjing
What us the situation regarding religious makeup and status of Christianity in China?
No argument here haha. I'm trying to write the Great Qing as a place to live so hopefully this keeps up!
Jinli ancient street exists but being surrounded by other traditional areas it's not as special. It's also very preserved and touristy, the real stores have moved away.
There are still teahouses along the river but they're aimed at the upper and upper middle class and have to compete on rent and tax with other equally expensive businesses. Phenomenal view but the average person might go once a year.
Not familiar with Dragon's Breath Alley sorry but probably the same.
Korea is a more conservative country and firmly wedded to the Great Qing. If Canada is America's hat, Korea is China's sleeve. No real equivalent to Hallyu, the influential idols and groups come out of Qing (now there's a post idea - the idol industry in the Qing). It's still an economic power by population but culturally they tend to get overshadowed by Qing.
Japan is the only nearby country not in a formal tributary relationship. They are politically and geographically very different due to Qing intervention, but still developed and a nice play to live.
Haha me too. I'll try and include more looks at other areas - up next is military life and I want to do something about village life
I've got some aspects loosely sketched out but I want to research more so I can represent it properly. Last Kings of Shanghai is going to be an influence. The Middle-East situation (more positive than OTL but a mess by ITTL standards) will also matter of course.
PrinceofApathy basically got this one. Qing conservation started in the northeast and spread to the rest of the country in the form of wilderness preserves/hunting grounds and later breeding zoos. Wild harvested plants for "Traditional Chinese Medicine" also needed to be preserved. A third aspect was the agitation of Taoists and various other sectional interests to preserve the country. There was definitely some environmental damage through industrialisation of course for all the reasons Sarapen said, but the Qing are generally in a better shape than OTL because they controlled the development of the country in line with ideology.
There was definitely a point when:
TEDDY ROOSEVELT: I don't see the benefit of conservation
ZAIFENG: If you kill all the animals at once what will you kill next week
TEDDY: You son of a bitch I'm in
Ice skating was alluded to in the latest chapter of course (actually existed in Qing) and other general athletic activities like the sprint, marathon, and javelin are huge. Unlike OTL there's a much healthier balance of sports and academics because Manchu martial culture emphasises physical activity and the traditional Han split of wen/wu (culture and martial) is much more deliberately balanced. Martial arts are naturally huge in culture and the equivalent to Sanda (Chinese equivalent to MMA) is taught in schools (another symptom of Manchu militarisation).
The Olympics do exist but the Qing didn't take them very seriously until after the European War, and didn't bother to hold them until the late 20th/2000s in Nanjing. In pretty much all competitions the Qing are guaranteed to make it to the finals and have won the most gold medals/various world cups more than any other countries, but other nations can challenge with effort.
Xiangqi (Chinese relative of chess) and mahjong are the most popular board games while Weiqi (Go/Baduk) is the high prestige game.
Football/soccer is the most popular street game but the rules and team sizes are different to account for divergence - it's more of a Qing sport than European now. China has won actual world cups ITTL.
Basketball and table tennis didn't take off at all in this timeline I'm afraid, and baseball never got in.
Oriental Orthodox migrants from Solomonic Ethiopia and what-used-to-be-Syria are the largest single group. Christianity is not an official religion like Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or Taoism and has no right to evangelise, but there's some push to change that.
Legally a Qing citizen can convert to Christianity without losing their rights, but being found to have received proselytisation in the Great Qing could open them up to charges in theory. Recognising the right to receive proselytisation overseas was a major court case in the 20th century, mainly because the Qing never lost their...unique view on where their borders end. There's only one prominent Han Christian, a singer from Guangdong, but there might be more recognition in the future.
One of the big ways Qing governance evolved distinctly from western governance is that secularism is neither law nor considered desirable. The government has every right to interfere in religion and a responsibility to protect their religious character. In exchange they recognise that other regions will have their national religions too. Religious courts exist in the Qing for the purpose of mediation. Families are still the foundation of the state, not individuals, although arranged marriages are extinct. Marriage is fundamentally the province of government but religious institutions have the right to marry any couples whose marriage they recognise and have it be recognised by law (i.e. a Taoist priest can choose not to marry a couple if they don't think their zodiacs are good or any other arbitrary reason, but if they do choose to marry them the state automatically endorses the marriage).
When the Manchu rulers are strong, the Han tend to go along with their rule in exchange for concessions.
When the Manchu rulers are weak, the Han tend to go along with their rule in exchange for more concessions.
The calculus for Han politicians is that, firstly, transitioning away from the Manchu would disadvantage the cliques which are currently benefitting from the empire and thus only political losers oppose the government. Secondly, it would raise tensions in the outlying regions and force the Han government to directly solve these problems instead of letting the Manchus do the hard work. And thirdly, every demand short of a Han emperor and unrestricted internal migration has already been met and there's a widespread consensus that only the Marquis of Extended Grace (descendant of Ming) and Duke Honourable Overflowing with Wisdom (descendant of Confucius) have a viable claim to take the throne, since the age of heroic rebels overthrowing the government are long since passed. So unless you're those two or their close supporters how do you benefit? Finally the difference between Manchu and Han is blurry. Han wear Manchu vests, Manchu study Han classics. The economy had some hard moments in the 20th century but those were shared equally across racial lines, and while Guangxu and Xuantong nearly broke the Qing the government recovered thanks to the work of some key leaders. By today there's just no overwhelming reason to overthrow a successful government.
In short, by 2024 individual rulers don't effect Han like they used to and the Qing as an institution is the winning side; people might root for the underdog but they want to go home a winner. There's plenty of groups which rise and fall opposing the monarchy, and dedicated republicans exist, but for most people the Manchu are inoffensive distant sovereigns.
As for the survival of ethnic identity; Tibetans have been the most successful due to geography. Uyghurs second most due to their religion, distant geography, and ties to the Turkic world. The Han are happy to make money from these territories but don't want to settle in too large numbers. Mongolians are middle-of-the road, they're now very sedentary and integrated into the administration but their special position in relation to the throne and ties to the Tibetans have kept them superficially separate but there's a Han majority from Dzungar to Baikal to Hulunbir so not too separate. Tusi identities are largely novelties or extinct except Taiwanese aboriginals who are now almost feudatories. Manchus are not as bad as the Tusi but they're increasingly closer to a subgroup of Han in every way except political.
Ideological assimilation has been high though. Confucius is honoured everywhere, Mandarin is the national language, and there's an acceptance of "Chinese" institutions like the bureaucracy. But in terms of language, clothing, and food, there's a lot of continuity within ethnic groups, and the "rites and rituals" are very local even between different Han towns. If the Qing splintered it would be into 6 or 7 states with largely consistent structures and ideas, not a clash of civilisations
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What is situation of Buddhism in China and in the world? Was there any attempt by Qing to spread Buddhism?
Is vajrayana most prominent among various Buddhist sects?
What is the situation in india?
How Qing dealt with Christian Missionaries?
Is vajrayana most prominent among various Buddhist sects?
What is the situation in india?
How Qing dealt with Christian Missionaries?
Buddhism is a common religion throughout the Qing sphere, but the only ideology they have spread is tributary relations and the principles of Confucian/Legalist governance. Nobody is really interested in promoting a particular sect, there's a general sense that religion is up to the local ruler (Sokoto was pressured to drop the claim of Caliphate even though they weren't really invested in the whole universal authority thing on the advice of Imams).
Mahayana is the largest Buddhist sect and making inroads in southeast Asia. Vajrayana is the most politically coordinated. Potala Palace no longer has explicit temporal authority but remains influential. There are three panchen lamas (the 2 disputed claimants OTL and an additional one) and the golden urn is still used for political reasons.
At the advice of a couple of people British expansion was limited specifically due to a) a war with the Burmese and b) curbed funding from not selling opium. The Bharati subcontinent is peacefully divided into several major states with talks of a northern plains union the Qing are not opposing. Bharat is not as close to the Qing as Central Asia or Southeast Asia and some states are even aligned against the Qing but overall things are steady.
Missionaries are now merely detained for disturbing the peace and expelled. The Qing err on the side of tolerance these days so merely talking about Christianity is generally fine.
Divided between surrounding powers. The Alawite coast and a chunk of the south including Damascus joined the Jerusalem Confederations, the centre Hashemite Sultanate (OTL Saudi, UAE, Jordan, Yemen, Oman). The north joined the Iranian Republic or Qajari Transcaucasia (when the Qajari fell they retreated northwest, which for a while was the Taiwan allegory until the two reconciled. The Pahlavis meanwhile got overthrown and replaced with a modernising and mostly secular republic).
The Jerusalem Confederation is a dual monarchy between the Solomonids and Hashemites, but neither king has political power. Israel and Palestine are the two original constituent members with chunks of Syria and Lebanon joining. Politically it's a mess with constant border redrawings, entrenched ethnic parties, internal migration restrictions, a split military, and constant tensions as the Palestinians and Hebrews both try to unite the country under their rule. So a dark mirror to the Qing. But nobody wants actual genocide, which makes it better than OTL.
The Holocaust and Mizrahi purges never happened. The short-lived Socialist Germany before the Habsburgs took control of a greater germany, the dying Russian Tsardom, and the Ultramodernist Electocracy all committed expulsions driving their Jewish community to end up in the Levant. America wasn't as bad in the current plan but also not particularly welcoming. Mizrahi Jews from the former Ottoman, Arabia, and Iran saw how the wind was blowing and cashed in their assets to end up in China or what would become Israel.
The Holocaust and Mizrahi purges never happened. The short-lived Socialist Germany before the Habsburgs took control of a greater germany, the dying Russian Tsardom, and the Ultramodernist Electocracy all committed expulsions driving their Jewish community to end up in the Levant. America wasn't as bad in the current plan but also not particularly welcoming. Mizrahi Jews from the former Ottoman, Arabia, and Iran saw how the wind was blowing and cashed in their assets to end up in China or what would become Israel.
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Is there any attempt to unifiy various Buddhist branches of the world under one umbrella and propagate Buddhism?
Is there any attempt by Qing and Buddhist to renovate various Buddhist sites in india or send missionaries there? I am particularly interested in dalit conversion.
Is there any attempt by Qing and Buddhist to renovate various Buddhist sites in india or send missionaries there? I am particularly interested in dalit conversion.
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I would not; sure, the Great Qing seems like a far better place than IRL China, but it's almost certainly retained the... chauvinist outlook of old China regarding the rest of the world. American cultural and military imperialism may suck, but at least it's a relatively new historical development, and the US has to deal with external and internal issues that prevent it from fully reshaping the world in its image. The Great Qing, on the other hand, it's got the population and resources of OTL China, plus the cultural and military might of OTL America, and an unbroken history of considering itself the center of the world, going back millennia. Good, if you're Han Chinese, not as good, if you're a historical Chinese minority (sure, they've stopped trying to genocide most non-Han peoples inside their borders, but the Han and Manchu probably look down upon the likes of Mongols and Tibetans as unrefined yokels that should just assimilate into "proper" Great Qing society), to say nothing of the barbarians unlucky enough to be born outside of the Emperor's domain.
They'd be the arrogant fantasy elf trope, IRL.
Buddhism is in a strong position, and as a result most people are keenly aware of their differences. Sects are generally friendly but there's no call for further unification although the Qing maintain a Buddhist Council that covers major temples and groups for institutional convenience. Evangelising exists of course.
Qing Buddhists independently sponsor temple reviving, the Qing government aren't interested beyond guaranteeing the safety of pilgrims. Dalit are more likely to convert to Islam, which due to the lack of partition remains a major force across the whole continent
Well haha up to the reader how to interpret and I'm very happy if I write something people feel something about but I admit that's not how I see it.I would not; sure, the Great Qing seems like a far better place than IRL China, but it's almost certainly retained the... chauvinist outlook of old China regarding the rest of the world. American cultural and military imperialism may suck, but at least it's a relatively new historical development, and the US has to deal with external and internal issues that prevent it from fully reshaping the world in its image. The Great Qing, on the other hand, it's got the population and resources of OTL China, plus the cultural and military might of OTL America, and an unbroken history of considering itself the center of the world, going back millennia. Good, if you're Han Chinese, not as good, if you're a historical Chinese minority (sure, they've stopped trying to genocide most non-Han peoples inside their borders, but the Han and Manchu probably look down upon the likes of Mongols and Tibetans as unrefined yokels that should just assimilate into "proper" Great Qing society), to say nothing of the barbarians unlucky enough to be born outside of the Emperor's domain.
They'd be the arrogant fantasy elf trope, IRL.
Well mostly, the former is certainly true (well not sure I agree about America, Manifest Destiny is baked into the American worldview but off-topic). The Qing explicitly believe they are the centre of the world and everyone should pay tribute.
There's an interesting story about that from real life. Vietnam and the Qing were disputing about the border. The Qing emperor of the time granted the Vietnamese 2/3 of what they demanded. When the Vietnamese came back again and protested, they were handed the remaining 1/3. Courtiers asked the emperor why and he simply said "all land under heaven belongs to me; what difference does it make if I rule it directly or give it to a vassal?"
That's Qing sinocentrism. They demand tribute, which sucks patriotically, but unlike a modern nation state they don't care much what you do with or within your borders and consider granting you favourable trade and diplomatic relations a way to show their power. It's not always a great deal but the Qing vassals are developed and culturally distinct.
As for the minorities, I don't think looking down on them is evidenced in what I've written. Mongols and Tibetans are respected pillars of the empire. They're certainly not a majority within the halls of Beijing, but the Mongolians have a special relationship with the Qing crown and are respected as a "martial pillar" of the empire. Tibetans basically do their own thing, with minimal Han settlement due to geography and the general perspective is that they're mystics with a spiritual touch (more on that in the next two chapters about Leh and Lhasa). Uyghurs get the least respect but also get left alone. Certainly they're somewhat assimilated but OTL has the spread of American/European norms to an even greater extent.
The Qing have made mistakes, like the Somali intervention, and they have a worldview that's inherently kind of condescending, but they're also invested in supporting their protectorates and the Manchu are extremely committed to minority rights. Neither better nor worse than OTL, merely different. And if you're a sinophile it's subjectively better
If Puyie never inherited, who did?
Also: with examples like Hua Mulan and Wu Zetian women's movements don't lack for inspiration, certainly
Also: with examples like Hua Mulan and Wu Zetian women's movements don't lack for inspiration, certainly
Are the Qing active in Africa ITTL?
So from the discussion of succession, is the heir to the throne a woman here, then?
Youzhi, then Yuzhang. Pujie went down with Puyi due to their incompetence and as a consequence of Guangxu's policies hurting the Manchu position before them.
From the Horn of Africa to West Africa. Central and South is more of a mess still in recovery mode.
Jin Xin daughter of Yuzhang, who got the inheritance when Yuzhang's lack of a son and the post-Puyi political instability became enough of an issue that they decided to amend the rules.
Not positive. There's still underground churches but the authorities have gone full French revolution. Limited Deism or Atheism are acceptable. That said there's a vast underground church network with a position similar to Catholics in Poland during the Warsaw Pact days who will probably take a leading role when the government falls.
Cult of the Supreme Being - Wikipedia
Cult of Reason - Wikipedia
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Is the German Empire still the Greater Prussia that OTL’s Kaiserreich was or is the Papacy being in Vienna a hint that Austria was the one to unify Germany? On that note, how’s Latin America doing ITTL?
There were some quick changes over 70 years: Prussian Kaiserreich, Socialist Germany, Ultramodernist period, and then a Habsburg restoration including the Benelux. The Habsburgs rule "Germany", but the borders are closer to the HRE. They're in the US Camp, technically pays tribute to China though
Well developed, used commodities export and low wages to support becoming a major exporter. Unquestionably "western" nations that are aligned with the Qing order but make their money with the revisionists, similar to maybe Saudi Arabia of OTL
Probably not I'm afraid, I'm focused on the travelogue + a look at the seedier side of the Qing (Detective Noir). The detective story will have more to do with IR though
In general Qing mistakes were overconfidence and overreliance on local support that led to them being dragged into peacekeeping across Africa that turned into Vietnam. Fed into the worst of Qing militarism too.
What was Red Germany like, especially as the Spartakists were more into a system based on worker’s councils than on Vanguardism?
Inheriting the semi-democratic Prussian system Red Germany was a mixture of parliamentary democracy at the national and workers councils at the local. There was a lot of tension between sectional union interests and the more bourgeoisie intelligentsia national system that played a role in their defeat at the hands of the Ultramodernists.
Socially it was similar to late 1800s Europe in general. Fairly liberal at home, massive anti-semitism that led to mass migration to the Levant (no holocaust here though), and a militarist streak we might compare to Trotskyism. Overall probably the best European country of the decade.
In general the combination of the "Great War" (which similar to OTL WW2 started in several different places and eventually became identified as a global conflict) and the European War (which was more similar to OTL WW1 but with the technology of WW2) put Europe pretty deeply into the American sphere.
Another interesting story so I'm looking forward to this TL continued. So is the main reason of Christanity being targeted is because it's western and seen possibly as a tool to destablize the nation.