Laszlo Montgomery

“He bu, why not? And the character shi as a verb means to eat. And the last two characters, rou mi, that's a kind of a minced meat porridge. That's quite a delicacy compared to, you know, the normal rice porridge or xi fan that would be consumed by the masses. And we paste it all together and we get Why not eat meat porridge? He bu shi rou mi.”

“Seriously? You know, when Marie Antoinette allegedly said, Qu'il mange de la brioche. She never lived that one down, even though she never said it. Let them eat cake. Well, Emperor Hui, who preceded Marie Antoinette by some fourteen and a half centuries, he couldn't have possibly been more insensitive to what was going on.”

“And his manipulator-in-chief was one of China's great villainesses, his wife, Empress Jia Nanfang. She was the daughter of the powerful official Jia Chong, who some of you may remember from an old, old CSP episode, Muren Shi Xin. Well, Empress Jia, using her husband's authority and all the perks and power that came from the emperor ship, strong-armed other members of the Sima imperial clan. And for every slot in the government that she was able to open up, she filled it with relatives from her Jia clan.”

“And all this rancor led to what became known as the Bawang Zhe Luan, the War of the Eight Princes. It was a decade and a half of protracted wars among a gaggle of Sima princes, all vying for the top leadership spot. And as you can imagine, this did nothing to ameliorate the sorry state of the peasantry. So with this civil war going on in the background, things in the countryside went from bad to worse.”

“I mean, he had gone and done the same careless thing that the Zhou dynasty kings had done, distributing princely titles and handing out large fiefdoms to his numerous relatives. He thought this, in theory at least, would shore up the dynasty and that he'd be able to better maintain control out in the provinces. But despite his best intentions, all he did was plant a few seeds that would bear fruit later on in the form of internal division.”

“In a way, the story behind this Chinese Saying conveys a lesson. When rulers forget the basic needs of the people, catastrophe follows. And when the dam broke in the early 4th century and the Jin Dynasty royal family and all their aristocratic hangers on got chased out of the capital, it marked the end of the Western Jin and the start of the Eastern Jin.”

“Okay, next time you see your king, prime minister, president, or high up officials living high on the hog making comments that suggest to the people to just suck it up and tighten the belts one more notch, remember, why not eat meat?”

“You know, uniting a nation and conquering one's rivals was a very costly business. There's never been a shortage of people throughout history lacking in human decency who wouldn't think twice about robbing some tomb. According to the record of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao had appointed a Mojing Xiaowei, our gold-seeking captain, to lead the efforts of searching for buried treasure to fund his military campaigns.”

“As one well-worn legend goes, per Emperor Taizong's personal request, an actual copy of Wang Xijie's preface to the Orchid Pavilion collection, the Lan Tingji Xu, had been placed inside the tomb along with this deceased Tang Dynasty co-founding emperor. When Wen Tao cast his eyes on this gold standard of Chinese calligraphy, he had no clue to its value. As the legend goes, he discarded the priceless calligraphy scroll of Wang Xijie and kept the decorated silken box it was placed in.”

“Wen Tao managed to desecrate 18 of them. Like the Kamikaze winds that spared Japan from the Mongol invaders in 1274 and 1281, it was inclement weather that spared the tomb of China's only empress to rule in her own name, Wu Zetian. But all the other tombs got hit.”

“And si she herself? Well, she was covered in jewels and pearls and they stripped her dead body to the point where all she was wearing was one sock and some underpants. Five large crates were loaded with all the valuables from this Dingdongling that the Empress Dowager herself had had a hand in designing.”

“You know, he's been mentioned so many times, the almighty Qianlong Emperor. Despite everything we know about him, all the history he played a role in, all the anecdotes, well, he couldn't have been treated more shabbily than on this July date in 1928 After all this time in his magnificent tomb, all that remained of this longest-reigning emperor in Chinese imperial history was a skeleton. And in order to access the jewels and precious objects he was buried with, the soldiers snatched the former ruler of the Chinese empire and just unceremoniously dumped his remains in the water and the mud along with his concubines.”

“The last emperor of the Qing dynasty, Pu Yi, was heartbroken when he heard what happened. He was said to have screamed, If I don't avenge this, I will never be a descendant of the Aisin-Jueluo clan. This incident and the failure of the ROC government to do anything about it led to a complete break between Pu Yi and the nationalist government. So anyone wondering why did the last emperor throw his lot in with the Japanese when they created Manchukuo? This may have been the leading cause. I read that Pu Yi even named one of his wolfhounds Tan Wenqiang.”

“Well, maybe Sun Dianying expected this, maybe he didn't, but he had to do some serious hardcore damage control, and no expense was spared to bribe all those at the top of the Republic of China government. When Dai Li came a-knocking, Sun handed over the two largest vermillion beads of Emperor Qianlong, the Imperial Nine Dragon Sword, the Black Knight Pearl pried from Cixi's royal mouth and other utterly fantastical jade objects and priceless artifacts. All were handed over to Dai and delivered to Jiankai Shek, the Song's and their spouses.”

“The other thing about Sun Dianying was that he was loyal to no one. He switched sides at the drop of a hat. Sometimes fighting for other warlords or for Chiang Kai-shek or against the Japanese and when it would benefit him, for the Japanese. He always kept his options open. No scruples, no principles. He was a parasite who just fed on the meek.”