The China History Podcast

“And the feedback from the publishers in 2018 and 2019 was the book is not pro-China and it's not anti-China, so it has no market in America. You could be either pro-China or anti-China. That's it. Yeah, like either you're pro or you're against, but there's no room for comedy and life and reality. And so I was like, I thought that was kind of bullshit.”

“And then out from behind the ship, this little vessel comes out, like a little power boat, and it was the Japanese Coast Guard. And they start yelling at me in Japanese. And I'm like, I'm the comedian. They realized I was supposed to be on the ship. So they let me board the Coast Guard vessel, and we start chasing the ship out to sea. And eventually, they're like, he's supposed to be on the ship. And they threw down, I'm not joking, a rope ladder. And so at speed, I had, so I brought a suitcase and a duffel bag, and I put the duffel bag around me and tightened it. So I could kind of like wear the suitcase as an uneven backpack as I walked up four flights of rope ladder.”

“Master Ding, as my teacher, one of his big things that he was like, fundamentally, this is what it means to be a professional comedian, is you show up for the show. You like, you might not kill every night. That's the way comedy works. Some nights you don't do a good job, but a professional shows up for the show. He was like, I just don't care. You said you were going to be here. Like I can deal with people who are not funny and they get better. I can't deal with people who say they're going to show up and they don't.”

“So I'm about at the right area. It's midnight. I've been on this bus for 10 hours. And finally I see headlights on the side of the road and I tell the driver, I'm like, let me off, let me off. I just get off the bus, the bus drives away and the headlights also drive away. It wasn't him. It was so cold. Like my hands were dead. And I found out that he wasn't on a car. He was on his elementary school friend's motorcycle. And I knew it was his elementary school friend's motorcycle because his elementary school friend was also on the motorcycle. So we three person motorcycled it in the dark with my suitcases all the way back to the village.”

“And in Hollywood, this has been a really good lesson as well. Like you'd be surprised how many people here are like, I will work with you even if your talent is lower than other people, if you show up on time and you respond to emails and you're a part of the project and you're respectful to everybody. Like people think of celebrities getting special treatment and they do, but everybody would rather not be giving a celebrity special treatment. They would rather work with somebody who is maybe not quite as good, but just better to work with.”

“And you know where he wanted to go? The number one place he wanted to go. Is this random parking lot in Monterey Park, because there's a Chinese influencer on Xiaohongshu, on Red Note, who's called Ding Pongzi, and Ding Pongzi has basically is running a channel about living in America as a homeless person. So he was homeless in California legally, as a legal resident, and started blogging about basically being a activist, for lack of a better term, for illegal workers in America. This is one of my days when I realized that old Hollywood is over. That this guy from China who grew up watching Hollywood movies comes to LA, and the place he wants to go is a parking lot, because of social media.”

“In order to do a setup well as a comedian, you need to know what the audience knows and what they don't know. So in America, if I say, like, you know, oh, my family is middle class, my mom drove a Toyota Camry. That kind of like, that reference is an anchor for people, but my mom driving a Toyota Camry means very different things in China. As a comedian, in order to make the joke work, you need to know your audience well enough to set them up well, so that when I tell the funny story or have the reveal or the reversal, I'm able to express that reversal in a way that they are not only understand, but are comfortable with and actually feel on an emotional level.”

“The best one I found if I wanted to talk about, just like I saw this in society. If I said I saw it on my Ponyo Char, like the circles, WeChat circles, everybody had the highest trust for WeChat circles, WeChat moments. Which I always thought was interesting because that's like in some way the least regulated because it's just a timeline feed. It shows you all your fault, everybody you're friends with, everything they share in a timeline feed with no editing. And weirdly enough, that's the most trust we can get now out of the media is like no triage of important or unimportant. The fact that it all shows up means it's the least censored news we get.”

“It's really kind of scary because it's like, when I started getting into Chinese cultural exchange, I was like, surely there are hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of these cultural bridges. But nowadays, it's like, every year, there's fewer. A lot of the bridges are being destroyed purposefully, which is really disgusting. I always figured like, if the bridges died, it would be from like atrophy. But I never thought somebody would like purposely take a hammer to something like the Fulbright program to purposely destroy the exchange.”

“Choie Sew Hoy, he was too smart and entrepreneurial to engage in the backbreaking labor of mining. Plus, he spoke English, the great differentiator that separated the Cooley labor from the ones who made their living as a merchant or liaising with the locals. Choie Sew Hoy made a living by employing one of the most important and ancient skill sets known to humankind, buying and selling. He set up a shop that sold all the necessities of life to the Chinese community and to other local peoples, of course.”

“Unlike what we know about the Chinese immigrant experience in California, New Zealand's history lacked the scale of violence and massacres witnessed in the American West. Wherever the races mingled, some degree of violence never failed to occur. But unlike the American West, in New Zealand, the problem there was sporadic rather than systemic. The anti-Chinese sentiment was manifested through legislation pushed through parliament rather than being mob driven by men like California's Dennis Kearney, who led the charge against Chinese immigration there.”

“From 1901 to 1902, Chinese who had previously perished in New Zealand and who were interred in about 40 small Chinese cemeteries from around Dunedin had their remains exhumed and processed in such a way that each complete set of human remains was separated and bagged with an identification tag. The remains were then placed inside a plain wooden coffin. On July 22, 1901, while preparations were underway to process the remains for their final trip home to Guangdong province via Hong Kong, Choie Sew Hoy suddenly died, age 64. His son, Cho Kham Pui, stepped into his father's shoes and took over the operation. In total, there were 499 men who were prepared for the voyage home.”

“The next day, on October 27, the SS. Ventnor, sailing closer to the shore than it should have, hit rocks off the coast of Taranaki on the western side of the North Island. The ship's fate was sealed when the captain made the fatal mistake of seeking harbor in New Plymouth rather than turning around and heading south back to Wellington. Like that iceberg would do to the Titanic a decade later. The damage these rocks did to the Ventnor ended up being more catastrophic than Captain James Ferry at first determined. It was determined later that whilst piloting the vessel, Captain Ferry had enjoyed more than one tipple.”

“The Maori from these Iwi along that stretch of the west coast of the North Island, they knew what this was all about and so they did what came natural. To the Maori, the dead, regardless of their origin or whoever they may have been in life, should be treated with dignity. So in the spirit of Kaitiakitanga, the people there gathered the bones that kept washing up on the shoreline over a period of months, took them inland and buried them with respect, performing their own Maori rites of returning them to the earth from whence they had once come, to ensure the spirits would not wander.”

“As things turned out, the Maori and Chinese people had a few other things in common. Both people, Maori and Chinese, worshiped and honored their ancestors. And there was a strong belief that you were who you came from. Both had very strong clan associations and ties to their native places. The Maori with their Iwi, Hapu, and Wanao extended families. And both cultures had dragons and serpentine-like creatures as guardians. And they both prayed at sacred, natural sites and had similar protocols for speaking, rituals, and other formalities.”

“While its general location was known, divers only located the wreck of the SS. Ventnor in 2012. In 2013, descendants of Chinese miners and members from the Maori Iwi gathered at Hokyanga for a ceremony. And since then, annual remembrance events have been held. And these two cultures, these two communities, who throughout history remained strangers, now join together to annually commemorate this event and honor these Chinese who came to New Zealand filled with hopes and dreams.”

“So, there's no great battle or great emperor or profound discovery here. This is just a little story that perhaps teaches us that amidst the backdrop of history, quiet acts of humanity and compassion were going on all the time all over the world. We just didn't see it and nobody wrote a book about it.”

“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.”

“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?”

“The Kwantung Army has its roots in the aftermath of the Russell Japanese War. According to the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russell Japanese War, Japan inherited a lease on the Liaodong Peninsula, of which the Kwantung or Guangdong Peninsula is a part. The Kwantung Garrison was founded in nineteen o six to protect these Japanese assets, especially, which was especially salient because of fears among the Japanese army general staff that the Russians would want to fight a war of revenge over Manchuria.”

“Silk was quite significant for many ordinary Japanese. Two in five rural households were involved in the silk trade and the collapse of export markets during the Great Depression led to a kind of evisceration of the peasantry and many of the kind of Imperial Japanese Army officers had were either descended from peasants themselves or knew men in the Imperial Japanese Army under their command that were of peasant origin. And this kind of familiarity with the peasantry led to many radical ideas proliferating most notably those of Kitaiki that advocated for a kind of national socialism that would redistribute much of the wealth from the corrupt oligarchs that were running the country and restore power to the emperor in the spirit of the Meiji restoration.”

“He finally believed that the West and the East were inevitably going to clash because these in his view were kind of shall we say diametrically opposite civilizations that had to essentially fight to establish custody over the world. And in Ishiwara's opinion, The US was the kind of leader of Western civilization. Japan was the leader of Eastern civilization and these countries would eventually go to war with one another. Now for Japan to triumph in its final conflict with The United States, in Ishiwadas opinion, it needed control of a massive hinterland in East Asia.”

“So the, so the concept of Gekokujo is a Japanese term that roughly means something along the lines of the lower overcoming the higher. It has its roots, I think, in kind of pre Tokugawa Japan and it's a concept that is kind of not that well known about outside of kind of World War II Kwantung Army specialists the Kwantung Army was the kind of foremost practitioner or was the foremost incubator for Gekokujo and basically in the twentieth century what Gekokujo was was these kind of middle ranking field officers majors and colonels taking the initiative on their own to conduct in offensive operations without the permission of their superiors in the army or in the government.”

“But one could certainly argue and I think I myself am more of the persuasion that the Mukden incident is the beginning of World War II in the Asia Pacific region because it leads to a series of events that eventually leads to the second Sino Japanese war and World War two in the Asia Pacific region as a whole. But in a broader sense, the Mukden incident directly leads to the kind of Kwantung army's annexation of or not annexation, the absorption of Manchuria, the establishment of a puppet state in Manchukuo. It's called the the fourteen year war. Right? That's how it's referred to.”

“For instance, Ishii Shiro, the head of unit seven thirty one, which was the Kwantung Army's bacteriological and biological warfare outfit in Manchuria that performed very heinous experiments on living, subjects, most notably, live vivisections, for example, was let go in exchange for the data he got being he gave it to the Americans and General MacArthur and, he was not prosecuted for his criminal activities.”

“Then you have guys like, Kishi Nobusuke, who during the Second World War was in Manchukuo as one of the directors of, I think, the General Affairs Board of the Machuquo government and his job was to oversee the kind of industrialization of Machuquo. But more importantly from the perspective of many Chinese, this industrialization entailed the enslavement and early deaths of billions of people. This was a essentially slave labor driven industrialization of Manchukuo and Kishi Nobusuke oversaw this and was not indicted and actually his grandson Abe Shinzo eventually became the prime minister of Japan in 2021 after Kishinobusuke was prime minister in Japan in the late fifties. The CIA, I think, helped install him as the prime minister in the late fifties as a kind of bulwark against the Soviet Union.”

“I would say that to some extent Japan has not sufficiently apologized for the atrocities that it committed during the Second World War in East Asia. For example, you have the Rising Sun enzyme of the Imperial Japanese Navy which is still in use, right? A lot of people compare it to the swastika and for good reason, because this kind of the rising sun with the rays, that flag is, was the standard of the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy when they were rampaging throughout the Asia Pacific region and committing a wide variety of heinous atrocities that led to the depths of tens of millions of people.”